Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “Computer science”

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.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 1,639 records · Page 91
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

A dynamic variational multiscale method on unstructured meshes for stationary transport problems

Here, this paper presents a variational multiscale (VMS) based finite element method where the stabilization parameter is computed dynamically. The current dynamic procedure takes in a general structure/form of the stabilization parameter with unknown coefficients and computes them dynamically in a local fashion resulting in a dynamic VMS-based finite element method. Thus, a static stabilization parameter with pre-defined coefficients is not needed. A variational Germano identity (VGI) based local procedure suitable for unstructured meshes is developed to perform the dynamic computation in a local fashion. The local VGI based procedure is applied for each interior vertex in the mesh and unknown coefficients are first determined locally at each vertex, and subsequently, for each element a maximum value is taken over the vertices of the element. To make the current procedure practical, a coarser secondary solution is constructed from the primary coarse-scale solution, which is done locally over a patch of elements around each interior vertex. Further, averaging steps are employed to make the local dynamic procedure robust. Currently, the new dynamic VMS formulation is applied to steady problems governed by the advection-diffusion and incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in both 1D and 2D to demonstrate its efficacy and effectiveness.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2023

Thermal insulation versus capacitance: A simulation experiment comparing effects of shade and hyporheic exchange on daily and seasonal stream temperature cycles

In streams where water temperatures stress native biota, management of riparian shade or hyporheic exchange are both considered viable management strategies for reducing the peaks of daily and seasonal stream channel temperature cycles. Although shade and hyporheic exchange may have similar effects on stream temperatures, their mechanisms differ. Improved understanding of the heat-exchange mechanisms influenced by shade and hyporheic exchange will aid in the appropriate application of either stream temperature management strategy. To illustrate a conceptual model highlighting shade as ‘thermal insulation’ and hyporheic exchange imparting ‘thermal capacitance’ to a stream reach, we conducted an in-silico simulation modelling experiment increasing shade or hyporheic exchange parameters on an idealized, hypothetical stream. We assessed the potential effects of increasing shade or hyporheic exchange on a stream reach using an established process-based heat-energy budget model of stream-atmosphere heat exchange and incorporated an advection-driven hyporheic heat exchange routine. The model tracked heat transport through the hyporheic zone and exchange with the stream channel, while including the effects of hyporheic water age distribution on upwelling hyporheic temperatures. Results showed that shade and hyporheic exchange similarly damped diurnal temperature cycles and differentially altered seasonal cycles of our theoretical stream. In winter, hyporheic exchange warmed simulated channel temperatures whereas shade had little effect. In summer, both shade and hyporheic exchange cooled channel temperatures, though the effects of shade were more pronounced. Our simple-to-grasp analogies of ‘thermal insulation’ for shade effects and ‘thermal capacitance’ for hyporheic exchange effects on stream temperature encourage more accurate conceptualization of complex, dynamic heat exchange processes among the atmosphere, stream channel, and alluvial aquifer.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2017

Botnet behaviour analysis: How would a data analytics-based system with minimum a priori information perform?

Botnets, as one of the most aggressive threats, has used different techniques, topologies, and communication protocols in different stages of their lifecycle since 2003. Hence, identifying botnets has become very challenging specifically given that they can upgrade their methodology at any time. Various detection approaches have been proposed by the cyber-security researchers, focusing on different aspects of these threats. In this work, 5 different botnet detection approaches are investigated. These systems are selected based on the technique used and type of data used where 2 are public rule–based systems (BotHunter and Snort) and the other 3 use machine learning algorithm with different feature extraction methods (packet payload based and traffic flow based). On the other hand, 4 of these systems are based on a priori knowledge while one is using minimum a priori information. The objective here is to evaluate the effectiveness of these approaches under different scenarios (eg, multi-botnet and single-botnet classifications) as well as exploring how a system with minimum a priori information would perform. The goal is to investigate if a system with minimum a priori information could result in a competitive performance compared to systems using a priori knowledge. The evaluation is shown on 24 publicly available botnet data sets. Results indicate that a machine learning–based system with minimum a priori information not only achieves a very high performance but also generalizes much better than the other systems evaluated on a wide range of botnet structures (from centralized to decentralized botnets).

