Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “OPERATIONS RESEARCH”

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 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2026

or-topas: Operations Research Toolkit for Pyomo Alternative Solutions

SAND2026-16702O OR-TOPAS: Operations Research Toolkit for Pyomo Alternative Solutions is a tool that enhances optimization applications defined by the Pyomo modeling library. It offers functions to generate optimal or near-optimal solutions, operating independently of Pyomo’s solver interface. Users can configure these functions with specific solver names and options, resulting in a custom solution object that returns a list of solutions. The OR-TOPAS library includes methods tailored to the properties of the model, such as binary integer programs versus linear programs, and specific solver interfaces like Gurobi. It does not provide models for specific applications, but it is applicable to a wide range of Pyomo optimization models. Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.

Siirola, John [Sandia National Lab. (SNL-CA), Live↗
DOE OSTI2025

Application of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning to Operations Research

This report examines the transformative impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) on operations research, private industry, and government sectors, highlighting their applications in automating processes, enhancing decision-making, and optimizing complex systems. AI/ML technologies have revolutionized industries through predictive maintenance, supply chain optimization, and autonomous systems, while also advancing public safety and defense operations. However, challenges such as data integrity, model transparency, and the need for human oversight persist, particularly in high-consequence environments. The report emphasizes the critical role of explainable AI (XAI) and human-computer interaction models like Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) and Human-on-the-Loop (HOTL) in fostering trust and accountability. Balancing automation with ethical responsibility and transparency is essential for the continued successful integration of AI/ML into operational and strategic decision-making frameworks.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2024

Cybersecurity Operational Research, Experimentation, Innovation, and Integration (COREII)

The Department of Energy’s Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response Office (CESER) has partnered with Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and energy companies to develop COREII. This research initiative aims to align with the national cybersecurity strategy, enhance the resilience of critical energy infrastructure, facilitate efforts to improve grid-enhancing technologies (GET) and major effects from other critical and emerging technologies, and to enable discovery of innovative solutions for emerging cybersecurity challenges

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Upgrading Fermilab’s accelerator control system with ACORN

The Fermilab Accelerator Complex is the largest national user facility in the Office of High Energy Physics (DOE/HEP) program and the only national user facility operating at Fermilab. Fermilab serves as the host to the Long Baseline Neutrino Facility/Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (LBNF/DUNE), the laboratory’s flagship project for neutrino science that is under construction. LBNF/DUNE will be powered by megawatt beams from an upgraded accelerator, the Proton Improvement Plan II (PIP-II) that will replace the laboratory’s aging linear accelerator with a new one based on superconducting radio-frequency cavities. The Accelerator Controls Operations Research Network (ACORN) Project will support LBNF/DUNE and PIP-II by modernizing the accelerator control system. The project is at the conceptual design phase and looking to achieve Critical Decision 1 (CD-1) later this year. The scope and structure of the project will be presented, along with an overview of how that has changed in the past year. Current design and technology choices will be shared. Specific challenges facing the project will be addressed, along with current thinking on solutions.

Roehrig, Christian [Fermilab]↗
DOE OSTI2025

Modernizing to an AI-Ready Control System

The Accelerator Controls Operations Research Network (ACORN) project will modernize the accelerator control system and upgrade power supplies to enable future operations of the Fermilab Accelerator Complex with megawatt proton beams. By focusing on MLOps, ACORN enables full integration of AI into the control system to allow safe and reliable improvements to accelerator beam operations.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Accelerating Discovery to Deployment: Argonne's Materials Engineering Research Facility (MERF) and Its Role in Scaling Materials Technologies for Water and Resource Solutions

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories represent a unique class of government‐owned, contractor‐operated research institutions dedicated to conducting research and development (R&D) related activities that address national priorities, supporting and advancing the DOE mission. They play a vital role in sustaining U.S. innovation capacity, stewarding the nation's technical base, and nurturing science and technologies. In this perspective, we highlight the processing science and scaleup capabilities of the Materials Engineering Research Facility (MERF) at DOE's Argonne National Laboratory to demonstrate how DOE National Laboratories bridge fundamental science and applied technology development to accelerate deployment. Case studies are presented on selective membranes for critical mineral recovery, sensors for per‐ and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) detection, surface functionalization via atomic layer deposition (ALD) and sequential infiltration synthesis (SIS), and lithium recovery from battery recycling waste streams using a novel electrodialysis process. These examples underscore MERF's role in translating innovative technologies into practical solutions for renewable water and critical resource recovery, which also leverage Argonne's analytical and computational capabilities. This perspective also outlines mechanisms for collaborating with the DOE national laboratories to strengthen partnerships across government, the national laboratories, academia, and industry.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Modernizing Fermilab's Accelerator Control Hardware

