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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 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

Integration of a real-time orientation measurement system for a real-time evaluator (RTE) to measure the position and orientation of crane-lifted components

Prefabrication of building components holds the potential to revolutionize the construction industry. Prefabrication consists of manufacturing building components, modules, and other elements in a factory to be shipped and installed on a construction site. Prefabricated components have been produced for various applications including precast concrete panels for new construction and exterior wall retrofits. The manufacturing process has seen much innovation in recent years; however, the installation process has seen minimal advancements. A real-time evaluator (RTE) was developed to reduce the installation cost of prefabricated components by reducing installation time, decreasing rework, and improving accuracy. The RTE uses off-the-shelf hardware and novel algorithms to assist erectors with component installation by measuring the real-time positions of connections and prefabricated components, providing installation guidance through a graphical user interface, and monitoring the accumulated installation errors. An overview of the RTE and the proposed workflow is presented. Previous on-site demonstrations provided valuable feedback from users on the potential areas for improvement of the system. One common request was real-time measurement of component orientation during lifting, a process that previously required that the component remain stationary while the laser tracker cycled through target prisms. This paper will present the incorporation and testing of a real-time orientation measurement system as it was implemented into the RTE, allowing for measurement of component orientation during movement.

Selvakumar, Balaji [ORNL]↗
DOE OSTI2025

Poster for intern poster presentation

Inside the hot cells of HFEF (Hot Fuel Examination Facility) and FCF (Fuel Conditioning Facility) reside several large, purpose built 6500-pound cranes. Each crane holds several DC motors that must all be actuated without error for years on end. However, when a component becomes inoperable inside one of these crane carriages, it must be taken out of cell, fixed, and reevaluated. In order to test these cranes and EMMs, two test boxes were built. However, the test cabinets were designed with few engineering controls, zero released documentation, and they were both at some level of disrepair. This poster goes over some of the particulars that go into a control box redesign, mostly focusing on the drawing and DCR process.

42 - ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2026

Complementary effects of supplemental feeding and straw retention on winter biodiversity in rice agroecosystems

Rice paddies are both major food-production systems and critical winter habitats for wildlife. In the Civilian Control Zone (CCZ) adjoining the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), post-harvest interventions such as supplementary grain feeding and straw retention are promoted through agronomic and conservation incentives. These measures differ in ecological scope: feeding provides direct, concentrated energetic subsidies, whereas straw management alters habitat structure and resource bases. We clarified whether these pathways function in complementary or substitutive ways to support resilient, long-term conservation strategies in rice agroecosystems. Using camera traps, we evaluated the effects of three straw treatments (chopped-straw, whole-straw, straw-removed) and supplemental feeding on winter bird and mammal communities across 48 rice fields in the CCZ. Our results demonstrate that feeding produced strong, localized increases in bird abundance and richness, driven mainly by cranes (Grus japonensis and Antigone vipio) and geese (Anser spp.), with limited effects on Shannon diversity or functional structure. Among non-feeding fields, chopped-straw paddies consistently supported higher richness and Shannon diversity than whole-straw or straw-removed fields, while centroid shifts in taxonomic and functional space were modest. Mammal abundance and diversity were largely insensitive to feeding or straw regimes, varying instead with road and forest distance and regional context. Supplemental feeding and straw retention are therefore not interchangeable tools: feeding concentrates a few avian guilds, whereas chopped-straw retention enhances baseline diversity across farmland. Collectively, our findings suggest integrating low-input straw retention with targeted feeding offers a more robust pathway for sustaining winter biodiversity in rice agroecosystems.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2026

Lab-Scale Cable-Driven Parallel Robot Prototype for Automated Prefabricated Component Manipulation

