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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 181 records · Page 10

CONTROL AND DATA ACQUISITION IN A CYBER-PHYSICAL MIDSTREAM TESTBED

This thesis presents the development of a laboratory-scale cyber–physical midstream pipeline testbed designed to address this gap and support research in industrial control systems security. The platform integrates pumps, valves, sensors, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), and a human–machine interface (HMI) to emulate the monitoring and control architecture of real pipeline operations. The physical process is implemented as a closed-loop liquid circulation system designed to replicate flow behavior characteristic of midstream pipeline infrastructure. The testbed enables real-time data acquisition of key process variables, including flow rate and pressure facilitating the generation of datasets representative of normal pipeline operation. A threat model encompassing common ICS attack vectors was developed, including sensor spoofing, command injection, false data injection, denial-of-service attacks, and relay manipulation. Multiple attack scenarios were implemented and evaluated to demonstrate how cyber intrusions targeting sensors, actuators, networks, and software propagate into measurable physical consequences in pipeline flow and pressure. The developed platform serves as a practical, cost-effective environment for experimentation, education, and future cybersecurity research in midstream pipeline systems.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Development of a distributed-parameter mathematical model for simulation of cryogenic wind tunnels

A one-dimensional distributed-parameter dynamic model of a cryogenic wind tunnel was developed which accounts for internal and external heat transfer, viscous momentum losses, and slotted-test-section dynamics. Boundary conditions imposed by liquid-nitrogen injection, gas venting, and the tunnel fan were included. A time-dependent numerical solution to the resultant set of partial differential equations was obtained on a CDC CYBER 203 vector-processing digital computer at a usable computational rate. Preliminary computational studies were performed by using parameters of the Langley 0.3-Meter Transonic Cryogenic Tunnel. Studies were performed by using parameters from the National Transonic Facility (NTF). The NTF wind-tunnel model was used in the design of control loops for Mach number, total temperature, and total pressure and for determining interactions between the control loops. It was employed in the application of optimal linear-regulator theory and eigenvalue-placement techniques to develop Mach number control laws.

Tripp, J. S.↗

Exploring Multilayer Network Models to Build a Scientific Basis for Integrated Deterrence: Final Report

The emerging multipolar international security environment represents a fundamental restructuring of global nuclear balance of power to include two nuclear peer competitors, growing non-peer nuclear threats, and concerns of nuclear latency from both allies and adversaries. Conflicts in the grey zone, cyber operations, mis- and disinformation campaigns, and emerging disruptive technologies like drones, and hypersonic missiles are becoming more prevalent. These present a risk of cross-domain and multi-domain conflicts that may not follow known escalatory patterns. In order to prepare for the new deterrence environment, it is critical to have quantitative and qualitative understandings of these cross-domain conflicts, their potential for escalation, and which systems they may impact. To that end, our team created a Multi-Layer Network (MLN) model of ‘integrated deterrence’ where instruments of national power are modeled as individual network graph layers that include efforts from all domains. We then evaluate the potential for escalation against escalation scenarios. Analysis of the escalation scenarios is then used to identify insights of potential risk and escalation within integrated deterrence.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗

Resilient State Recovery Using Prior Measurement Support Information

Resilient state recovery of cyber-physical systems has attracted much research attention due to the unique challenges posed by the tight coupling between communication, computation, and the underlying physics of such systems. By modeling attacks as additive adversary signals to a sparse subset of measurements, this resilient recovery problem can be formulated as an error correction problem. To achieve exact state recovery, most existing results require less than 50% of the measurement nodes to be compromised, which limits the resiliency of the estimators. In this paper, we show that observer resiliency can be further improved by incorporating data-driven prior information. Here, we provide an analytical bridge between the precision of prior information and the resiliency of the estimator. By quantifying the relationship between the estimation error of the weighted ℓ 1 observer and the precision of the support prior, this quantified relationship provides guidance for the estimator’s weight design to achieve optimal resiliency. Several numerical simulations and an application case study are presented to validate the theoretical claims.

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Description of a computer simulation of an orbital SAR system

In order to predict the performance of a synthetic aperture radar for a wide variety of system and environmental parameters a computer simulation of the SAR system was developed. This model is a detailed description of the SAR imaging process on a pulse-by-pulse basis. The simulation is implemented as seven computer programs for a CDC Cyber 171 digital computer.

