Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “Multiphysics”

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 1,693 records · Page 94
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Integrated Steady-State System Package for Nuclear Thermal Propulsion Analysis Using Multi-Dimensional Thermal Hydraulics and Dimensionless Turbopump Treatment

Nuclear thermal propulsion is an evolving technology that can be utilized for long-distance space travel. This technology yields the advantage of a high thrust and specific impulse, but requires an examination of the potential design adjustments necessary to enhance its feasibility. The development of nuclear thermal propulsion requires a comprehensive understanding of the system-level behavior during transient and steady-state operation. This paper extends our previous research by including the proper handling of turbomachinery with multi-channel thermal hydraulic simulations only for steady-state solutions. The system-level approach presented here enables the treatment of the turbopump components through non-dimensional analysis that eliminates the assumption of constant efficiencies. All the other components within the system (e.g., reflector and core) can be discretized to multiple channels and layers, in which the full thermal hydraulic solution is established. The approach chosen here enables the realistic modeling of the propellant flow within the expander cycle by capturing the pressure losses, mass flow rate splits, and enthalpy gain for various operational conditions. The verification of the package is completed through point comparisons of previous investigations into similar system designs. Furthermore, sensitivity studies are used to benchmark the capabilities of the package and investigate solution variations due to the perturbation of operational conditions and regimes. The sensitivity studies performed here are important to capture variation in flow characteristics (e.g., temperature, pressure, mass flow rates) for different design objectives such as the thrust and specific impulse. This work demonstrates that system-level simulations lacking multi-channel capability and proper turbomachinery treatment may yield higher uncertainties in understanding the engine’s response and characteristics to changing various requirements. This is extremely important when screening the design space of such propulsion systems and when transient simulations are required.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2019

Simultaneous Spark Plasma Sintering of Multiple Complex Shapes

This work addresses the two great challenges of the spark plasma sintering (SPS) process: The sintering of complex shapes and the simultaneous production of multiple parts. A new controllable interface method is employed to concurrently consolidate two nickel gear shapes by SPS. A graphite deformable sub-mold is specifically designed for the mutual densification of both complex parts in a unique 40 mm powder deformation space. An energy efficient SPS configuration is developed to allow the sintering of a large-scale powder assembly under electric current lower than 900 A. The stability of the developed process is studied by electro-thermal-mechanical (ETM) simulation. The ETM simulation reveals that homogeneous densification conditions can be attained by inserting an alumina powder at the sample/punches interfaces, enabling the energy efficient heating and the thermal confinement of the nickel powder. Finally, the feasibility of the fabrication of the two near net shape gears with a very homogeneous microstructure is demonstrated.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2025

PCMS: Parallel Coupler For Multimodel Simulations

This paper presents the Parallel Coupler for Multimodel Simulations (PCMS), a new GPU accelerated generalized coupling framework for coupling simulation codes on leadership class supercomputers. PCMS includes distributed control and field mapping methods for up to five dimensions. For field mapping PCMS can utilize discretization and field information to accommodate physics constraints. PCMS is demonstrated with a coupling of the gyrokinetic microturbulence code XGC with a Monte Carlo neutral transport code DEGAS2 and with a 5D distribution function coupling of an energetic particle transport code (GNET) to a gyrokinetic microturbulence code (GTC). Weak scaling is also demonstrated on up to 2,080 GPUs of Frontier with a weak scaling efficiency of 85%.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
NASA NTRS2013

