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At least 1,747 records · Page 97
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2017

Subplane-based Control Rod Decusping Techniques for the 2D/1D Method in MPACT

The MPACT transport code is being jointly developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Michigan to serve as the primary neutron transport code for the Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications Core Simulator. MPACT uses the 2D/1D method to solve the transport equation by decomposing the reactor model into a stack of 2D planes. A fine mesh flux distribution is calculated in each 2D plane using the Method of Characteristics (MOC), then the planes are coupled axially through a 1D NEM-P$_3$ calculation. This iterative calculation is then accelerated using the Coarse Mesh Finite Difference method. One problem that arises frequently when using the 2D/1D method is that of control rod cusping. This occurs when the tip of a control rod falls between the boundaries of an MOC plane, requiring that the rodded and unrodded regions be axially homogenized for the 2D MOC calculations. Performing a volume homogenization does not properly preserve the reaction rates, causing an error known as cusping. The most straightforward way of resolving this problem is by refining the axial mesh, but this can significantly increase the computational expense of the calculation. The other way of resolving the partially inserted rod is through the use of a decusping method. This paper presents new decusping methods implemented in MPACT that can dynamically correct the rod cusping behavior for a variety of problems.

Graham, Aaron M↗
DOE OSTI2024

Proton radiography inversions with source extraction and comparison to mesh methods

In this article, proton radiography is a central diagnostic technique for measuring electromagnetic (EM) fields in high-energy-density, laser-produced plasmas. In this technique, protons traverse the plasma where they accumulate small EM deflections which lead to variations in the proton fluence pattern on a detector. Path-integrated EM fields can then be extracted from the fluence image through an inversion process. In this work, experiments of laser-driven foils were conducted on the OMEGA laser and magnetic field reconstructions were performed using both “fluence-based” techniques and high-fidelity “mesh-based” methods. We implement nonzero boundary conditions into the inversion and show their importance by comparing against mesh measurements. Good agreement between the methods is found only when nonzero boundary conditions are used. We also introduce an approach to determine the unperturbed proton source profile, which is a required input in fluence reconstruction algorithms. In this approach, a fluence inversion is embedded inside of a mesh region, which provides overconstrained magnetic boundary conditions. A source profile is then iteratively optimized to satisfy the boundary information. This method substantially enhances the accuracy in recovering EM fields. Lastly, we propose a scheme to quantify uncertainty in the final inversion that is introduced through errors in the source retrieval.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Efficient shallow Ritz method for 1D diffusion problems

This paper studies the shallow Ritz method for solving the one-dimensional diffusion problem. It is shown that the shallow Ritz method improves the order of approximation dramatically for non-smooth problems. To realize this optimal or nearly optimal order of the shallow Ritz approximation, we develop a damped block Newton (dBN) method that alternates between updates of the linear and non-linear parameters. Per each iteration, the linear and the non-linear parameters are updated by exact inversion and one step of a modified, damped Newton method applied to a reduced non-linear system, respectively. The computational cost of each dBN iteration is $\mathcal{O}$(n). Starting with the non-linear parameters as a uniform partition of the interval, numerical experiments show that the dBN is capable of efficiently moving mesh points to nearly optimal locations. In conclusion, to improve the efficiency of the dBN further, we propose an adaptive damped block Newton (AdBN) method by combining the dBN with the adaptive neuron enhancement (ANE) method [28].

Diffusion problems↗
DOE OSTI2014

SU-E-I-92: Is Photon Starvation Preventing Metal Artifact Reduction Algorithm From Working in KVCT?