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2016

Designing networks: A mixed-integer linear optimization approach

Designing networks with specified collective properties is useful in a variety of application areas, enabling the study of how given properties affect the behavior of network models, the downscaling of empirical networks to workable sizes, and the analysis of network temporal evolution. Despite the importance of the task, there currently exists a gap in our ability to systematically generate networks that adhere to theoretical guarantees for the given property specifications. In this work, we propose the use of Mixed-Integer Linear Optimization modeling and solution methodologies to address this Network Generation Problem. We present useful modeling techniques and apply them to mathematically express and constrain a broad class of network properties in the context of an optimization formulation. We derive complete formulations for the generation of networks that attain specified levels of connectivity, spread, assortativity and robustness, and we illustrate these via a number of computational case studies.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2019

Network Community Detection on Small Quantum Computers

In recent years, a number of quantum computing devices with small numbers of qubits have become available. A hybrid quantum local search (QLS) approach that combines a classical machine and a small quantum device to solve problems of practical size is presented. Herein, the proposed approach is applied to the network community detection problem. QLS is hardware-agnostic and easily extendable to new quantum computing devices as they become available. It is demonstrated to solve the 2-community detection problem on graphs of sizes of up to 410 vertices using the 16-qubit IBM quantum computer and D-Wave 2000Q, and compare their performance with the optimal solutions. The results herein demonstrate that QLS performs similarly in terms of quality of the solution and the number of iterations to convergence on both types of quantum computers and it is capable of achieving results comparable to state-of-the-art solvers in terms of quality of the solution including reaching the optimal solutions.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2019

Nonnegative tensor decomposition with custom clustering for microphase separation of block copolymers

High–dimensional datasets are becoming ubiquitous in many applications and therefore unsupervised tensor methods to interrogate them are needed. Here, we report a new unsupervised machine learning (ML) approach (NTFk) based on nonnegative tensor factorization integrated with a custom k–means clustering. We demonstrate the ability of NTFk to extracting temporal and spatial features of phase separation of copolymers as they are modeled by self–consistent field theory. Microphase separation of block copolymers has been extensively studied both experimentally and theoretically. However, the interpretation of computer simulations and/or experimental data, representing temporal and spatial changes of molecular species concentration is still a challenging task. Thus, extracting the phase diagram from simulations or experimental data as well as the interpretation of data requires discernment of the model/experimental parameters (such as, temperature, concentrations, the number of molecular species and the interaction between species) impact on the microphase separation process. An attractive and unique aspect of the introduced ML method is that it ensures the nonnegativity of the extracted latent features. Nonnegativity is an essential constraint needed to obtain interpretable and sparse latent features that are parts–based representation of the data. The custom clustering in NTFk serves to estimate the number of latent features in the data.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2016

What can molecular simulation do for global warming?

Carbon capture is necessary to reduce CO 2 emissions from burning fossil fuels, which has led to global warming. Molecular simulations offer chemical insights and design principles for new separation media and for understanding the separation process. In this review, we summarize recent applications of simulation methods from ab initio and density functional theory to classical molecular dynamics and Grand canonical Monte Carlo in understanding ionic liquids and porous carbonaceous materials for CO 2 separation, especially the postcombustion CO 2 / N 2 separation. We highlight design and simulation of the porous two‐dimensional ( 2D ) materials as the highly selective membranes for CO 2 separation. Simulated structure–property relationships for the materials are discussed in connection to the corresponding chemisorption, physisorption, or membrane process. In chemisorption, the focus is on reducing the heat of reaction with CO 2 ; in physisorption, the key is to increase the binding strength via CO 2 ‐philic groups; in membrane process, the key is to increase solubility for ionic‐liquid membranes and to control pore size for 2D materials. Challenges and opportunities for simulating emerging materials are also discussed. WIREs Comput Mol Sci 2016, 6:173–197. doi: 10.1002/wcms.1241 This article is categorized under: Structure and Mechanism > Computational Materials Science Electronic Structure Theory > Density Functional Theory Molecular and Statistical Mechanics > Molecular Interactions

Tian, Ziqi↗
DOE OSTI2021

Algorithm advances and applications of time‐dependent first‐principles simulations for ultrafast dynamics