Modernizing the Fermilab accelerator control system is essential to future operations of the laboratory's accelerator complex. The existing control system has evolved over four decades and uses hardware that is no longer available.The Accelerator Controls Operations Research Network (ACORN) Project will modernize the control system and replace end-of-life power supplies to enable future accelerator complex operations with megawatt particle beams. The ACORN project is planning to replace Fermilab s obsolete CAMAC crate-and-card controls hardware with modern MicroTCA hardware. There are over 2,000 CAMAC cards and over 250 CAMAC crates serving various functions in Fermilab s control system. We will review the existing CAMAC hardware and provide updates on the status of the ACORN project, which includes the conceptual design of the MicroTCA replacement hardware and software tools for supporting the installation of hundreds of MicroTCA crates.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Bridging the Gap Between Modern UX Design and Particle Accelerator Control Room Interfaces

Accelerator control systems often represent relatively complex and safety-sensitive human-machine interfaces within process control industries. These systems are technically robust and reflect the cumulative integration of solutions built and adapted across decades. One of the regular, unfortunate casualties of provisional accelerator control system updates is their human-system interfaces (HSIs) which often lag behind modern usability and design standards. An additional challenge is that although there is a multitude of established human factors (HF), and user experience (UX) principles for everyday digital applications, there are very few (if any) established principles for complex and safety-critical applications for an accelerator. This paper argues for the importance of established HF and UX principles (herein referred to as human-centered design principles) into the development of accelerator HSIs, emphasizing the need for clarity, consistency, responsiveness, and cognitive accessibility. Drawing from HF/UX best practices and human-centered design, this paper discusses how these approaches can enhance operator performance, reduce human error, and improve accelerator personnel collaboration. Case studies from Accelerator Control Operations Research Network (ACORN) at Fermilab are explored to demonstrate how interfaces built with human-centered design principles can scale with system complexity while remaining intuitive and efficient for diverse user roles including operators, machine experts, and engineers. By bridging the gap between traditional control system design and modern human-centered design methods, this paper provides a roadmap for evolving accelerator HSIs into more usable, maintainable, and effective tools.

Hill, Rachael [Idaho Natl. Lab.]↗
DOE OSTI2024

Survey of tungsten gross erosion from main plasma facing components in WEST during a L-mode high fluence campaign

An initial high fluence campaign was performed in WEST, in 2023, on the newly installed actively cooled tungsten divertor composed of ITER-grade monoblocks. The campaign consisted in the repetition of a 60 s long Deuterium L-mode pulse in attached divertor conditions, cumulating over 10000s of plasma exposure. A maximum deuterium fluence of approximately 5⋅1⁢026 m−2 was reached in the outer strike point region, representative of a few high performance ITER pulses. Gross tungsten erosion inferred from visible spectroscopy shows that the most eroded plasma facing component is the inner divertor target with rates ten times larger than on the outer divertor target. The outer midplane tungsten bumpers, located a few centimeters from the plasma, show gross erosion rates two times lower than at the outer divertor. We conclude that the outer midplane bumpers have a negligible contribution to the long range tungsten migration and deposition onto the lower divertor. The cumulated gross erosion rate on the inner divertor translates in an effective gross erosion thickness of about 20μ⁢m, while it is about 2μ⁢m for the outer divertor. Strikingly, these orderings coincide with the thickness of deposits found locally on the divertor: the exposed surfaces of high field side monoblocks are covered with several tens of μ⁢m tungsten deposits, while on the lower field side, few μ⁢m thin tungsten deposits are only found on the magnetically shadowed parts of monoblocks. The strong impact of those deposits on WEST operation, namely perturbation of surface temperature measurement with infra-red thermography, and the emission of flakes causing radiative perturbation of the confined plasma, calls for anticipating similar issues in ITER. In particular, the start of research operation shall consider the definition of a divertor erosion budget in order to anticipate the formation of deleterious deposits.