This paper presents the design and evaluation of a lab-scale cable-driven parallel robot (CDPR) developed as a flexible platform for automated installation of prefabricated components onto exterior building envelopes. Traditional manual installation methods for prefabricated components, which depend on scaffolding, cranes, cherry pickers, and verbal coordination, are not only labor-intensive and error-prone but also face significant limitations in dense urban environments due to site access constraints. To address these challenges, we developed a lab-scale CDPR platform capable of autonomously transporting building envelope components from a designated pickup zone to their target installation location, minimizing the need for human intervention. This study describes the system’s mechanical design, actuation architecture, real-time feedback system, and control strategy of the CDPR, and evaluates its performance in a laboratory environment. The robot’s actuation system uses torque control for end-effector manipulation. The robot’s real-time pose feedback comes from a construction-grade total station and a wireless inertial measurement unit (IMU), which together support precise end-effector control. Experimental results demonstrate the successful integration of the hardware, sensing, state estimation, and control subsystems. Preliminary tests showed that our lab-scale prototype can position the end effector with an error of less than 3 mm, which is a level of precision not previously achieved by existing CDPRs in construction applications. The key findings are twofold: (1) torque-only control is necessary but not sufficient for minimizing final pose error, and (2) incorporating real-time pose feedback can achieve the desired placement accuracy.

Liu, Yifang [Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL),↗
DOE OSTI2025

Data for Machado-Silva et al. (2024), "Short-Term Groundwater Level Fluctuations Drive Subsurface Redox Variability"

This dataset contains the analytical data reported in Machado-Silva et al. (2024) as part of the COMPASS-FME project, which seeks to advance a scalable, predictive understanding of the fundamental biogeochemical processes, ecological structure, and ecosystem dynamics that distinguish coastal terrestrial-aquatic interfaces from the purely terrestrial or aquatic systems to which they are coupled. The dataset consists of water quality parameters as well as redox potential, water content, and electrical conductivity. These data were collected in 2022 in Crane Creek (CRC), Portage River (PTR), and Old Woman Creek (OWC). Each of these sites included uplands (UP), transitions (TR), wetland-transition edge (WTE), and wetland (W) zones. The sites represent replicates of the Lake Erie terrestrial-aquatic interface under fluctuating water levels and are located in well-preserved areas with natural or restored marsh and forest cover.This dataset consists of a single data file (Machado_Silva_et_al_2024_EST_data.csv) that is in comma-separated value (CSV) format. No special software is required to read it.This dataset uses the ESS-DIVE Hydrologic Monitoring Reporting Format 1.0.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Conceptual Design of a Water Tank Critical Facility for SPARC

Critical experiments, sometimes referred to zero-power reactors, are crucial tools in developing and validating nuclear physics predictions and thus an indispensable capability to ensure criticality safety during all parts of the nuclear fuel cycle and in reducing uncertainties in reactor physics predictions toward optimizing nuclear energy production. The System Physics Advanced Reactor Facility (SPARC) project was recently initiated to enable large-scale criticality experiments using a horizontal split table machine well suited toward solid core materials systems (fuel, moderator, reflector). The facility selected for this mission was a former pool-type research reactor building and thus also well suited toward a second critical experiment capability able to house full-size light-water reactor (LWR) fuel bundles. A conceptual design study was undertaken to review past water tank critical experiments used for LWR physics experiments and to develop an early engineering design for a new critical assembly tank (CAT). The work described here shows that a relatively simple CAT concept can be constructed and deployed in the SPARC facility to meet the urgent demands for new critical experiments on advanced LWR fuel bundles designs. The SPARC facility layout is conducive to the receipt and upending of LWR fuel bundles using existing containers and equipment from the LWR industry. The facility’s overhead crane can then be used to handle fuel bundles and place them in a vertical storage rack or in the CAT for critical experiments, both of which fit within the building’s “open basement” alongside other equipment planned for SPARC and the horizontal split table. A slightly lower area in the basement can serve as a large drain tank so that fail-safe valves drain the CAT reactor tank for safe shutdown. Neutronic configurations were determined where a 3 × 3 array of fuel bundles can be surrounded by full-length “loose rods” to adjust reactivity so that critical is achieved when the bundles are fully submerged. Viable configurations were determined for both pressurized- and boiling-water-reactor-type fuel bundles. This design concept was used to develop an early planning basis for establishing the CAT capability alongside the otherwise planned SPARC project in order to help streamline the process. Recent presidential executive orders have highlighted the need to achieve power uprates in LWR plants and the CAT capability will be a crucial element of these initiatives. Based on the work described herein, it is recommended that an earnest and timely project begin in order to establish this urgently needed capability.