Dynamics and Control of a Disordered System in Space

In this paper, we present some ideas regarding the modeling, dynamics and control aspects of granular spacecraft. Granular spacecraft are complex multibody systems composed of a spatially disordered distribution of a large number of elements, for instance a cloud of N grains in orbit, with N greater than 10(exp 3). These grains can be large (Cubesat-size) or small (mm-size), and can be active, i.e., a fully equipped vehicle capable sensing their own position and attitude, and enabled with propulsion means, or entirely passive. The ultimate objective would be to study the behavior of the single grains and of large ensembles of grains in orbit and to identify ways to guide and control the shape of a cloud composed of these grains so that it can perform a useful function in space, for instance, as an element of an optical imaging system for astrophysical applications. This concept, in which the aperture does not need to be continuous and monolithic, would increase the aperture size several times compared to large NASA observatories such as ATLAST, allowing for a true Terrestrial Planet Imager that would be able to resolve exo-planet details and do meaningful spectroscopy on distant world. In the paper, we address the modeling and autonomous operation of a distributed assembly (the cloud) of large numbers of highly miniaturized space-borne elements (the grains). A multi-scale, multi-physics model is proposed of the dynamics of the cloud in orbit, as well as a control law for cloud shape maintenance, and preliminary simulation studies yield an estimate of the computational effort, indicating a scale factor of approximately N(exp 1.4) as a function of the number of grains. A granular spacecraft can be defined as a collection of a large number of space-borne elements (in the 1000s) designed and controlled such that a desirable collective behavior emerges, either from the interactions among neighboring grains, and/or between the grains and the environment. In this paper, each grain is considered to be a highly miniaturized spacecraft which has limited size and mass, hence it has limited actuation, limited propulsive capability, limited power, limited sensing, limited communication, limited computational resources, limited range of motion, limited lifetime, and may be expendable. The modeling and dynamics of clouds of vehicles is more challenging than with conventional vehicles because we are faced with a probabilistic vehicle composed of a large number of physically disconnected vehicles. First, different scales of motion occur simultaneously in a cloud: translations and rotations of the cloud as a whole (macro-dynamics), relative rotation and translation of one cloud member with respect to another (meso-dynamics), and individual cloud member dynamics (micro-dynamics). Second, the control design needs to be tolerant of the system complexity, of the system architecture (centralized vs. decentralized large scale system control) as well as robust to un-modeled dynamics and noise sources. Figure 1, top left, shows the kinematic parameters of a 1000 element cloud in orbit. The motion of the system is described with respect to a local vertical-local horizontal (LV-LH) orbiting reference frame (x,y,z)=F(sub ORF) of origin O(sub ORF) which rotates with mean motion omega and orbital semi-major axis R(sub 0). The orbital geometry at the initial time is defined in terms of its six orbital elements, and the orbital dynamics equation for point O(sub ORF) is propagated forward in time under the influence of the gravitational field of the primary and other external perturbations, described below. The origin of this frame coincides with the initial position of the center of mass of the system, and the coordinate axes are z along the local vertical, x toward the flight direction, and y in the orbit normal direction. The assumptions we used to model the dynamics are as follows: 1) The inertial frame is fixed at Earth's center. 2) The orbiting Frame ORF follows Keplerian orbit. 3) the cloud system dynamics is referred to ORF. 4) the attitude of each grain uses the principal body frame as body fixed frame. 5) the atmosphere is assumed to be rigidly rotating with the Earth. Regarding the grains forming the cloud: 1) each grain is modeled as a rigid body; 2) a simple attitude estimator provides attitude estimates, 3) a simple guidance logic commands the position and attitude of each grain, 4) a simple local feedback controller based on PD control of local states is used to stabilize the attitude of the vehicle. Regarding the cloud: 1) the cloud as a whole is modeled as an equivalent rigid body in orbit, and 2) an associated graph establishes agent connectivity and enables coupling between modes of motion at the micro and macro scales; 3) a simple guidance and estimation logic is modeled to estimate and command the attitude of this equivalent rigid body; 4) a cloud shape maintenance controller is based on the dynamics of a stable virtual truss in the orbiting frame. Regarding the environmental perturbations acting on the cloud: 1) a non-spherical gravity field including JO (Earth's spherical field) zonal component, J2 (Earth's oblateness) and J3 zonal components is implemented; 2) atmospheric drag is modeled with an exponential model; 3) solar pressure is modeled assuming the Sun is inertially fixed; and 4) the Earth's magnetic field is model using an equivalent dipole model. The equations of motion are written in a referential system with respect to the origin of the orbiting frame and the state is propagated forward in time using an incremental predictor-corrector scheme. A representative cloud with varying number of grains is simulated to identify the limitations in computation time as the number of grains grows. We derive a control law to track a desired surface in the ORF (equivalently to maintain a reference cloud shape) by defining an error from a desired surface shape, and designing a control law that is exponentially stable and reduces the tracking error to zero. Figure 1 (top right) shows a comparison of various requirements for simulation of single spacecraft vs. granular spacecraft, indicating the high degree of complexity that needs to be taken into consideration. The ORF components of control force required by one of the grains is, for this particular case, in the micro-Newton range. However, no attempt has been made yet to reconfigure (or re-orient) the cloud configuration internally, for which forces in the milli-Newton level are expected, depending on the time required to do the reconfiguration. Figure 1, bottom, shows the computation time as a function of the number of grains, indicating an order N(exp 1.43) scaling on a 8 Gb, 1067 MHz RAM MacOSX computer with a 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. With this metric, the same simulation for a system of N=1000 grains would take 5.4 hours, and 146 hours (i.e., 6 days) for a system with N=10,000 grains. Therefore, efficient ways to simulate this complex system, where not only the time scales of natural system dynamics, but also the sampling times of the Guidance, Navigation, and Control are included, remain to be explored. Additional details on the cloud modeling, dynamics, and control will be described in the paper.