Fedorczak, N.↗
DOE OSTI2025

A High-Current Pulsed Prototype Power Supply

The Accelerator Controls Operations Research Network (ACORN) project aims to modernize the accelerator control system and replace aging power supplies at Fermilab. As part of this effort, outdated RF ferrite bias power supplies will be redesigned. These power supplies are essential for tuning the resonant frequency of RF cavities by delivering programmable current outputs of up to 2500 A and voltages ranging from −10 V to +35 V. They operate at a repetition rate of 15 Hz in the Booster ring, and 1 Hz at the Main Injector ring. The power supplies utilize a bank of transistors in the linear region, connected in parallel with the load, to actively regulate the output current from a 12-pulse SCR bridge. To support this upgrade, a new bias power supply topology was developed as proof of concept. The design utilizes an IGBT Hbridge operating in Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) mode, controlled by a microcontroller. A prototype, constructed using spare components, successfully delivered an output current of 500 A at a repetition rate of 15 Hz during initial testing. The circuit's bandwidth was measured at 480 Hz, highlighting opportunities for further optimization in the controller design to achieve the target bandwidth of 2 kHz.

Bullman, Austin [ORNL]↗
DOE OSTI2025

Advancing nuclear forensics competencies at the National Nuclear Center of the Republic of Kazakhstan and conceptual development of a National Nuclear Forensics Library

Since 2021, the National Nuclear Center (NNC) of the Republic of Kazakhstan has been successfully developing a project dedicated to nuclear forensics. The relevance of this project is underscored by Kazakhstan’s leading position in the global uranium mining and export market. The country operates research reactors and is involved in the production of experimental nuclear fuel. The nuclear forensics project is being implemented in several key areas: the project will develop competencies in laboratory research of samples, interpretation of results, and develop a prototype concept for the National Nuclear Forensics Library. In implementing these challenges, the NNC experts draw on the experience of colleagues from world-leading scientific and research centers. Designing a prototype National Nuclear Forensics Library (NNFL) is a challenging project. In conclusion, the solution to this task is based on the IAEA’s approaches, recommendations, and the experience gained from the construction of similar systems in other countries.

and nuclear chemistry↗
DOE OSTI2024

Leveraging generative AI for urban digital twins: a scoping review on the autonomous generation of urban data, scenarios, designs, and 3D city models for smart city advancement

The digital transformation of modern cities by integrating advanced information, communication, and computing technologies has marked the epoch of data-driven smart city applications for efficient and sustainable urban management. Despite their effectiveness, these applications often rely on massive amounts of high-dimensional and multi-domain data for monitoring and characterizing different urban sub-systems, presenting challenges in application areas that are limited by data quality and availability, as well as costly efforts for generating urban scenarios and design alternatives. As an emerging research area in deep learning, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) models have demonstrated their unique values in content generation. This paper aims to explore the innovative integration of GenAI techniques and urban digital twins to address challenges in the planning and management of built environments with focuses on various urban sub-systems, such as transportation, energy, water, and building and infrastructure. The survey starts with the introduction of cutting-edge generative AI models, such as the Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN), Variational Autoencoders (VAEs), Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT), followed by a scoping review of the existing urban science applications that leverage the intelligent and autonomous capability of these techniques to facilitate the research, operations, and management of critical urban subsystems, as well as the holistic planning and design of the built environment. Based on the review, we discuss potential opportunities and technical strategies that integrate GenAI models into the next-generation urban digital twins for more intelligent, scalable, and automated smart city development and management.

3D city modeling↗
DOE OSTI2026

Neural Posterior Estimation for Scalable and Accurate Inverse Parameter Inference in Li-Ion Batteries

Diagnosing the internal state of Li-ion batteries is critical for battery research, operation of real-world systems, and prognostic evaluation of remaining lifetime. By using physics-based models to perform probabilistic parameter estimation via Bayesian calibration, diagnostics can account for the uncertainty due to model fitness, data noise, and the observability of any given parameter. However, Bayesian calibration in Li-ion batteries using electrochemical data is computationally intensive even when using a fast surrogate in place of physics-based models, requiring many thousands of model evaluations. A fully amortized alternative is neural posterior estimation (NPE). NPE shifts the computational burden from the parameter estimation step to data generation and model training, reducing the parameter estimation time from minutes to milliseconds, enabling real-time applications. The present work shows that NPE can infer parameters equally or more accurately than Bayesian calibration, even if it leads to higher voltage reconstruction errors. We also demonstrate that the higher computational costs for data generation are tractable even in high-dimensional cases (ranging from 6 to 27 estimated parameters). The NPE method also offers several interpretability advantages over Bayesian calibration, such as local parameter sensitivity to specific regions of the voltage curve. The NPE method is demonstrated using an experimental fast charge dataset, with parameter estimates validated against measurements of loss of lithium inventory and loss of active material. The implementation is made available in a companion repository (https://github.com/NatLabRockies/BatFIT).