11 - NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Pitch Bearing Rating and Service Life Analysis

Pitch bearings are an essential component in wind turbines used to connect the blade root to the hub. They support the resulting simultaneous radial, axial, and overturning moment loads while allowing relative rotation of the blade to the hub. The most recent evidence indicates the replacement rate for pitch bearings on 3+ MW turbines can be several percent per year, reaching 10% by year 5. This is a far higher replacement rate than both older 1.5 to 2 MW turbines and 2 to 3 MW turbines, which only reach a 10% replacement rate by 14 to 24 years compared to the expected design life of at least 20 years. Typical pitch bearing replacements require the use of a large, expensive crane and removal of the blade(s) or rotor, with a significant amount of downtime. Given the most recent developments in pitch bearing reliability and the publication of the updated NREL and Fraunhofer IWES pitch bearing design guide, the purpose of this report is to update the performance and rating analysis of the example 1.9-meter diameter pitch bearing representative of that installed on a 1.5 MW wind turbine, compare the rating life to the observed service life of similar pitch bearings, and validate the service life modification factor with this large population of bearings. The report will also summarize the pitch bearing contact conditions, thereby serving as a guide for planned bench-level fretting wear tests at Argonne National Laboratory.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Geophysical measurements of a demolition at NRF

On May 31 st , 2025, at approximately 14:40:00 UTC, the former Submarine First Westinghouse (SW1) structure housing a large crane was demolished at the Naval Reactors Facility (NRF) located within the perimeter of the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). Several targeted explosives were used to facilitate this demolition. The INL Seismic Monitoring Program (SMP) installed four temporary seismic instrument suites around the site of the demolition in order to monitor ground motion including measuring peak ground acceleration (PGA), peak ground velocity (PGV), and to calculate peak ground displacement (PGD). The demolition produced three types of waves: body waves, surface waves, and acoustic waves. The acoustic wave represents the largest signal received. The PGA, measured on the eastern component of the instrument located approximately 95m away from the demolition site, was 0.187g. The PGV measured was 0.0004 m/s, and the PGD was approximately 0.000006m. Rayleigh waves incident on an instrument located at the Advanced Test Reactor, about 7.6km away, were used to estimate a magnitude of 0.3 at the ATR, representing a yield of energy equivalent to approximately 3 grams of TNT.

58 - GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Scalable fabrication of a tough and recyclable spore-bearing biocomposite thermoplastic polyurethane

Thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPUs) are a class of versatile thermoplastic elastomers, but most of their products lack a proper recycling strategy or have no end-of-life solutions. To pursue a sustainable end-of-life solution for TPU-based products, self-disintegrating biocomposite TPUs have recently been developed by embedding spores of TPU-degrading bacteria into TPUs via melt extrusion. Herein, we improve upon spore-bearing biocomposites and demonstrate industrially relevant manufacturing conditions for fabricating biocomposite TPUs. To minimize the coloration of biocomposite TPUs, spore production was modified. The innate brown color of the resulting materials was diminished by reducing FeSO 4 in sporulation media, generating white spores without compromising spore productivity, viability, morphology or heat-shock tolerance. Biocomposite TPUs containing white spores displayed a 45 % increase in toughness compared to TPUs without spores, while retaining ∼ 90 % spore viability post processing. Furthermore, biocomposite TPU fabrication was demonstrated using a scalable continuous extruder followed by injection molding. Biocomposite TPUs generated by these industry-relevant processes exhibited comparable toughness improvement and spore viability to biocomposite TPU prepared using a lab scale microcompounder, while enhancing productivity by 30-fold. Finally, spore addition significantly improved the recyclability of biocomposite TPUs, enabling 80 % toughness retention after 5 rounds of iterative melt processing. Additionally, no negative effect on the lifespan of the generated TPUs was observed over 1 year of storage. Overall, this study confirms that spore-bearing biocomposite TPUs are promising for practical applications, offering an accessible method to enhance toughness and sustainability of commercial TPUs through the incorporation of spore-based living fillers.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Formation of functionally graded steel by laser powder bed fusion via in-situ carbon doping

