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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
DOE OSTI2024

Real-Time Inertia Estimation Tool Implementation Based on Probing Signals

As renewable energy penetration increases and the traditional generators retire in power grids, system inertia decreases and exhibits significant daily fluctuations. Furthermore, fast frequency responses (FFRs) provided by the inverter-based resources (IBRs) begin to playa very critical role and bring new challenges to real-time system inertia monitoring due to the difficulties of quantifying its artificial inertia contribution. Thus, necessitating an accurate real-time inertia estimation tool will not only benefit the secure power grid operations, but also provide insights on assessing the artificial inertia contribution from the IBRs. This paper presents a probing-based real-time inertia estimation tool that has been validated through a power-hardware-in-the-Ioop (PHIL) test system using identical hardware battery energy storage system (BESS) and control in an actual power grid. Preliminary results indicate high estimation accuracy of the developed tool and pave the way for the field test and deployment.

inverter-based resources↗
DOE OSTI2023

Oak Ridge National Laboratory Security by Design: A Plant Design and Component-Based Approach to Technical Solutions to Insider and Outsider Threat

Security costs for nuclear reactors have been shown to rise over the lifecycle of a nuclear facility as new threats, security weaknesses, and the generic threat profile of the plant location change over time. This paper conducts a review of the technological gaps that currently exist in Security by Design (SeBD) based on the literature available and attempts to close those gaps through proposing technological constructs and processes that can integrate safety and security in the design process of a plant, with a primary focus on SMR technology. Under the new modular and mass manufacturing regime, where plant designs attempt to reduce costs with potential economies of scale and modular construction, the current SeBD definitions focusing on state level regulators are not considered adequate since the licensing stage is often too late in the design process to integrate the true cost savings of SeBD. Thus, this paper attempts to remedy the current logic in order to allow for continuous implementation of security alongside the development of the safety concept for the plant. If adopted within the design process the establishment of this type of technology will allow for a technological ecosystem to evolve that will imbed security concepts into the physical design of the components of the plant.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Real-Time Protocol Engineering with the B Language

It is an invariant that critical cyberphysical systems should not fail. Mission assurance requires systems to behave with predictability, especially in their ability to satisfy real-time constraints. The NIST standard for Engineering Trustworthy Secure Systems, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication (SP) 800-160v1r1 states that formal methods are the highest level for meeting assurance requirements. There is a tension between the formal method software development process (Figure 1), which does not introduce time specificity until the latter stages of the development process (concrete model), and the need to gain confidence that time constraints will be satisfied. This paper formalizes the practical application of temporal entities e.g. Propositional Temporal Logic (PTL), Temporal Logic of Actions Plus (TLA+), etc. to critical systems.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2021

Laser ablation spectrometry for studies of uranium plasmas, reactor monitoring, and spent fuel safety

Nuclear security is one of the defining challenges of our time. Nuclear threats range from deliberate dispersal of radioactive material to contaminate the vital infrastructure to diversion and smuggling of special nuclear material for clandestine nuclear programs and nuclear terrorism, respectively. There is an associated need to develop and sustain the nuclear forensics capabilities, which requires the understanding of complex processes that occur in plasmas of nuclear materials. The area of nuclear safety has seen a resurgence of public interest, and there is a concomitant need to safely store used nuclear fuel and detect structural material failure in nuclear power systems, especially in innovative reactor designs envisioned for future adoption. Laser-produced plasmas are complicated extreme environments that can generate intense and rich, highly specific signatures of nuclear and radiological materials, which can then be explored in a wide range of applications. They include interdiction and rapid detection of nuclear materials, including their isotopic composition, detection over long distances, laboratory simulation of weapons effects, monitoring the condition of structural materials in dry cask storage containers, and novel instrumentation for nuclear power systems. We present a compilation of recent representative examples of the application of laser spectroscopy, and laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy in particular, to nuclear safety and security problems. A case is made that spectroscopic techniques based on laser-produced plasmas offer complementary, and sometimes unique, capabilities that motivate the continued exploration of their efficient production and understanding of the signatures they produce

(020.3260) Isotope shifts, (140.3440) Laser-induce↗
DOE OSTI2021

Rock Valley Accelerated Weight Drop Seismic Data Processing and Picking of P-wave and S-wave Arrival Times