Purpose: High density/high atomic number metallic objects create shading and streaking metal artifacts in the CT image that can cause inaccurate delineation of anatomical structures or inaccurate radiation dose calculation. A modified iterative maximum-likelihood polychromatic algorithm for CT (mIMPACT) that models the energy response of detectors, photon interaction processes and beam polychromaticity has successfully reduced metal artifacts in MVCT. Our extension of mIMPACT in kVCT did not significantly reduce metal artifacts for high density metal like steel. We hypothesize that photon starvation may result in the measured data in a commercial kVCT imaging beam. Methods: We measured attenuation of a range of steel plate thicknesses, sandwiched between two 12cm thick solid water blocks, using a Phillips Big Bore CTTM scanner in scout acquisition mode with 120kVp and 200mAs. The transmitted signal (y) was normalized to the air scan signal (y{sub 0}) to get attenuation [i.e., ln(y/y{sub 0})] data for a detector. Results: Below steel plate thickness of 13.4mm, the variations in measured attenuation as a function of view number are characterized by a quantum noise and show increased attenuation with metal thickness. On or above this thickness the attenuation shows discrete levels in addition to the quantum noise. Some views have saturated attenuation value. The histograms of the measured attenuation for up to 36.7mm of steel show this trend. The detector signal is so small that the quantization levels in the analog to digital (A-to-D) converter are visible, a clear indication of photon starvation. Conclusion: Photons reaching the kVCT detector after passing through a thick metal plate are either so low in number that the signal measured has large quantum noise, or are completely absorbed inside the plate creating photon starvation. This is un-interpretable by the mIMPACT algorithm and cannot reduce metal artifacts in kVCT for certain realistic thicknesses of steel hip implants. Moti Raj Paudel is supported by the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship, the Endowed Graduate Scholarship in Oncology and the Dissertation Fellowship at the University of Alberta. The authors acknowledge the CIHR operating grant number MOP 53254.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2015

MO-FG-204-09: High Spatial Resolution and Artifact-Free CT Bone Imaging at Off-Centered Positions: An Application of Model-Based Iterative Reconstruction

Purpose: Although the anatomy of interest should be positioned as close as possible to the isocenter of CT scanners, off-centering may be inevitable during certain exams in clinical practice such as lumbar spine and elbow imaging. Off-centering degrades image sharpness, generates streak artifacts, and sometimes creates blooming artifacts due to truncation. The purpose of this work was to investigate whether the use of model-based image reconstruction (MBIR) can alleviate the negative impacts of off-centering to achieve high quality CT bone imaging. Methods: Both an anthropomorphic phantom and an ex vivo swine elbow sample were scanned at centered and off-centered positions using clinical CT bone scan protocols. The magnitude of off-centering was determined from localizer radiographs. Both FBP and MBIR reconstructions were performed. For FBP, both standard and Bone Plus kernels commonly used in bone imaging were used. Objective assessment of image sharpness, noise standard deviation, and noise nonuniformity were performed. Additionally, we retrospectively analyzed human subject data acquired under off-centered conditions as a validation study. Results: In FBP images of the phantom, off-centering by 10 cm led to a 14% increase in noise (p<1e-3) and a 68% increase in noise nonuniformity (p<0.02). A visible drop in bone sharpness was observed. In contrast, no significant difference in the noise magnitude or the noise nonuniformity between the centered and off-centered MBIR images was found. The image sharpness of off-centered MBIR images outperformed that of FBP images reconstructed with the Bone Plus kernel. In images of the swine elbow off-centered by 20 cm, not only was the noise and spatial resolution performance improved by MBIR, truncation artifacts were also elliminated. The human subject study generated similar results, in which the visibility of the off-centered lumbar spine was significantly improved. Conclusion: High quality CT bone imaging at off-centered positions can be achieved using MBIR. This work was partially supported by an NIH grant R01CA169331 and GE Healthcare. K. Li, D. Gomez-Cardona: Nothing to disclose. G.-H. Chen: Research funded, GE Healthcare; Research funded, Siemens AX. A. Budde, J. Hsieh: Employee, GE Healthcare.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

AdS/CFT unitarity at higher loops: high-energy string scattering

What is the space of weakly-coupled, gravitational theories which contain massive, higher-spin particles? This class of theories is highly constrained and it is conjectured their ultraviolet completion must be string theory. We provide more evidence for this conjecture by studying the Regge limit in large N, 4d CFTs with single-trace operators of unbounded spin. We show that in the Regge limit, these theories have bulk scattering amplitudes which are consistent with the string theory prediction to all orders in 1/N for large, but finite, coupling. In the language of Regge theory, we show Pomeron exchange naturally exponentiates in the 1/N expansion. To do this, we solve the bootstrap equations at tree-level and then use the Lorentzian inversion formula to find the one-loop correlator in the Regge limit. This is a unitarity method for AdS/CFT which can be repeated iteratively to make all orders statements. We also explain under what conditions the tree-level result exponentiates in the 1/N expansion at arbitrary coupling. Finally, we comment on further inelastic effects and show they give subleading contributions at large coupling. As a consistency check, we recover results from bulk Einstein gravity in the limit where all higher-spin particles decouple.

