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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 163 records · Page 9
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Problems in Machine Learning-Based Systems for Safety-Critical Avionics

To explore, discover, and understand the impact on safety of growing complexity introduced by modernization aimed at improving the efficiency of flight, the access to airspace, and/or the expansion of services provided by air vehicles. To develop and demonstrate innovative solutions that enable this modernization and the aviation transformation envisioned by ARMD through proactive mitigation of risks in accordance with target levels of safety.

Safety Critical Systems↗
DOE OSTI2020

Precipitation-site competition in duplex stainless steels: Cu clusters vs spinodal decomposition interfaces as nucleation sites during thermal aging

Competing microstructural evolution mechanisms can exist simultaneously when duplex stainless steels are operating for several decades in a high temperature service environment. Such competition between different microstructural evolution pathways can be difficult to ascertain using simple model alloy systems necessitating detailed structural and compositional analysis of phase transformation mechanisms in complex alloys Thus, in this study duplex stainless steels with complex but well understood chemistries were used to investigate the relative importance of different heterogeneous nucleation sites – specifically spinodal decomposition and Cu clustering – on precipitation of Ni-Si-Mn particles during long term thermal aging. Precipitation of Ni-Si-Mn particles in duplex stainless steels and ferritic steels during thermal aging and irradiation is known to have profound effect on mechanical properties. Using duplex stainless steels with custom modified compositions along with atom probe tomography characterization and first-passage kinetic Monte Carlo (FPKMC) simulations it is revealed that while the interface between Cr and Fe formed during spinodal decomposition can be a pathway for diffusion of Ni, Si, Mn, and Cu, it is not a site that encourages precipitation of Ni-Si-Mn rich particles. Instead, the presence of a higher concentration of Cu in these steels leads to formation of small Cu clusters with high energy interfaces that act as nucleation sites for Ni-Si-Mn particles because of its strong interaction particularly with Ni increasing the chemical driving force for precipitation. These results will help inform predictive models for the use of duplex stainless steels and other precipitation-hardened alloys for extended operation at high temperatures.

Duplex stainless steel, Thermal aging, Precipitati↗
DOE OSTI2026

Field Validation of a Grid-Interactive Efficient Building Software Solution

The U.S. General Services Administration's (GSA's) Green Proving Ground (GPG) program, in partnership with the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR), completed a field study of a Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings (GEB) software solution. The study focused on a single testbed facility to test the GEB functionality of the software solution, along with other features. The testbed facility - a courthouse - is a common building type in GSA's vast building portfolio, offering potentially impactful findings on a scalable level. The study evaluated Prescriptive Data's technology, Nantum OS, a connected building operating system ("GEB Solution") which aggregates multiple sources of previously siloed building data and combines that data with external sources, such as weather information or utility signals, into a single integrated platform. A GEB Solution is a type of Energy Management Information System (EMIS). EMIS is defined as a system of devices, data services, and software applications that communicates with any building system or third-party data source to aggregate and transform data into new capabilities to aid in the optimization of energy use at the building, campus, or agency level. This specific GEB Solution is an EMIS with ASO, automated system optimization, offering supervisory control of certain aspects of the Building Automation System (BAS). Multiple features were evaluated including, but not limited to, Continuous Demand Management to avoid setting new monthly kilowatt (kW) peaks, energy efficiency for reduction of kilowatt hours (kWh) and natural gas consumption, and automated demand response (ADR) for purposes of lowering demand during a utility called Demand Response (DR) event. The testbed facility was the Foley Federal Building and US Courthouse ("Foley Federal Building") located in Las Vegas, NV. This is a 209,496 sq. ft. building constructed in the 1960s with major renovations in 2004. The facility was a good candidate due to the large prevalence of office and courthouse spaces in the GSA portfolio of buildings. It also has many features which allow integration into and control of the building and a strong facilities team to assist with the study. Quantitative and qualitative performance objectives were developed using GSA's GPG GEB project template along with input from the vendor and building facility staff; these are outlined in Table 1. The quantitative performance objectives focused on continuous demand management, energy efficiency, and automated demand response. The qualitative performance objectives focused on the ease of installation and commissioning as well as the operability of the GEB solution. Other performance metrics that are reported on include carbon reduction, cost effectiveness, and occupant acceptance.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Safety Expertise and the Perils of Novelty