Crow, G. L.↗

Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) Cyber Range Overview and Threat-to-Consequence Demonstration

This presentation was presented at the Aggregation and Grid Security Workshop - held on June 17-18, 2025, at NREL in Golden, Colorado. The goal of the two-day workshop was to address the critical cybersecurity challenges for the future electric grid. The threat-to-consequence demonstration showcases NREL's capability to model, simulate, test, and evaluate cyberattacks targeting energy systems that coincide with natural hazards, as well as the ramifications for the energy grid as a whole.

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Self-Supervised and Interpretable Anomaly Detection Using Network Transformers

Machine learning and deep neural networks (DNNs) have been proposed as a tool to identify anomalies in computer network communications. However, due the obfuscated nature of off-the-shelf machine learning models, their output often does not provide enough information to isolate the source of the anomaly to take corrective measures. In this article, we introduce the network transformer (NeT), a DNN model for anomaly detection that incorporates the graph structure of the communication network in order to improve interpretability. Further, the presented approach has the following advantages: first, enhanced interpretability by incorporating the graph structure of computer networks; second, provides a hierarchical set of features that enables analysis at different levels of granularity; second, self-supervised training that does not require labeled data. The NeT model was evaluated on a set of anomalous scenarios executed in a real industrial control system. The presented approach successfully identified the anomalies, the devices affected, and the specific connections causing the anomalies, providing a data-driven hierarchical approach to analyze the behavior of a cyber network.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Portable Parallel Algorithms and Frameworks for Exascale Graph Analytics

Graphs (or networks) are a tool used to model the interactions among various entities. Efficiently processing large graphs has recently attracted significant attention due to the applications of graphs in various domains, such as biology, chemistry, and cyber-security. Analyzing the structure and properties of these graphs is an important component of many scientific computing pipelines. With the explosion in the volume of data, graphs have become very large and can contain hundreds of billions of vertices and trillions of edges. Therefore, it is crucial to develop high-performance methods to enable graph analysis to be done quickly and energy-efficiently. Furthermore, these solutions should be highly parallel in order to take advantage of modern parallel machines. However, designing efficient solutions is not enough. With the wide variety of computing environments available, each with different programmability and performance characteristics, it is necessary to develop solutions that are portable in terms of both performance (i.e., provide theoretical guarantees) and programmability (i.e., provide high level abstractions).

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Intelligent Launch and Range Operations Virtual Test Bed (ILRO-VTB)

Intelligent Launch and Range Operations Virtual Test Bed (ILRO-VTB) is a real-time web-based command and control, communication, and intelligent simulation environment of ground-vehicle, launch and range operation activities. ILRO-VTB consists of a variety of simulation models combined with commercial and indigenous software developments (NASA Ames). It creates a hybrid software/hardware environment suitable for testing various integrated control system components of launch and range. The dynamic interactions of the integrated simulated control systems are not well understood. Insight into such systems can only be achieved through simulation/emulation. For that reason, NASA has established a VTB where we can learn the actual control and dynamics of designs for future space programs, including testing and performance evaluation. The current implementation of the VTB simulates the operations of a sub-orbital vehicle of mission, control, ground-vehicle engineering, launch and range operations. The present development of the test bed simulates the operations of Space Shuttle Vehicle (SSV) at NASA Kennedy Space Center. The test bed supports a wide variety of shuttle missions with ancillary modeling capabilities like weather forecasting, lightning tracker, toxic gas dispersion model, debris dispersion model, telemetry, trajectory modeling, ground operations, payload models and etc. To achieve the simulations, all models are linked using Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). The test bed provides opportunities for government, universities, researchers and industries to do a real time of shuttle launch in cyber space.

Bardina, Jorge↗

User's guide to STIPPAN: A panel method program for slotted tunnel interference prediction

Guidelines are presented for use of the computer program STIPPAN to simulate the subsonic flow in a slotted wind tunnel test section with a known model disturbance. Input data requirements are defined in detail and other aspects of the program usage are discussed in more general terms. The program is written for use in a CDC CYBER 200 class vector processing system.