Rock Valley, in the southern end of the Nevada National Security Site, hosts a fault system that was responsible for a shallow (< 3 km below surface ) magnitude 3.7 earthquake in May 1993. In order to better understand this system, seismic properties of the shallow subsurface need to be better constrained. In April and May of 2021, accelerated weight drop (AWD) active-source seismic data were recorded in order to measure P- and S-wave travel-times for the area. This report describes the processing and phase picking of the recorded seismic waveforms. In total, we picked 7,982 P-wave arrivals at offsets up to ~2500 m, and 4,369 S-wave arrivals at offsets up to ~2200 m. These travel-time picks can be inverted for shallow P-wave and S-wave velocity structure in future studies.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

Transient Safety Filter Design for Grid-Forming Inverters

Unlike conventional generators, inverter-based generation are fundamentally incapable of providing rotational inertia. While grid-forming inverters alleviate some of that problem by synthesizing small inertia via feedback control, additional control mechanisms are needed to ensure safety and security during transients. In this paper, we propose novel real-time safety-constrained feedback controllers (``safety filters'') for droop-based (grid-forming) inverters to ensure transient security of the grid. The safety filter acts as a buffer between the network operational layer and the inverter-control layer, and only lets those dispatch control signals pass to the inverter droop-controller, which are guaranteed to not violate the safety specifications (frequency, voltage, current limits). Using a distributed barrier certificates method, we construct sector-like conditions on the control policies, which guarantee the satisfaction of transient safety specifications. Sum-of-square programming is used to synthesize the safety filters. Numerical simulation results are provided to illustrate the performance of the proposed filter on inverter-based microgrids.

Kundu, Soumya↗
NASA NTRS1938

A New Spinning-test Method

This report contains a description of a new spinning-test arrangement wherein the otherwise customary rotation of the model about a fixed axis is abandoned in favor of a corresponding rotation of the air stream. The advantage of this method lies in the fact that the model is at rest while the spin is recorded. In this manner it is possible to secure systematic results with little loss of time while employing 3- or 6-component wind-tunnel balances. The troublesome equalization of the mass forces is eliminated and the flow phenomena are accessible to direct observation.

Kramer, M↗
NASA NTRS2010

Decision Engines for Software Analysis Using Satisfiability Modulo Theories Solvers

The area of software analysis, testing and verification is now undergoing a revolution thanks to the use of automated and scalable support for logical methods. A well-recognized premise is that at the core of software analysis engines is invariably a component using logical formulas for describing states and transformations between system states. The process of using this information for discovering and checking program properties (including such important properties as safety and security) amounts to automatic theorem proving. In particular, theorem provers that directly support common software constructs offer a compelling basis. Such provers are commonly called satisfiability modulo theories (SMT) solvers. Z3 is a state-of-the-art SMT solver. It is developed at Microsoft Research. It can be used to check the satisfiability of logical formulas over one or more theories such as arithmetic, bit-vectors, lists, records and arrays. The talk describes some of the technology behind modern SMT solvers, including the solver Z3. Z3 is currently mainly targeted at solving problems that arise in software analysis and verification. It has been applied to various contexts, such as systems for dynamic symbolic simulation (Pex, SAGE, Vigilante), for program verification and extended static checking (Spec#/Boggie, VCC, HAVOC), for software model checking (Yogi, SLAM), model-based design (FORMULA), security protocol code (F7), program run-time analysis and invariant generation (VS3). We will describe how it integrates support for a variety of theories that arise naturally in the context of the applications. There are several new promising avenues and the talk will touch on some of these and the challenges related to SMT solvers. Proceedings