Emerging aviation markets such as urban air mobility are giving rise to new technologies and means of operation. However, novelty may hide ‘unknown unknowns,’ raising new hazards. This paper examines how expertise and safety techniques enable transformative technologies such as reduced crew operations, hybrid wing-borne and rotor-born flight, federated air traffic services, and urban operations. We explore how analysts use expertise to address common-cause failures, collect and interpret safety data, and perform exacting tradeoffs between dissimilarity, redundancy, independence, and diversity (human, process lifecycle, or otherwise) to ensure safety. When novelty is present, analysts might not possess the expertise needed to fully understand the implications of design decisions and tradeoffs being made, especially in early lifecycle phases, on emergent properties such as safety. Safety expertise must be carefully cultivated. The conflicting views of safety experts must be unpacked to identify the divergence in fundamental assumptions, models, means, and methods that may be causing them. Once systems venture beyond the basis of what safety expertise can reliably guarantee, projects take on risk that must be managed. The paper contains key takeaways and actionable recommendations for novel OEMs and regulators touching on topics such as robust monitoring; clear and transparent reporting; incremental approaches to fielding novel systems in hazard-rich, risk-tolerant environments; the cultivation of safety culture and expertise in an organization; and the use of scientific study to reduce epistemic uncertainty in novel operations with new technologies. Since excessive novelty in aviation can undermine the current foundation of safety, humility and incrementalism are necessary to enable emerging aviation markets safely.

safety expertise↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Safety Expertise and the Perils of Novelty

Emerging aviation markets such as urban air mobility are giving rise to new technologies and means of operation. However, novelty may hide ‘unknown unknowns,’ raising new hazards. This paper examines how expertise and safety techniques enable transformative technologies such as reduced crew operations, hybrid wing-borne and rotor-born flight, federated air traffic services, and urban operations. We explore how analysts use expertise to address common-cause failures, collect and interpret safety data, and perform exacting tradeoffs between dissimilarity, redundancy, independence, and diversity (human, process lifecycle, or otherwise) to ensure safety. When novelty is present, analysts might not possess the expertise needed to fully understand the implications of design decisions and tradeoffs being made, especially in early lifecycle phases, on emergent properties such as safety. Safety expertise must be carefully cultivated. The conflicting views of safety experts must be unpacked to identify the divergence in fundamental assumptions, models, means, and methods that may be causing them. Once systems venture beyond the basis of what safety expertise can reliably guarantee, projects take on risk that must be managed. The paper contains key takeaways and actionable recommendations for novel OEMs and regulators touching on topics such as robust monitoring; clear and transparent reporting; incremental approaches to fielding novel systems in hazard-rich, risk-tolerant environments; the cultivation of safety culture and expertise in an organization; and the use of scientific study to reduce epistemic uncertainty in novel operations with new technologies. Since excessive novelty in aviation can undermine the current foundation of safety, humility and incrementalism are necessary to enable emerging aviation markets safely.

safety expertise↗
DOE OSTI2022

How to Build a Connected Community: Policies to Promote Grid-interactive Efficient Buildings and Demand Flexibility

Efficient, connected, grid-interactive, smart, and flexible buildings are key to decarbonizing the U.S. energy economy, optimizing energy use, reducing electric consumers’ bills, integrating variable renewable energy resources, and improving the reliability and performance of the nation’s electricity grids. Such grid-interactive efficient buildings have high levels of energy efficiency layered with other distributed energy resources (DERs) and intelligent controls to provide demand flexibility. Policy support is unfolding at the federal, state, and local levels to transform homes and workplaces into state-of-the-art energy-efficient buildings and community-level grid services. This paper starts by describing the potential benefits. Next, it highlights existing policies — with a focus on state-level actions — that support grid-interactive efficient building deployment and demand flexibility. Finally, it identifies current trends and gaps, policies and programs that promote grid-interactive efficient buildings, and aggregations of grid-interactive efficient buildings referred to as Virtual Power Plants.

Schwartz, Lisa C↗
NASA NTRS1997

Characterization of Miniature Millimeter-Wave Vivaldi Antenna for Local Multipoint Distribution Service

The paper presents first, an efficient measurement technique to characterize the input impedance of a Vivaldi antenna, second, a simple technique to impedance match a Vivaldi antenna to a 50 Ohm feed line and lastly, a desktop arrangement to determine the directional gain of a Vivaldi antenna. The characterization is done using a microwave wafer probe station, a ground-signal microwave probe, impedance standard substrate and an automatic network analyzer. The Vivaldi antenna with a matching transformer has a VSVIR close to unity and a gain of about 10 dB over the frequency band of 27.5 to 28.35 GHz which is allocated for local multipoint distribution service (LMDS).