simulation↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

DC Modeling of 4H-SiC nJFET Gate Length Reduction at 500°C

The development of robust, high-performance integrated circuits (ICs) will enable numerous potential NASA missions of current interest, including long-duration robotic missions exploring the 460°C surface of Venus. Currently, NASA is looking towards SiC-based devices to provide such a solution. However, the current NASA silicon carbide (SiC) JFET device with a channel length of 6 μm (recently fabricated Gen. 11 ICs) limits mission-relevant circuit capabilities. In this study, we combined experiments with simulations to explore two straightforward fabrication strategies (shallow n− and deep n+) to reduce the SiC JFET channel length while maintaining turn-off behavior needed to realize 500 °C circuit operation. First, the material properties for 4H-SiC were implemented in COMSOL and the Poisson equation was solved for twelve 2D device designs. Then, based on the insights gained from the distribution of the electron concentration, electrostatic potential, and electric field for twelve designs (with three fabrication strategies), simulation for a 1 μm gate length nJFET with the turn-off performance comparable to the state-of-the-art.

4H-SiC nJFET↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

DC Modeling of 4H-SiC nJFET Gate Length Reduction at 500°C

The development of robust, high-performance integrated circuits (ICs) will enable numerous potential NASA missions of current interest, including long-duration robotic missions exploring the 460°C surface of Venus. Currently, NASA is looking towards SiC-based devices to provide such a solution. However, the current NASA silicon carbide (SiC) JFET device with a channel length of 6 μm (recently fabricated Gen. 11 ICs) limits mission-relevant circuit capabilities. In this study, we combined experiments with simulations to explore two straightforward fabrication strategies (shallow n− and deep n+) to reduce the SiC JFET channel length while maintaining turn-off behavior needed to realize 500 °C circuit operation. First, the material properties for 4H-SiC were implemented in COMSOL and the Poisson equation was solved for twelve 2D device designs. Then, based on the insights gained from the distribution of the electron concentration, electrostatic potential, and electric field for twelve designs (with three fabrication strategies), simulation for a 1 μm gate length nJFET with the turn-off performance comparable to the state-of-the-art.

4H-SiC nJFET↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Comparing Acoustic Prediction Methods for Additively Manufactured Porous Strutures

While macroscale methods for predicting the acoustic properties of porous structures have been popular in the past, they often require time-consuming manufacturing and testing workflows. Meanwhile, microscale approaches allow the prediction of transport parameters based exclusively on a periodic structure’s unit cell geometry. Here, we compare these methods to predict the characteristic impedance of additively manufactured porous structures. We use the microscale approach to estimate the geometry’s transport parameters, then predict the characteristic properties using the Johnson-Champoux-Allard (JCA) model. We measure the acoustic properties of the printed structures using a normal incidence impedance tube and estimate the transport parameters using an inverse characterization approach. We use the two-thickness method as a macroscale approach to predict the characteristic properties from the measured surface impedances of two sample thicknesses. Finally, we compare these characteristic prediction methods. Our results show that the inverse characterization and two-thickness methods offer the closest match to the measured values at low frequencies.

impedance↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

High-Fidelity Modeling Approach for Coupling Thermal, Fluid, and Neutronic Analysis in an NTP Engine

Nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP), with its increased efficiency compared to traditional rocket engines, is a potentially enabling technology for space missions of higher complexity, such as delivering heavy machinery or crew to the moon or other planets. Thus, exploring modeling approaches that can effectively couple the thermal, fluid, and neutronic behaviors of NTP reactors is essential to mitigate cost and schedule challenges with hardware development. This paper details one such approach which utilizes Cardinal to unify reactor physics analysis performed using OpenMC, heat transfer analysis performed using the MOOSE framework, and thermal hydraulic analysis performed using the MOOSE Thermal Hydraulic Module. This approach is demonstrated with a proof of concept that focuses on a legacy reactor geometry from the historic NERVA program. This preliminary model found an overprediction in, when compared to the reference data, axial power peaking and the temperatures of both solids and fluids by roughly 20%. It is clear, however, that the model conserved a number of broad trends, and a few model refinements should reduce the observed error. This approach has definite merit and should enable the production of informative results for more modern NTP systems. This work is a first step in creating a transient reactor model that can be updated across a sequence of time steps based on continually fluctuating, time-dependent boundary conditions.