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Highly-detailed neutronic and thermal-hydraulic coupled calculations for OPAL reactor using diverse codes and approaches

The industry-standard approach for designing and operating research reactors cores relies on well-established methodologies that consider uncoupled neutronic calculations and a subchannel analysis of the Thermal-Hydraulic (TH) associated problem. Advancements in computing power and codes allow detailed Multiphysics approaches to be implemented, thereby reducing conservatism. In this study, a comparative analysis of results from diverse detailed neutronic-TH coupled core approaches is developed. To address a realistic application case, the comparison is made for a reported critical configuration from the Open Pool Australian Lightwater research reactor (OPAL) at Hot Full Power (HFP) and low burnup. Both cell-core and stochastic methodologies for neutronics are evaluated, whereas two different subchannel codes are considered for TH. In conclusion, the convergence of the coupled schemes, and the consistency of the main parameters are discussed, showing the compatibility of the alternative methods and their ability to offer critical insights not captured by standard practices.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2024

2023 Site Environmental Report: Volume 1

Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is managed on behalf of the Department of Energy (DOE) by Brookhaven Science Associates (BSA), a partnership between Stony Brook University and Battelle, and six core universities: Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton, and Yale. For over 75 years, the Laboratory has played a lead role in the DOE Science and Technology mission and continues to contribute to the DOE’s missions in energy resources, environmental quality, and national security. BNL manages its world-class scientific research operations with sensitivity to environmental issues and community concerns. The Laboratory’s Environmental, Safety, Security, and Health (ESSH) Policy reflects the commitment of BNL’s management to fully integrate environmental stewardship into all facets of its mission and operations. BNL prepares an annual Site Environmental Report (SER) in accordance with DOE Order 231.1B, Environment, Safety, and Health Reporting. The report is written to inform the public, regulators, employees, and other stakeholders of the Laboratory’s environmental performance during the calendar year in review. Volume I of the SER summarizes environmental data; environmental management performance; compliance with applicable DOE, federal, state, and local regulations; and performance in restoration and surveillance monitoring programs. BNL has prepared annual SERs since 1971 and has documented nearly all its environmental history since the Laboratory’s inception in 1947. Volume II of the SER, the Groundwater Status Report, is also prepared annually to report on the status of groundwater protection and restoration efforts. Volume II includes detailed technical summaries of groundwater data and treatment system operations and is intended for regulators and other technically oriented stakeholders. A summary of the information contained in Volume II is included in Chapter 7, Groundwater Protection, of this volume.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

2024 Site Environmental Report

Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is managed on behalf of the Department of Energy (DOE) by Brookhaven Science Associates (BSA), a partnership between Stony Brook University and Battelle, and six core universities: Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton, and Yale. For over 75 years, the Laboratory has played a lead role in the DOE Science and Technology mission and continues to contribute to the DOE’s missions in energy resources, environmental quality, and national security. BNL manages its world-class scientific research operations with sensitivity to environmental issues and community concerns. The Laboratory’s Environmental, Safety, Security, and Health (ESSH) Policy reflects the commitment of BNL’s management to fully integrate environmental stewardship into all facets of its mission and operations.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Upgrading Fermilab s Accelerator Control System with ACORN

The Fermilab Accelerator Complex is the largest national user facility in the Office of High Energy Physics (DOE/HEP) program and the only national user facility operating at Fermilab. Fermilab serves as the host to the Long Baseline Neutrino Facility/Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (LBNF/DUNE), the laboratory’s flagship project for neutrino science that is under construction. LBNF/DUNE will be powered by megawatt beams from an upgraded accelerator, the Proton Improvement Plan II (PIP-II) that will replace the laboratory’s aging linear accelerator with a new one based on superconducting radio-frequency cavities. The Accelerator Controls Operations Research Network (ACORN) Project will support LBNF/DUNE and PIP-II by modernizing the accelerator control system. The project is at the conceptual design phase and looking to achieve Critical Decision 1 (CD-1) later this year. The scope and structure of the project will be presented, along with an overview of how that has changed in the past year. Current design and technology choices will be shared. Specific challenges facing the project will be addressed, along with current thinking on solutions.

Roehrig, Christian [Fermilab]↗