Simon, Rainee N.↗
DOE OSTI2020

Autonomous Intelligent Charging/Discharging of Electric Vehicles using Distributed Multi-Agent ADMM Framework for Grid Ancillary Services

The increasing popularity of Electric Vehicles (EVs) in the distribution grid along with technological advancement in EV electronics such as vehicle to grid (V2G) technique has enabled them to participate in grid ancillary services. To achieve this, the EVs need to establish a contract with third-party aggregators and connect to a charging unit, either residential or commercial. At any time they are connected, the EVs can decide to take part in the ancillary services program offered to them by the aggregators. If agreed, the aggregators will use the EVs as a power source capable of charging/discharging power according to the input signal, and in return, they will be compensated. This inter-temporal nature of charging/discharging is also transforming the traditional optimal power flow (OPF) problem into a dynamic OPF problem. This chapter aims at developing a multi-layer time-dependent optimization algorithm to utilize EV potential and provide ancillary services while maximizing its utilization function. Specifically, in the upper layer, an autonomous distributed ADMM algorithm is developed to optimize the cost for charging/discharging EVs while using them to regulate the voltage at each bus in the distribution grid. The distributed ADMM algorithm is also expanded to the lower layer where the individual EVs active and reactive power is controlled for voltage regulation while maintaining the desired state of the charge of the vehicle at the end of the charging period. Here, the effectiveness and performance improvement of the proposed multi-layer algorithm is illustrated through analytical analysis and simulation results.

Rahman, Towfiq↗
DOE OSTI2020

Autonomous Intelligent Charging/Discharging of Electric Vehicles using Distributed Multi-Agent ADMM Framework for Grid Ancillary Services

The increasing popularity of Electric Vehicles (EVs) in the distribution grid along with technological advancement in EV electronics such as vehicle to grid (V2G) technique has enabled them to participate in grid ancillary services. To achieve this, the EVs need to establish a contract with third-party aggregators and connect to a charging unit, either residential or commercial. At any time they are connected, the EVs can decide to take part in the ancillary services program offered to them by the aggregators. If agreed, the aggregators will use the EVs as a power source capable of charging/discharging power according to the input signal, and in return, they will be compensated. This inter-temporal nature of charging/discharging is also transforming the traditional optimal power flow (OPF) problem into a dynamic OPF problem. This chapter aims at developing a multi-layer time-dependent optimization algorithm to utilize EV potential and provide ancillary services while maximizing its utilization function. Specifically, in the upper layer, an autonomous distributed ADMM algorithm is developed to optimize the cost for charging/discharging EVs while using them to regulate the voltage at each bus in the distribution grid. The distributed ADMM algorithm is also expanded to the lower layer where the individual EVs active and reactive power is controlled for voltage regulation while maintaining the desired state of the charge of the vehicle at the end of the charging period. The effectiveness and performance improvement of the proposed multi-layer algorithm is illustrated through analytical analysis and simulation results.

Rahman, Towfiq↗
DOE OSTI2022

Thermal conductivity of salvaged fused cast alumina used in the glass industry

Fused cast alumina (FCA) has been and continues to be used as a refractory material in energy intensive industries such as glass melting and chemical processing. In-service degradation due to high temperature exposure in harsh environment affects the designed furnace thermal profiles and energy consumption. Phase transformation may occur at the refractory hot face during glass melting altering the properties. Three FCA blocks recovered from industrial furnaces were investigated in this study. The as-received FCA consists primarily of a mixture of alpha (α) and beta (β) alumina that has a thermal conductivity value of 5–6 W/mK. The Hot Disk method was used to obtain thermal conductivity directly on the refractory blocks. At the hot face, a transformation from β to α alumina occurred and was confirmed by an X-ray diffraction study. Thermal conductivity measurements as a function of position also showed a clear transition from β to α alumina at both ends of a complete block with no voids. Thermal conductivity of the α alumina tripled compared to β alumina. This study provides important information of heat transfer and thermal conductivity evolution to refractory manufacturers and users.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2021

Expanding the Scope of Commercial Opportunities for Investor-Owned Electric Utilities

Technological advances and a more engaged customer population are pushing utilities and their regulators towards new strategies that promote growth and transformation. Common to many of these efforts is an interest in expanding the set of profit-generating product and service offerings, hereafter referred to as alternative commercial opportunities, beyond just buying and selling electricity. Prior work has focused on specific categories and types of alternative commercial opportunities and in specific market segments. The report fills an important gap in the literature in two ways. First, we develop a comprehensive taxonomy to categorize the alternative commercial opportunities and provide numerous examples within each category. Second, we identify six issues that regulators may want or need to address when determining if and how investor-owned electric utilities pursue these commercial opportunities. The work is intended to inform regulators and decision-makers about how to navigate these broader reform opportunities, as well as rationalize their response within the context of their state policy strategy and in comparison to their peers in other states.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
NASA NTRS1979