Nuclear Thermal Propulsion↗
DOE OSTI2016

THE APPLICATION OF MAMMOTH FOR A DETAILED TIGHTLY COUPLED FUEL PIN SIMULATION WITH A STATION BLACKOUT

Accurate calculation of desired quantities to predict fuel behavior requires the solution of interlinked equations representing different physics. Traditional fuels performance codes often rely on internal empirical models for the pin power density and a simplified boundary condition on the cladding edge. These simplifications are performed because of the difficulty of coupling applications or codes on differing domains and mapping the required data. To demonstrate an approach closer to first principles, the neutronics application Rattlesnake and the thermal hydraulics application RELAP-7 were coupled to the fuels performance application BISON under the master application MAMMOTH. A single fuel pin was modeled based on the dimensions of a Westinghouse 17x17 fuel rod. The simulation consisted of a depletion period of 1343 days, roughly equal to three full operating cycles, followed by a station blackout (SBO) event. The fuel rod was depleted for 1343 days for a near constant total power loading of 65.81 kW. After 1343 days the fission power was reduced to zero (simulating a reactor shut-down). Decay heat calculations provided the time-varying energy source after this time. For this problem, Rattlesnake, BISON, and RELAP-7 are coupled under MAMMOTH in a split operator approach. Each system solves its physics on a separate mesh and, for RELAP-7 and BISON, on only a subset of the full problem domain. Rattlesnake solves the neutronics over the whole domain that includes the fuel, cladding, gaps, water, and top and bottom rod holders. Here BISON is applied to the fuel and cladding with a 2D axi-symmetric domain, and RELAP-7 is applied to the flow of the circular outer water channel with a set of 1D flow equations. The mesh on the Rattlesnake side can either be 3D (for low order transport) or 2D (for diffusion). BISON has a matching ring structure mesh for the fuel so both the power density and local burn up are copied accurately from Rattlesnake. At each depletion time step, Rattlesnake calculates a power density, fission density rate, burn-up distribution and fast flux based on the current water density and fuel temperature. These are then mapped to the BISON mesh for a fuels performance solve. BISON calculates the fuel temperature and cladding surface temperature based upon the current power density and bulk fluid temperature. RELAP-7 then calculates the fluid temperature, water density fraction and water phase velocity based upon the cladding surface temperature. The fuel temperature and the fluid density are then passed back to Rattlesnake for another neutronics calculation. Six Picard or fixed-point style iterations are preformed in this manner to obtain consistent tightly coupled and stable results. For this paper a set of results from the detailed calculation are provided for both during depletion and the SBO event. We demonstrate that a detailed calculation closer to first principles can be done under MAMMOTH between different applications on differing domains.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2017

Heat Source Characterization in a TREAT Fuel Particle Using Coupled Neutronics-BCMC Calculations

This work presents a multi-physics, multi-scale approach to modeling the Transient Test Reactor (TREAT) currently prepared for restart at the Idaho National Laboratory. TREAT fuel is made up of microscopic fuel grains (r ˜ 20µm) dispersed in a graphite matrix. The novelty of this work is in coupling a binary collision Monte-Carlo (BCMC) model to the Finite Element based code Moose for solving a microsopic heat-conduction problem whose driving source is provided by the BCMC model tracking fission fragment energy deposition. This microscopic model is driven by a transient, engineering scale neutronics model coupled to an adiabatic heating model. The macroscopic model provides local power densities and neutron energy spectra to the microscpic model. Currently, no feedback from the microscopic to the macroscopic model is considered. TREAT transient 15 is used to exemplify the capabilities of the multi-physics, multi-scale model, and it is found that the average fuel grain temperature differs from the average graphite temperature by 80 K despite the low-power transient. The large temperature difference has strong implications on the Doppler feedback a potential LEU TREAT core would see, and it underpins the need for multi-physics, multi-scale modeling of a TREAT LEU core.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2022