Additive Manufacturing (AM) enables functional integration by combining multiple components into a single part to shorten assembly time, reduce weight, and improve performance. Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) is an important AM method due to excellent spatial resolution, surface finish, and material properties without the need for extensive post-processing. Functional integration could be enhanced by spatial tuning of properties, but LPBF cannot readily vary material composition. Here, this paper addresses a method to add spatial composition control by printing small quantities of dopants via liquid carrier prior to laser fusion. The impact of carbon black suspension added to select regions of a Stainless Steel 316 L powder bed on melt pool dimension, hardness, and porosity is reported. The distribution of the carbon between the doped and plain layers and the resulting spatial variation in hardness is measured. Optical microscopy and composition analysis show that the carbon dispersed uniformly within the layer of deposition and diffused as little as 50 μm in the build direction. Keyhole conditions dramatically increase the inter-layer transport of the dopant. The added carbon increased hardness by >50 %. Porosity increased in doped regions but remained below 1.5 % for the best processing parameters. These results demonstrate that the composition of LPBF parts could be controlled in 3-dimensions using a dopant that is soluble in the melt pool. Additional work will be required to evaluate different dopant materials and optimize processing conditions for full density, but microalloying with soluble dopants appears to be a plausible solution to enhance functional integration with LPBF.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2025

Rapid scalable plasma processing of thin-film Li–La–Zr–O solid-state electrolytes

Solid-state electrolytes, such as lithium lanthanum zirconium oxide (LLZO), show promise as technologies for next-generation high-energy-density batteries, but commercial development has been hindered by a lack of scalable processing methods. Current fabrication methods are costly or require long annealing steps to create dense films. We report an atmospheric pressure blown-arc nitrogen plasma jet process to rapidly form sub-micrometer-thick, dense amorphous LLZO (a-LLZO) films from sol-gel precursors. Films are processed in less than 2 min, an order of magnitude faster than what has previously been reported. We demonstrate 500-nm-thick a-LLZO films processed at 350°C with an ionic conductivity of 2 × 10 −6 S/cm at 30°C and 2 × 10 −3 S/cm at 100°C and a conductance of 19 S at 100°C, the highest conductance of any LLZO phase to date. Here, the films exhibit outstanding smooth surface morphology with low defectivity, advancing atmospheric plasma processing as a scalable processing method for solid-state electrolytes.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2025

Generation of a fluorescent short-lifetime oxygen nanosensor by coupling of an exciplex forming dye pair

Typical oxygen-sensitive dyes have lifetimes in the μs-ms regime for sensitive oxygen detection based on molecular quenching. Due to the long triplet-state lifetimes and poor quenching efficiency of these probes, it has been difficult to develop short lifetime probes. We have developed oxygen sensors using a short-lifetime dye (∼30–60 ns) that forms an anthracene-aniline exciplex, which is quenched by molecular oxygen through an excited-state charge transfer mechanism. To achieve measurements in aqueous systems, we have tethered the dyes together via a C3 alkyl linker to facilitate greater exciplex formation at low dye concentration (20 μg mL −1 ) and encapsulated the resulting compound into polymeric nanoparticles to form an aqueous-dispersible short-lifetime oxygen nanosensor. The sensors emit at 420 nm (unfolded dye) and 500 nm (exciplex), and the ratiometric Stern-Volmer Constant is 1.52 ± 0.02 L mol −1 , showing good sensitivity from 0 % to 40 % dissolved oxygen without the tradeoff of a long lifetime needed for direct molecular quenching. In this paper, we characterize this sensor for both lifetime-based measurements using time-correlated single-photon counting and ratiometric intensity-based measurements using the unfolded dye emission as an internal reference peak.

Biological and medical sciences↗
DOE OSTI2025

The UV Photoinduced Ring-Closing Reaction of Cyclopentadiene Probed with Ultrafast Electron Diffraction

Conjugated cyclic organic molecules are common across many fields such as pharmaceuticals, are naturally occurring in biological systems, and are used in synthetic materials. One particular area of interest from a photochemical point of view is the formation of highly strained cyclic organics. We investigate the photoinduced reaction of cyclopentadiene, a five-membered organic ring molecule which can form strained three and four carbon rings after photoexcitation with UV light, with the gas-phase ultrafast electron diffraction instrument at the SLAC MeV-UED facility. Electron diffraction offers a direct probe sensitive to the nuclear geometry during the reaction, allowing for the determination of the distribution of products formed following photoexcitation. We observe the simultaneous formation of the highly strained ring- closed bicyclo[2.1.0]pentene and vibrationally hot cyclopentadiene within the temporal resolution of the experiment, and determine the relative yield of all reaction products. Furthermore, the experimental results are in good agreement with the predictions of trajectory simulations.