Electromagnetic propulsion alternatives

Mass drivers can serve to propel massive objects by expelling any available material as reaction mass, however, mass driver engines have several limitations such as relatively large payload size and dynamic stability problems. A number of alternative acceleration mechanisms exist which offer advantages for certain applications, such as higher acceleration at a sacrifice in efficiency, smaller possible size and decreased complexity at a sacrifice in service life, etc. The alternative concepts include several variants of the railgun, a family of superconducting slingshot oscillators, a momentum transformer, an impulse induction motor, and a family of hybrid synchronous accelerators. A potential application of considerable interest is the earth-based launching of space cargo or nuclear waste by using off-peak generating capacity to accelerate one ton cargo cylinders at intervals of several minutes.

Kolm, H.↗
DOE OSTI2020

NREL Transforms Energy for Innovative Smart and Connected Communities

Smart and connected communities use technology to better manage their urban energy systems and improve the quality and performance of government services by leveraging big data for data-driven decisions. NREL helps these communities reach their clean energy goals through cutting-edge expertise in planning, data, analytical tools, and technical support.

partnering with cities↗
DOE OSTI2022

5G Enabled Transformative Co-design and Co-simulation Framework for Grid Decarbonization and Modernization

5G is a breakthrough technology to enable a fully mobile and connected society, and a 5G-enabled digital continuum will be one of the critical foundations for clean energy economy and grid modernization. The clean energy transformation not only requires innovative manufacturing, algorithm, application, and cross-domain co-simulation, but also a systematic evaluation and comprehensive support on the microelectronic and architectural computing customization to enable and maximize the high renewable penetration in the future power grid. The co-design of decarbonized grid, reliable yet efficient communication, and affordable yet ubiquitous computing will unlock the potential of almost any available tools for the undergoing clean energy transformation. 5G is also an opportunity to rethink the paradigm of infrastructure planning, as computing will be one of the core services for society alongside electricity and communication services.

5G↗
NASA NTRS1990

Earth benefits from space life sciences

Contributions of space exploration which are widely recognized are those dealing with the impact of space technology on public health and medical services in both urban and remote rural areas. Telecommunications, image enhancement, 3-dimensional image reconstructions, miniaturization, automation, and data analysis, have transformed the delivery of medical care and have brought about a new impetus to the field of biomedicine. Many areas of medical care and biological research have been affected. These include technological breakthroughs in such areas as: (1) diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of cardiovascular diseases, (2) new approaches to the understanding of osteoporosis, (3) early detection of genetic birth defects, (4) emergency medical care, and (5) treatment of chronic metabolic disorders. These are but a few examples where technology originally developed to support space medicine or space research has been applied to solving medical and health care delivery problems on Earth.

NASA Center HQS↗
NASA NTRS1998

Smart Sensor System for NDE or Corrosion in Aging Aircraft

The extension of the operation life of military and civilian aircraft rather than replacing them with new ones is increasing the probability of aircraft component failure as a result of aging. Aircraft that already have endured a long srvice life of more than 40 years are now being considered for another 40 years of service.

monitoring system mathematical transformation oper↗
NASA NTRS2017

Web Coverage Service Challenges for NASA's Earth Science Data

In an effort to ensure that data in NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) is available to a wide variety of users through the tools of their choice, NASA continues to focus on exposing data and services using standards based protocols. Specifically, this work has focused recently on the Web Coverage Service (WCS). Experience has been gained in data delivery via GetCoverage requests, starting out with WCS v1.1.1. The pros and cons of both the version itself and different implementation approaches will be shared during this session. Additionally, due to limitations with WCS v1.1.1 ability to work with NASA's Earth science data, this session will also discuss the benefit of migrating to WCS 2.0.1 with EO-x to enrich this capability to meet a wide range of anticipated user's needs This will enable subsetting and various types of data transformations to be performed on a variety of EOS data sets.

Web Coverage Services↗
DOE OSTI2021

dCache: from Resilience to Quality of Service

A major goal of future dCache development will be to allow users to define file Quality of Service (QoS) in a more flexible way than currently available. This will mean implementing what might be called a QoS rule engine responsible for registering and managing time-bound QoS transitions for files or storage units. In anticipation of this extension to existing dCache capabilities, the Resilience service, which maintains on-disk replica state, needs to undergo both structural modification and generalization. This paper describes ongoing work to transform Resilience into the new architecture which will eventually support a more broadly defined file QoS.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