1/N Expansion↗
DOE OSTI2021

Tuning successive linear programming to solve AC optimal power flow problem for large networks

Successive linear programming (SLP) is a practical approach for solving large-scale nonlinear optimization problems. Alternating current optimal power flow (ACOPF) is no exception, particularly the large size of real-world networks. However, in order to achieve tractability, it is essential to tune the SLP algorithm presented in the literature. This paper presents a modified SLP algorithm to solve the ACOPF problem, specified by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Grid Optimization (GO) Competition Challenge 1, within strict time limits. The algorithm first finds a near-optimal solution for the relaxed problem (i.e., Stage 1). Then, it finds a feasible solution in the proximity of the near-optimal solution (i.e., Stage 2 and Stage 3). The numerical experiments on test cases ranging from 500-bus to 30,000-bus systems show that the algorithm is tractable. Here the results show that our proposed algorithm is tractable and can solve more than 80% of test cases faster than the well-known Interior Point Method while significantly reduce the number of iterations required to solve ACOPF. The number of iterations is considered an important factor in the examination of tractability which can drastically reduce the computational time required within each iteration.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2012

Mechanisms for the convergence of time-parallelized, parareal turbulent plasma simulations

Parareal is a recent algorithm able to parallelize the time dimension in spite of its sequential nature. It has been applied to several linear and nonlinear problems and, very recently, to a simulation of fully-developed, two-dimensional drift wave turbulence. The mere fact that parareal works in such a turbulent regime is in itself somewhat unexpected, due to the characteristic sensitivity of turbulence to any change in initial conditions. This fundamental property of any turbulent system should render the iterative correction procedure characteristic of the parareal method inoperative, but this seems not to be the case. In addition, the choices that must be made to implement parareal (division of the temporal domain, election of the coarse solver and so on) are currently made using trial-and-error approaches. Here, we identify the mechanisms responsible for the convergence of parareal of these simulations of drift wave turbulence. We also investigate which conditions these mechanisms impose on any successful parareal implementation. The results reported here should be useful to guide future implementations of parareal within the much wider context of fully-developed fluid and plasma turbulent simulations.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2019

Methylmercury sorption onto engineered materials

Four commercially available sorbents (BioChar (BC), ThiolSAMMS® (TS), SediMite (SM), and Organoclay™ PM-199 (OC-199)) were tested for their ability to sorb methylmercury (MeHg) and MeHg complexed with dissolved organic matter (DOM). Testing sorption behavior with DOM is more representative of the environmental conditions and mercury speciation expected during in-situ remediation efforts. Isotherms were fit using a robust, iterative re-weighting scheme. This fitting method improves upon the traditionally used indirect sorption method by removing the dependence between aqueous and solid phase concentrations in isotherm fitting. Developed isotherms reflect that without DOM, BC, TS, and SM adsorbed similar amounts of MeHg while OC-199 sorbed substantially less MeHg. Below an equilibrium concentration of 5.6 ng L -1 BC was the best performing sorbent, between 5.6 and 20. ng L -1 SM sorbed the most MeHg, and above an equilibrium concentration of 20.9 ng L -1 TS outperformed the other sorbents. BC and OC-199 showed indication of MeHg sorption saturation over the tested concentration range of 3.5–680 ng L -1 . With DOM, SM outperformed the other sorbents at equilibrium concentrations less than 0.98 ng L -1 and TS was the superior MeHg:DOM sorbent at higher concentrations. MeHg:DOM sorption was controlled by DOM-sorbent interactions. DOM decreased MeHg sorption onto BC and SM whereas TS exhibited similar sorption with and without DOM. OC-199 had slightly higher MeHg uptake with DOM. East Fork Poplar Creek (EFPC), an industrially Hg contaminated site, was used as a case study example to build a relationship between aqueous and fish MeHg concentrations and subsequently compare the cost of sorbent materials required to meet regulatory objectives. For this case study, SM provided the most cost-effective sorbent option for in-situ remediation efforts to reduce aqueous MeHg concentrations.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2020

Elevated temperature mechanical properties of Inconel 617 surface oxide using nanoindentation