Bjorner, Nikolaj↗
NASA NTRS2015

Preface

The potential effects of climate change on the food production system are raising concern both globally and regionally. The system is already challenged to deliver sufficient and healthy sustenance to all people, and is certain to be even further challenged as world population grows and price shocks loom. The prospect of climate change intensifies these challenges, raising the risk that more frequent and intense extreme weather events threaten the stability of agricultural production in regions around the globe. This two-part set is an important contribution to the ongoing Imperial College Press (ICP) Series on Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation, and Mitigation. This series aims to provide the know ledge base necessary for understanding and responding to climate change, in both its current form and future manifestations. In these volumes, ·leading agricultural researchers have come together to contribute their expertise on actual and potential climate change impacts, adaptation strategies, and mitigation efforts. This ongoing series is jointly published by The American Society of Agronomy (ASA), Crop Science Society of America (CSSA), and Soil Science Society of America (SSSA), together with ICP. We hope that this fruitful cooperation will continue for many years to come, as it spurs the global effort to define and meet the great food security and climate change challenges of our time.

farmlands↗
DOE OSTI2021

The Fast Modular Reactor (FMR) Pre-Application Regulatory Engagement Plan

The Fast Modular Reactor (FMR) is a 50 MWe Gascooled Fast Reactor (GFR) being developed by General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) under U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP), specifically Advanced Reactor Concepts 2020 (ARC-20). The 3-year conceptual design of the FMR is being conducted with verifications of key metrics in fuel, safety, and operational performance. GAEMS is pursuing design, licensing, and commercialization of the proposed reactor, with demonstration by 2030 and deployment by the mid-2030s. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recommends the pre-application regulatory engagement to provide for early identification of regulatory requirements for advanced reactors and to provide all interested parties with a timely, independent assessment of the safety and security characteristics of advanced reactor designs. As such, GAEMS is developing a pre-application regulatory engagement plan (REP) of the FMR.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
NASA NTRS1995

Technology Transfer

The development and application of new technologies in the United States has always been important to the economic well being of the country. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has been an important source of these new technologies for almost four decades. Recently, increasing global competition has emphasized the importance of fully utilizing federally funded technologies. Today NASA must meet its mission goals while at the same time, conduct research and development that contributes to securing US economic growth. NASA technologies must be quickly and effectively transferred into commercial products. In order to accomplish this task, NASA has formulated a new way of doing business with the private sector. Emphasis is placed on forming mutually beneficial partnerships between NASA and US industry. New standards have been set in response to the process that increase effectiveness, efficiency, and timely customer response. This summer I have identified potential markets for two NASA inventions: including the Radially Focused Eddy Current Sensor for Characterization of Flaws in Metallic Tubing and the Radiographic Moire. I have also worked to establish a cooperative program with TAG, private industry, and a university known as the TAG/Industry/Academia Program.

Bullock, Kimberly R.↗
DOE OSTI2023

Mitigating Extremist Maritime Threats to Radiological Material Transport Vessels

The 21st century has experienced a rise in the threat of global radicalism and extremist organizations, and there has been oft-reported interest from these groups in obtaining or exploiting radiological materials. The threat of extremists acquiring radiological materials while in transit or sabotaging a transport vessel carrying materials at sea is one that requires increased attention. Transport is already one of the most vulnerable times for any cargo but including the difficulties in securing a large ship on the open ocean makes oceanic transport of radiological materials a space of elevated vulnerability for sabotage, theft, or other attacks. The risks of violent extremist attacks on trade ships and trading routes are serious, as shipping routes sustain the global economy, but an attack on a radiological transport vessel could be a magnitude worse, impacting national and international security. While radicalists have largely remained on land in the past due to minimal maritime expertise or inability to project power out of their immediate vicinity, the world has witnessed past attacks on ships such as the USS Cole and the MV Limburg and it is likely only a matter of time before groups extend further into the sea and engage in more maritime campaigns against material transport vessels. This paper suggests methods for increasing safety and security on oceanic transport voyages through behavioral science principles and insider threat recognition training, as well as a better understanding of adversarial and extremist psychology. By providing transport personnel with the knowledge and support to identify and respond to unique maritime threats by extremists, these principles and training suggestions should advance and increase security on the high seas.