Kemp, W. B., Jr.↗

Guest Editorial Special Section on Advanced Medium-Voltage Power Electronics for Grid Interactive Applications

Medium-voltage power electronics (MVPE) plays essential roles in power grid modernization and links the MV distribution grid with low-voltage consumers and prosumers. Various MVPE devices, such as solid-state transformers or circuit breakers, inverter-based resources, power flow controllers, etc., bring the benefits of voltage conversion and power regulation in small footprint, power quality and efficiency improvements, and enhancements of grid controllability, flexibility, stability, and resilience. The MVPE also makes it possible for sustainable energy systems, such as solar/wind farms and energy storage generating facilities, to directly access to MV grids without multistage conversions. With their intrinsic intelligence and communications, MVPE enables many new smart grid functions and applications, e.g., dc interconnections and electric vehicle charging, which were not envisioned by traditional power grids otherwise. In addition, the integration of physical power processing units with cyber components forms a cyber-physical system, which is essential for long-term sustainability, development, and environmental preservation. Nonetheless, technical challenges on MVPE device reliability, scalable and efficient converter topologies, control stability, large-scale modeling and simulation, to name a few, need to be addressed and advanced to the next level. In conclusion, this Special Section on Advanced MV Power Electronics for Grid Interactive Applications in IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics (TPEL) provides an insight on some of the recent advances in MVPE and emerging challenges and potential solutions.

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On-line structural parameter identification

Algorithms are presented for on-line parameter identification of structural dynamic systems. As an example, they are used to calculate the parameters of a modal model of a flexible beam. The algorithms are tested using hardware consisting of a 12 ft. beam with four voice coil actuators and nine noncontacting displacement sensors. They are programmed in a CDC Cyber 175 digital computer which provides input command signals for the actuators, reads the sensor data, and processes the algorithm to calculate consistent estimates of the modal parameters of the beam. Experimental results are compared with those of simulation analysis.

Thau, F. E.↗

Towards Reliable Evaluation of Anomaly-Based Intrusion Detection Performance

This report describes the results of research into the effects of environment-induced noise on the evaluation process for anomaly detectors in the cyber security domain. This research was conducted during a 10-week summer internship program from the 19th of August, 2012 to the 23rd of August, 2012 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The research performed lies within the larger context of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) Smart Grid cyber security project, a Department of Energy (DoE) funded effort involving the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology and the University of Southern California/ Information Sciences Institute. The results of the present effort constitute an important contribution towards building more rigorous evaluation paradigms for anomaly-based intrusion detectors in complex cyber physical systems such as the Smart Grid. Anomaly detection is a key strategy for cyber intrusion detection and operates by identifying deviations from profiles of nominal behavior and are thus conceptually appealing for detecting "novel" attacks. Evaluating the performance of such a detector requires assessing: (a) how well it captures the model of nominal behavior, and (b) how well it detects attacks (deviations from normality). Current evaluation methods produce results that give insufficient insight into the operation of a detector, inevitably resulting in a significantly poor characterization of a detectors performance. In this work, we first describe a preliminary taxonomy of key evaluation constructs that are necessary for establishing rigor in the evaluation regime of an anomaly detector. We then focus on clarifying the impact of the operational environment on the manifestation of attacks in monitored data. We show how dynamic and evolving environments can introduce high variability into the data stream perturbing detector performance. Prior research has focused on understanding the impact of this variability in training data for anomaly detectors, but has ignored variability in the attack signal that will necessarily affect the evaluation results for such detectors. We posit that current evaluation strategies implicitly assume that attacks always manifest in a stable manner; we show that this assumption is wrong. We describe a simple experiment to demonstrate the effects of environmental noise on the manifestation of attacks in data and introduce the notion of attack manifestation stability. Finally, we argue that conclusions about detector performance will be unreliable and incomplete if the stability of attack manifestation is not accounted for in the evaluation strategy.

cyber defense↗

Federated Learning for Efficient Condition Monitoring and Anomaly Detection in Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems

Detecting and localizing anomalies in cyber-physical systems (CPS) has become increasingly challenging as systems grow in complexity, particularly due to varying sensor reliability and node failures in distributed environments. While federated learning (FL) offers a foundation for distributed model training, existing approaches lack mechanisms to handle these CPS-specific challenges. This paper presents an enhanced FL framework that introduces three key innovations: adaptive model aggregation based on sensor reliability, dynamic node selection for resource optimization, and Weibull-based checkpointing for fault tolerance. Our framework enables reliable condition monitoring while addressing the computational and reliability challenges of industrial CPS deployments. Experiments on NASA Bearing and Hydraulic System Datasets demonstrate superior performance over state-of-the-art FL methods, achieving 99.5% AUC-ROC in anomaly detection and maintaining accuracy under node failures. Statistical validation using Mann-Whitney (U) test confirms significant improvements (p < 0.05) in both detection accuracy and computational efficiency across diverse operational scenarios.1

Marfo, William [University of Texas at El Paso,Dep↗

Advancing Cyber-Attack Detection in Power Systems: A Comparative Study of Machine Learning and Graph Neural Network Approaches