Inconel 617 is a principal candidate material for helium gas cooled very-high-temperature reactors with outlet temperatures of 700–950 °C. Recent findings showed that this alloy develops unique surface oxide layers especially at high temperature (HT) helium environment with distinctive wear, friction and contact properties. This study investigates the elevated temperature mechanical properties of Inconel 617 top surface layers aged in HT helium environment. Nanoindentation technique is used to obtain load-displacement graphs of the alloy top surface oxide in temperatures ranging from 25 °C up to 600 °C. In addition, using finite element analysis along with an iterative regression technique, a semi-numerical method is developed to further measure and quantify the material parameters and, in particular, time-independent and creep characteristics of the oxide. Although Young's modulus of the oxide is found to be relatively close to the bulk for the tested temperatures, the yield strength and hardness, in comparison to the bulk material, increase significantly as the material is oxidized after aging. The oxide exhibits significant softening as the temperature increases to 600 °C. Unlike the bulk material, diffusion through the grains is found to be the dominant creep mechanism for the oxide. Considerable difference between the mechanical properties of the oxide and the bulk material shows the need for accurate measurements of near surface mechanical properties, if reliable predictive contact and tribological models are sought at elevated temperatures.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2018

Iterative genome editing of Escherichia coli for 3-hydroxypropionic acid production

Synthetic biology requires strategies for the targeted, efficient, and combinatorial engineering of biological sub-systems at the molecular level. Here, we report the use of the iterative CRISPR EnAbled Trackable genome Engineering (iCREATE) method for the rapid construction of combinatorially modified genomes. We coupled this genome engineering strategy with high-throughput phenotypic screening and selections to recursively engineer multiple traits in Escherichia coli for improved production of the platform chemical 3- hydroxypropionic acid (3HP). Particularly, we engineered i) central carbon metabolism, ii) 3HP synthesis, and (iii) 3HP tolerance through design, construction and testing of ~162,000 mutations across 115 genes spanning global regulators, transcription factors, and enzymes involved in 3HP synthesis and tolerance. The iCREATE process required ~1 month to perform 13 rounds of combinatorial genome modifications with targeted gene knockouts, expression modification by ribosomal binding site (RBS) engineering, and genome-level site-saturation mutagenesis. Specific mutants conferring increased 3HP titer, yield, and productivity were identified and then combined to produce 3HP at a yield and concentration ~60-fold higher than the wild-type strain.

3-hydroxypropionic acid↗
DOE OSTI2018

Higher-Order Extended Lagrangian Born–Oppenheimer Molecular Dynamics for Classical Polarizable Models

Generalized extended Lagrangian Born-Oppenheimer molecular dynamics (XLBOMD) methods provide a framework for fast iteration-free simulations of models that normally require expensive electronic ground state optimizations prior to the force evaluations at every time step. XLBOMD uses dynamically driven auxiliary degrees of freedom that fluctuate about a variationally optimized ground state of an approximate “shadow” potential which approximates the true reference potential. While the requirements for such shadow potentials are well understood, constructing such potentials in practice has previously been ad hoc, and in this work, we present a systematic development of XLBOMD shadow potentials that match the reference potential to any order. We also introduce a framework for combining friction-like dissipation for the auxiliary degrees of freedom with general-order integration, a combination that was not previously possible. These developments are demonstrated with a simple fluctuating charge model and point induced dipole polarization models.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2024

Development of Nontargeted Workflow of Occupational Exposure by Infrared Ion Spectroscopy and Silicone Wristbands’ Passive Sampling

Monitoring chemical exposure has well-established protocols and procedures for occupational health and industrial hygiene across various career fields and in a variety of occupational and environmental conditions. Iterative analytical development has led to validated methods to provide employers and employees with safe working conditions in terms of industrial hygiene. These validated methods are commonly supported by commercial laboratories. Here, this workflow is explicitly a targeted approach in which sampling media, sample preparation, chemical separation, quantitative target detection, and post processing are well established. This workflow also relies on commercially available chemical surrogates, isotopically labeled internal standards, and certified/standard reference materials from reputable vendors. An untargeted workflow lacks many key ingredients of validated analytical methods to include the known chemical target.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2014

Numerical simulation of heat and mass transfer in unsteady nanofluid between two orthogonally moving porous coaxial disks

The paper deals with the study of heat and mass transfer in an unsteady viscous incompressible water-based nanofluid (containing Titanium dioxide nanoparticles) between two orthogonally moving porous coaxial disks with suction. A combination of iterative (successive over relaxation) and a direct method is employed for solving the sparse systems of linear algebraic equations arising from the FD discretization of the linearized self similar ODEs. It has been noticed that the rate of mass transfer at the disks decreases with the permeability Reynolds number whether the disks are approaching or receding. The findings of the present investigation may be beneficial for the electronic industry in maintaining the electronic components under effective and safe operational conditions.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2023