Kinney, Justin↗
DOE OSTI2020

Blockchain based Communication Architectures with Applications to Private Security Networks

Existing communication protocols in high consequence security networks are highly centralized. While this naively makes the controls easier to physically secure, external actors require fewer resources to disrupt the system because there are fewer points in the system can be destroyed or interrupted without the entire system failing. We present a solution to this problem using a proof-of-work-based blockchain implementation built on MultiChain. We construct a test-bed network containing two types of data input: visual imagers and microwave sensor information. These data types are ubiquitous in perimeter intrusion detection security systems and allow a realistic representation of a real-world network architecture. The cameras in this system use an object detection algorithm to nd important targets in the scene. The raw data from the camera and the outputs from the detection algorithm are then placed in a transaction on the distributed ledger. Similarly, microwave data is used to detect relevant events and are placed in a transaction. These transactions are then bundled into blocks and broadcast to the rest of the network using the Bitcoin-based MultiChain protocol. We develop five tests to examine the security metrics of our network. We performed the five security metric test using different sized networks from 7 to 39 nodes to determine how the metrics scale with respect to size. We nd that when compared to a centralized architecture our implementation provides a resiliency increase that is expected from a blockchain-based protocol without slowing the system so much that a human operator would notice. Furthermore, our approach is able to detect tampering in real time. Based on these results, we theorize that security networks in general could use a blockchain-based approach in a meaningful way.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
NASA NTRS2014

NASA Tech Briefs, June 2014

Topics include: Real-Time Minimization of Tracking Error for Aircraft Systems; Detecting an Extreme Minority Class in Hyperspectral Data Using Machine Learning; KSC Spaceport Weather Data Archive; Visualizing Acquisition, Processing, and Network Statistics Through Database Queries; Simulating Data Flow via Multiple Secure Connections; Systems and Services for Near-Real-Time Web Access to NPP Data; CCSDS Telemetry Decoder VHDL Core; Thermal Response of a High-Power Switch to Short Pulses; Solar Panel and System Design to Reduce Heating and Optimize Corridors for Lower-Risk Planetary Aerobraking; Low-Cost, Very Large Diamond-Turned Metal Mirror; Very-High-Load-Capacity Air Bearing Spindle for Large Diamond Turning Machines; Elevated-Temperature, Highly Emissive Coating for Energy Dissipation of Large Surfaces; Catalyst for Treatment and Control of Post-Combustion Emissions; Thermally Activated Crack Healing Mechanism for Metallic Materials; Subsurface Imaging of Nanocomposites; Self-Healing Glass Sealants for Solid Oxide Fuel Cells and Electrolyzer Cells; Micromachined Thermopile Arrays with Novel Thermo - electric Materials; Low-Cost, High-Performance MMOD Shielding; Head-Mounted Display Latency Measurement Rig; Workspace-Safe Operation of a Force- or Impedance-Controlled Robot; Cryogenic Mixing Pump with No Moving Parts; Seal Design Feature for Redundancy Verification; Dexterous Humanoid Robot; Tethered Vehicle Control and Tracking System; Lunar Organic Waste Reformer; Digital Laser Frequency Stabilization via Cavity Locking Employing Low-Frequency Direct Modulation; Deep UV Discharge Lamps in Capillary Quartz Tubes with Light Output Coupled to an Optical Fiber; Speech Acquisition and Automatic Speech Recognition for Integrated Spacesuit Audio Systems, Version II; Advanced Sensor Technology for Algal Biotechnology; High-Speed Spectral Mapper; "Ascent - Commemorating Shuttle" - A NASA Film and Multimedia Project DVD; High-Pressure, Reduced-Kinetics Mechanism for N-Hexadecane Oxidation; Method of Error Floor Mitigation in Low-Density Parity-Check Codes; X-Ray Flaw Size Parameter for POD Studies; Large Eddy Simulation Composition Equations for Two-Phase Fully Multicomponent Turbulent Flows; Scheduling Targeted and Mapping Observations with State, Resource, and Timing Constraints;

Source record↗
DOE OSTI2023

Flexible visualization of a 3rd party Intrusion Prevention (Security) tool: A use case with the ELK stack