Computational Chemistry↗
DOE OSTI2025

Excited state dynamics of azanaphthalenes reveal opportunities for the rational design of photoactive molecules

Abstract Various photoactive molecules contain motifs built on aza-aromatic heterocycles, although a detailed understanding of the excited state photophysics and photochemistry in such systems is not fully developed. To help address this issue, the non-adiabatic dynamics operating in azanaphthalenes under hexane solvation was studied following 267 nm excitation using ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy. Specifically, the species quinoline, isoquinoline, quinazoline, quinoxaline, 1,6-naphthyridine, and 1,8-naphthyridine were investigated, providing a systematic variation in the relative positioning of nitrogen heteroatom centres within a bicyclic aromatic structure. Our results indicate considerable differences in excited state lifetimes, and in the propensity for intersystem crossingvsinternal conversion across the molecular series. The overall pattern of behaviour can be explained in terms of potential energy barriers and spin-orbit coupling effects, as demonstrated by extensive quantum chemistry calculations undertaken at the SCS-ADC(2) level of theory. The fact that quantum chemistry calculations can achieve such detailed and nuanced agreement with experimental data across a full set of six molecules exhibiting subtle variations in their composition provides an excellent example of the current state-of-the-art and is indicative of future opportunities for rational design of photoactive molecules.

Chemistry↗
DOE OSTI2025

Imaging the photochemistry of cyclobutanone using ultrafast electron diffraction: Experimental results

We investigated the ultrafast structural dynamics of cyclobutanone following photoexcitation at λ = 200 nm using gas-phase megaelectronvolt ultrafast electron diffraction. Our investigation complements the simulation studies of the same process within this special issue. It provides information about both electronic state population and structural dynamics through well-separable inelastic and elastic electron scattering signatures. We observe the depopulation of the photoexcited S 2 state of cyclobutanone with n3s Rydberg character through its inelastic electron scattering signature with a time constant of (0.29 ± 0.2) ps toward the S 1 state. The S 1 state population undergoes ring-opening via a Norrish Type-I reaction, likely while passing through a conical intersection with S 0 . The corresponding structural changes can be tracked by elastic electron scattering signatures. These changes appear with a delay of (0.14 ± 0.05) ps with respect to the initial photoexcitation, which is less than the S 2 depopulation time constant. This behavior provides evidence for the ballistic nature of the ring-opening once the S 1 state is reached. The resulting biradical species react further within (1.2 ± 0.2) ps via two rival fragmentation channels yielding ketene and ethylene, or propene and carbon monoxide. Furthermore, our study showcases the value of both gas-phase ultrafast diffraction studies as an experimental benchmark for nonadiabatic dynamics simulation methods and the limits in the interpretation of such experimental data without comparison with such simulations.

Carbon monoxide↗
DOE OSTI2026

Ultrafast x-ray scattering of photodissociation dynamics in 2-iodothiophene

Here, a time-resolved x-ray scattering (TRXS) investigation of the photodissociation dynamics of gas-phase 2-iodothiophene molecules following 252 nm excitation is presented. Structural evolution of the molecule and dynamical information on the resulting photofragments were captured using femtosecond x-ray free-electron laser pulses. Two dissociation pathways were identified, arising via excitation to ππ* and (n/π)σ* states, respectively, yielding distinct interfragment recoil velocities of ∼6.4 Åps −1 and 17.0 Åps −1 . A comparison of asymptotic scattering data with simulated patterns indicates that the thiophene ring remains closed following dissociation at this wavelength. Modeling the experimental data yields a branching ratio of ∼3:1 in favor of the high velocity channel. These findings demonstrate the capability of TRXS to disentangle concurrent ultrafast reaction pathways and provide detailed structural insight into energy redistribution during photoinduced bond fission in complex molecular systems.

Razmus, Weronika O. [Univ. of Southampton (United ↗