Robust design of semi-automated clustering models for 4D-STEM datasets

Materials discovery and design require characterizing material structures at the nanometer and sub-nanometer scale. Four-Dimensional Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy (4D-STEM) resolves the crystal structure of materials, but many 4D-STEM data analysis pipelines are not suited for the identification of anomalous and unexpected structures. This work introduces improvements to the iterative Non-Negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) method by implementing consensus clustering for ensemble learning. We evaluate the performance of models during parameter tuning and find that consensus clustering improves performance in all cases and is able to recover specific grains missed by the best performing model in the ensemble. The methods introduced in this work can be applied broadly to materials characterization datasets to aid in the design of new materials.

Bruefach, Alexandra (ORCID:0000000209323477)↗
DOE OSTI2021

Iterative self-organizing SCEne-LEvel sampling (ISOSCELES) for large-scale building extraction

Convolutional neural networks (CNN) provide state-of-the-art performance in many computer vision tasks, including those related to remote-sensing image analysis. Successfully training a CNN to generalize well to unseen data, however, requires training on samples that represent the full distribution of variation of both the target classes and their surrounding contexts. With remote sensing data, acquiring a sufficiently representative training set is a challenge due to both the inherent multi-modal variability of satellite or aerial imagery and the general high cost of labeling data. To address this challenge, we have developed ISOSCELES, an Iterative Self-Organizing SCEne LEvel Sampling method for hierarchical sampling of large image sets. Using affinity propagation, ISOSCELES automates the selection of highly representative training images. Compared to random sampling or using available reference data, the distribution of the training is principally data driven, reducing the chance of oversampling uninformative areas or undersampling informative ones. In comparison to manual sample selection by an analyst, ISOSCELES exploits descriptive features, spectral and/or textural, and eliminates human bias in sample selection. Using a hierarchical sampling approach, ISOSCELES can obtain a training set that reflects both between-scene variability, such as in viewing angle and time of day, and within-scene variability at the level of individual training samples. We verify the method by demonstrating its superiority to stratified random sampling in the challenging task of adapting a pre-trained model to a new image and spatial domain for country-scale building extraction. Using a pair of hand-labeled training sets comprising 1,987 sample image chips, a total of 496,000,000 individually labeled pixels, we show, across three distinct model architectures, an increase in accuracy, as measured by F1-score, of 2.2–4.2%.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2020

Multi-Objective PMU Allocation for Resilient Power System Monitoring

Phasor measurement units (PMUs) enable better system monitoring and security enhancement in smart grids. In order to enhance power system resilience against outages and blackouts caused by extreme weather events or man-made attacks, it remains a major challenge to determine the optimal number and location of PMUs. In this paper, a multi-objective resilient PMU placement (MORPP) problem is formulated, and solved by a modified Teaching-Learning-Based optimization (MO-TLBO) algorithm. Three objectives are considered in the MORPP problem, minimizing the number of PMUs, maximizing the system observability, and minimizing the voltage stability index. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated through testing on IEEE 14-bus, 30-bus, and 118-bus test systems. The advantage of the MO-TLBO-based MORPP is demonstrated through the comparison with other methods in the literature, in terms of iteration number, optimality and time of convergence.

Multi-Objective Optimization↗
DOE OSTI2014

Evaluating Multi-core Architectures through Accelerating the Three-Dimensional Lax–Wendroff Correction

Wave propagation forward modeling is a widely used computational method in oil and gas exploration. The iterative stencil loops in such problems have broad applications in scientific computing. However, executing such loops can be highly time time-consuming, which greatly limits application’s performance and power efficiency. In this paper, we accelerate the forward modeling technique on the latest multi-core and many-core architectures such as Intel Sandy Bridge CPUs, NVIDIA Fermi C2070 GPU, NVIDIA Kepler K20x GPU, and the Intel Xeon Phi Co-processor. For the GPU platforms, we propose two parallel strategies to explore the performance optimization opportunities for our stencil kernels. For Sandy Bridge CPUs and MIC, we also employ various optimization techniques in order to achieve the best.

3D Wave Forward Modeling↗