Accelerated Coupled Monte Carlo-Thermal Hydraulic Calculations using a Hybrid GTF-Diffusion-based Prediction Block: First Results

Accurate predictions of spatial power and temperature distributions require the coupling of a neutron transport solver with a thermal-hydraulic (TH) feedback. Nowadays, Monte Carlo (MC) codes are widely coupled to TH solvers, typically via a Picard iteration (PI) method, due to the higher fidelity that such frameworks can produce. To speed up a PI, a prediction step can produce an improved initial guess for a source distribution and feed it to the MC code. Recent work [1, 2] investigated a prediction step that uses generalized transfer functions (GTFs) to predict the macroscopic cross sections’ variations following a perturbation in TH properties, such as coolant density. The previous method also relied on first order perturbation (FOP) theory to predict perturbed power profiles, rather than using an expensive MC iterate. The implemented FOP method relied on generating a fission matrix from which the forward and adjoint eigenmodes were extracted and later used to for power calculations. The generation of the fission matrix can introduce a significant computational overhead, therefore undermining the performance of the proposed hybrid technique when applied to high-dimensional problems, e.g., full core calculations. This work attempts to improve the GTF-FOP prediction step by replacing the FOP solver with a nodal diffusion solver, thus eliminating the need to calculate a fission matrix. The GTF-diffusion step was tested for various moderator density perturbations. In each case, the predicted power distribution showed good agreement with the reference case. The latter is attributed to the generally good prediction of most spatially distributed macroscopic cross sections, except the transport cross section, which will become the focus of future work.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Modelling Nuclear Thermal Propulsion Reactor Startup Transients

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has set the goal of a manned mission to Mars by the year 2030 [1] and charged the national academy of sci- ences "to identify primary technical and programmatic chal- lenges, merits, and risks for maturing space nuclear propulsion technologies of interest to a future human Mars exploration mission" [2]. One relevant technology, nuclear thermal propul- sion (NTP), has notable advantages over traditional chemical rockets; most important among them is the ability to produce larger specific impulse on the order of 900s. The reduction of mission time is crucial for a manned mission to Mars to reduce the risk for the crew. Due to its higher specific impulse, NTP satisfies this need and is pursued as one technology to get humans to Mars [3, 4]. The construction of an NTP sys- tem has to negotiate several challenges laid out in Ref. [2]; one of these challenges is the need to startup the NTP sys- tem from essentially cold conditions to full power within one minute. This paper focuses on studying the neutronics and thermal-hydraulics behavior of a simplified NTP model dur- ing prescribed reactivity insertions and mass flow rate (MFR) ramps. It is the goal of this paper to investigate startup, peak material temperatures, and average specific impulse for a low enriched Uranium (LEU), ceramic and metal material (CER- MET) NTP system when varying reactivity insertion and MFR ramps.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Selected results from full-core hydrogen redistribution asymptotic analysis in YH-moderated heat-pipe cooled microreactor

Yttrium hydride is the main candidate for moderation of high temperature nuclear microreactors . This is due to its high thermal stability and relatively high hydrogen retention at temperatures exceeding 870 C. One of the main issues associated with the use of yttrium hydride is that, when exposed to temperature, stress, or concentration gradients, the hydrogen contained in the metallic matrix tends to redistribute and leak from the moderating elements, potentially leading to reactivity losses and power swings. This paper is focused on presenting selected results from the asymptotic hydrogen redistribution analysis performed on the Simplified Microreactor Benchmark Assessment (SiMBA) problem, a microreactor core conceptual design developed at INL. The analysis is based on full core analysis, relies uniquely on Bison to perform hydrogen redistribution calculations, and discusses the physical causes of the reactivity feedback. It was found that the feedback is negative, but it is one order of magnitude lower than the one found for the empire reactor unit-cell. This is due to the lower axial temperature gradient together with the effect of the reflector.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Modeling Nuclear Thermal Propulsion Startup Transients

A poster for the 2021 intern poster session. This poster details the RELAP-7/Griffin model developed for transient simulations to compare the effects of startup sequencing on the propellant efficiency, startup time, and maximum core temperature of a nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) system. The sequencing parameters under consideration in this study are the ramping rates of both reactivity insertion and hydrogen propellant mass flow rate. Recommendations are made regarding startup sequencing based on the results produced by this model.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