This paper explores the detection and localization of cyber-attacks on power systems, focusing on comparing conventional machine learning (ML) and deep learning methods, and graph neural network (GNN)-based techniques. We assess the detection accuracy of these approaches and their potential to pinpoint the locations of specific buses under attack. Given the demonstrated success of GNNs in other time series anomaly detection applications, we aim to evaluate their performance within the context of power systems cyber-attack. Utilizing the IEEE 68-bus system, we simulated four types of attacks to test the selected approaches. Our results indicate that GNN-based methods outperform conventional machine learning and deep learning models in detection. Additionally, GNNs show promise in accurately localizing attacks for simple scenarios, although they still face challenges in more complex cases.

artificial intelligence↗

Hadoop for High-Performance Climate Analytics: Use Cases and Lessons Learned

Scientific data services are a critical aspect of the NASA Center for Climate Simulations mission (NCCS). Hadoop, via MapReduce, provides an approach to high-performance analytics that is proving to be useful to data intensive problems in climate research. It offers an analysis paradigm that uses clusters of computers and combines distributed storage of large data sets with parallel computation. The NCCS is particularly interested in the potential of Hadoop to speed up basic operations common to a wide range of analyses. In order to evaluate this potential, we prototyped a series of canonical MapReduce operations over a test suite of observational and climate simulation datasets. The initial focus was on averaging operations over arbitrary spatial and temporal extents within Modern Era Retrospective- Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) data. After preliminary results suggested that this approach improves efficiencies within data intensive analytic workflows, we invested in building a cyber infrastructure resource for developing a new generation of climate data analysis capabilities using Hadoop. This resource is focused on reducing the time spent in the preparation of reanalysis data used in data-model inter-comparison, a long sought goal of the climate community. This paper summarizes the related use cases and lessons learned.

analytics↗

Retrieval Augmented Generation for Robust Cyber Defense

In cybersecurity, the ability to efficiently analyze and respond to vulnerabilities, weaknesses, attack patterns, and threat tactics is critical for effective defense strategies. With the increasing complexity and volume of cybersecurity data, traditional methods of querying and retrieving information are often inadequate. To address this challenge, we implemented Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems—CyRAG and GraphCyRAG—that integrate large language models (LLMs) with both structured data from relational databases and knowledge graphs such as Neo4j. CyRAG is designed to handle structured data, focusing on CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) and CWE (Common Weakness Enumeration) entities to generate accurate and context-rich responses. In contrast, GraphCyRAG leverages Neo4j knowledge graphs to retrieve interconnected information from CVE, CWE, CAPEC (Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification), and ATT&CK (Adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and Common Knowledge) datasets. By utilizing Neo4j’s graph-based framework, GraphCyRAG enables deeper traversal of relationships between vulnerabilities and attack patterns, providing cybersecurity analysts with more comprehensive insights into potential attack vectors and mitigation strategies. Our preliminary results demonstrate that integrating knowledge graphs with RAG significantly enhances both the accuracy and depth of threat analysis, allowing for the retrieval of dynamic, real-time data and the generation of contextually aware responses. This approach helps analysts uncover hidden relationships between cyber entities, predict exploit paths, and prioritize mitigation efforts effectively. The integration of RAG with cybersecurity knowledge graphs represents a significant advancement in cybersecurity threat intelligence, enabling more informed decision-making and stronger defense strategies.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Cyber‐Resilient Distributed Energy Resource Control Algorithms for Smart Distribution Grids

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the development of cyber‐resilient gradient‐based optimisation algorithms and theoretical proof for grid‐interactive distributed energy resource (DER) control to enable two grid services of virtual power plants (VPPs) dispatch and grid voltage regulation, considering the communication and security impacts. Firstly, the combined DER dispatch and voltage regulation as a real‐time gradient‐based optimisation problem is recapped. Thereafter, we consider a probabilistic traffic model to characterise packet delays and loss in a communication network, and study how the delays enter the process of information exchange among the grid measurement units, local DER controllers and the grid control centre that execute this control algorithm in a coordinated manner. Then, a strategy combining delay thresholds and message update rules is proposed to immunity the asynchrony resulting from the communications traffic and it avoids possible numerical instabilities and sensitivities of the power tracking and voltage regulation capabilities, resulting as cyber‐resilient DER control algorithms. Additionally, their convergence is theoretically proved. Effectiveness of proposed cyber‐resilient algorithms has been validated on the IEEE 37‐bus system in terms of convergence, VPP tracking and voltage regulation performance for smart distribution systems with high penetration of DERs.

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