A difficult aspect of cyber security is the ability to achieve automated real time intrusion prevention across various sets of systems. To this extent, several companies are offering comprehensive solutions that leverage an "accuracy of scale" and moving much of the intelligence and detection on the Cloud, relying on an ever-growing set of data and analytics to increase decision accuracy. Often, they provide tools to visualize the decision workflows in attack prevention (as well as tune the algorithm) but those solutions are not always practical as companies see the problem as "global" that is, from a unified Cyber-security standpoint. However, a key to a successful Cyber-security program is transparency and trust: from an experimental team viewpoint, this specifically means having the ability to immediately see what and from where, who has been blocked and being able to inform the community in case of a revoked access without the need for filing a "ticket" (that may eventually be answered) – in other words, rapid response to their user-base is essential but solutions targeting "sub-groups" in an organization are not often available. We have come up with a versatile solution leveraging the ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, & Kibana) and an IPS (Intrusion Prevention System) based WAF (Web Application Firewall) from Signal Sciences. Signal Science allows the streaming of detailed logs in a Logstash format suitable for custom solutions for visualization. By combining these two tools, we have strengthened our security posture and enabled individual experiments to monitor their own traffic. Specifically, the IPS WAF provides unique data such as country of origin, protocol, response code, source IP, and paths accessed. In this contribution, we will show how we engineered a visualization solution so experiment groups could access a dashboard with predefined graphs but also, where they can create individual customizable dashboards used to display blocked traffic and troubleshoot latency issues. We will discuss the details and procedures for developing and configuring these tools and how it benefits cyber security postures across our scientific based environment.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Do parcel lockers reduce delivery times? Evidence from the field

Common-carrier parcel lockers have emerged as a secure, automated, self-service means of delivery consolidation in congested urban areas, which are believed to mitigate last-mile delivery challenges through reducing out-of-vehicle delivery times and consequently vehicle dwell times at the curb. However, little research exists to empirically demonstrate the environmental and efficiency gains from this technology. In this study, we designed a nonequivalent groups pre-test/post-test control experiment to estimate the causal effects of a parcel locker on delivery times in a residential building in downtown Seattle, WA. Here, the causal effects are measured in terms of vehicle dwell time and the time delivery couriers spend inside the building, through the difference-in-difference method and using a similar nearby residential building as a control. The results showed a statistically significant decrease in time spent inside the building, and small yet insignificant reduction in delivery vehicle dwell time at the curb. The locker was also well received by the building managers and residents.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
NASA NTRS2004

Emergency Response Manual

Safety and security is very important at NASA. The Security Management and Safeguards Office goal is ensure safety and security for all NASA Lewis and Plum Brook Station visitors and workers. The office protects against theft, sabotage, malicious damage, espionage, and other threats or acts of violence. There are three types of security at NASA: physical, IT, and personnel. IT is concerned with sensitive and classified information and computers. Physical security includes the officers who check visitors and workers in and patrol the facility. Personnel security is concerned with background checks during hiring. During my internship, I met people from and gained knowledge about all three types of security. I primarily worked with Dr. Richard Soppet in physical security. During my experience with physical security, I observed and worked with many aspects of it. I attended various security meetings at both NASA Lewis and Plum Brook. The meetings were about homeland security and other improvements that will be made to both facilities. I also spent time with a locksmith. The locksmith makes copies of keys and unlocks doors for people who need them. I rode around in a security vehicle with an officer as he patrolled. I also observed the officer make a search of a visitor s vehicle. All visitors vehicles are searched upon entering NASA. I spent time and observed in the dispatch office. The officer answers calls and sends out officers when needed. The officer also monitors the security cameras. My primary task was completing an emergency response manual. This manual would assist local law enforcement and fire agencies in case of an emergency. The manual has pictures and descriptions of the buildings. It also contains the information about hazards inside of the buildings. This information will be very helpul to law enforcement so that when called upon during an emergency, they will not create an even bigger problem with collateral damage.

Barnett, Traci M.↗
NASA NTRS1973

Future DCS objectives in communication network timing and synchronization

The Defense Communication System will be moving rapidly toward providing switched digital service to it's users within the next ten years. The principal driving force in the transition to a digital system is the requirement for high performance secure voice service. Additionally, the anticipated data requirements in this time frame can be handled most effectively by a digital network. The characteristics of a switched digital network which impose timing and synchronization requirements on the system design are presented. Several alternative approaches to implementing a timing subsystem suitable for a switched digital communications system have been considered. These include pulse stuffing, independent stable clocks, and clock correction techniques. The advantages and disadvantages of each approach are discussed relative to both the strategic and tactical communication system requirements.

Mensch, J. R.↗