Abstract Far from equilibrium phenomenon is a central theme of contemporary material research. Such phenomenon can exhibit itself in atomic structure and dynamics, but very often it also happens as non‐equilibrium phenomenon in the electronic structure. In ab initio material simulation, density functional theory (DFT) has played an essential role in studying electronic ground state problems. For excited states, besides many‐body perturbation theory, another powerful tool is the time dependent DFT (TDDFT) method. In particular, the real‐time TDDFT (rt‐TDDFT) method can be used to simulate many non‐equilibrium phenomena directly. Here we introduce our works on some algorithm advances based on our recently rt‐TDDFT method. This method uses the plane‐wave basis set, and significantly accelerates its efficiency by increasing the time step from 0.1–1 as in traditional methods to 0.2–0.5 fs. The noncollinear magnetic moments and spin–orbit coupling have also been included in our rt‐TDDFT method. Furthermore, a Boltzmann‐TDDFT algorithm has been developed to solve the hot carrier overheating problem in Ehrenfest dynamics, and a natural orbital branching algorithm has been developed to overcome the mean‐field approximation in Ehrenfest dynamics nuclear trajectory, thus allows stochastic multiple paths in chemical reactions. Utilizing these methods, we have studied the photoinduced ultrafast demagnetization, ultrafast phase transition, energy transfer between plasmon and hot carriers, as well as the high‐energy ion implantation and low‐energy atomic diffusion in semiconductors. We believe the tools as the ones introduced here can enable us to study a wide range of phenomena which are of great interest in modern day material research. This article is categorized under: Structure and Mechanism > Computational Materials Science Electronic Structure Theory > Ab Initio Electronic Structure Methods Electronic Structure Theory > Density Functional Theory

Liu, Wen‐Hao↗
DOE OSTI2022

Chemical transformations and transport phenomena at interfaces

Abstract Interfaces, the boundary that separates two or more chemical compositions and/or phases of matter, alters basic chemical and physical properties including the thermodynamics of selectivity, transition states, and pathways of chemical reactions, nucleation events and phase growth, and kinetic barriers and mechanisms for mass transport and heat transport. While progress has been made in advancing more interface‐sensitive experimental approaches, their interpretation requires new theoretical methods and models that in turn can further elaborate on the microscopic physics that make interfacial chemistry so unique compared to the bulk phase. In this review, we describe some of the most recent theoretical efforts in modeling interfaces, and what has been learned about the transport and chemical transformations that occur at the air–liquid and solid–liquid interfaces. This article is categorized under: Structure and Mechanism > Reaction Mechanisms and Catalysis Structure and Mechanism > Computational Materials Science Software > Quantum Chemistry Software > Simulation Methods

Hao, Hongxia↗
DOE OSTI2019

Comparing the Efficiency of In Situ Visualization Paradigms at Scale

This work compares the two major paradigms for doing in situ visualization: in-line, where the simulation and visualization share the same resources, and in-transit, where simulation and visualization are given dedicated resources. Our runs vary many parameters, including simulation cycle time, visualization frequency, and dedicated resources, to study how tradeoffs change over configuration. In particular, we consider simulations as large as 1,024 nodes (16,384 cores) and dedicated visualization resources with as many as 512 nodes (8,192 cores). We draw conclusions about when each paradigm is superior, such as in-line being superior when the simulation cycle time is very fast. Surprisingly, we also find that in-transit can minimize the total resources consumed for some configurations, since it can cause the visualization routines to require fewer overall resources when they run at lower concurrency. For example, one of our scenarios finds that allocating 25% more resources for visualization allows the simulation to run 61% faster than its in-line comparator. Finally, we explore various models for quantifying the cost for each paradigm, and consider transition points when one paradigm is superior to the other. Our contributions inform design decisions for simulation scientists when performing in situ visualization.

Kress, James M.↗
DOE OSTI2020

Lightweight Software Process Improvement Using Productivity and Sustainability Improvement Planning (PSIP)

Productivity and Sustainability Improvement Planning (PSIP) is a lightweight, iterative workflow that allows software development teams to identify development bottlenecks and track progress to overcome them. In this paper, we present an overview of PSIP and how it compares to other software process improvement (SPI) methodologies, and provide two case studies that describe how the use of PSIP led to successful improvements in team effectiveness and efficiency.

Heroux, Michael A.↗