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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

Proposed Material Properties, Allowable Stresses, and Design Curves of Diffusion Bonded Alloy 800H for the ASME Code Section III Division 5

Abstract Increased interest in compact heat exchangers (CHXs) to serve as intermediate heat exchangers of very high temperature reactors resulted in significant research and development on their design, analysis, and construction. Printed circuit heat exchangers are a type of CHXs with high thermal efficiency and compactness achieved through diffusion bonding a stack of etched plates with millimeter scaled channels. The diffusion bonding process changes the microstructural and mechanical properties of the wrought metal plates. The current nonnuclear design code ASME section VIII, division 1 captures the material property change through a “joint efficiency factor.” However, the current nuclear design code ASME section III, division 5 does not address or support the diffusion bonded material properties. Hence, there is a need to develop allowable stresses, isochronous curves, and fatigue life curves for various diffusion bonded alloys. In this study, Alloy 800H material was selected to establish the diffusion bonded material properties under tension, creep, fatigue, and creep-fatigue loads at elevated temperatures in the range 550–760 °C. A set of tests on diffusion bonded Alloy 800H (DB 800H) were performed and the acquired data are used in developing allowable stresses Sy, Su, Sr, Sm, St, Smt, So, isochronous curves and fatigue life curves according to the ASME section III, division 5 requirements. This paper also presents detailed procedures used in developing the ASME code section III division 5 design provisions for diffusion bonded Alloy 800H.

Engineering↗

PETSc Users Manual (Rev. 3.13)

This manual describes the use of PETSc for the numerical solution of partial differential equations and related problems on high-performance computers. The Portable, Extensible Toolkit for Scientific Computation (PETSc) is a suite of data structures and routines that provide the building blocks for the implementation of large-scale application codes on parallel (and serial) computers. PETSc uses the MPI standard for all message-passing communication. PETSc includes an expanding suite of parallel linear solvers, nonlinear solvers, and time integrators that may be used in application codes written in Fortran, C, C++, and Python. PETSc provides many of the mechanisms needed within parallel application codes, such as parallel matrix and vector assembly routines. The library is organized hierarchically, enabling users to employ the level of abstraction that is most appropriate for a particular problem. By using techniques of object-oriented programming, PETSc provides enormous flexibility for users. PETSc is a sophisticated set of software tools; as such, for some users it initially has a much steeper learning curve than a simple subroutine library. In particular, for individuals without some computer science background, experience programming in C, C++, python, or Fortran and experience using a debugger such as gdb or dbx, it may require a significant amount of time to take full advantage of the features that enable efficient software use. However, the power of the PETSc design and the algorithms it incorporates may make the efficient implementation of many application codes simpler than \rolling them" yourself.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

A light weight regularization for wave function parameter gradients in quantum Monte Carlo

The parameter derivative of the expectation value of the energy, ∂E/∂p, is a key ingredient in variational Monte Carlo (VMC) wave function optimization methods. In some cases, a naïve estimate of this derivative suffers from an infinite variance, which inhibits the efficiency of optimization methods that rely on a stable estimate of the derivative. In this work, we derive a simple regularization of the naïve estimator, which is trivial to implement in existing VMC codes, has finite variance, and a negligible bias, which can be extrapolated to zero bias with no extra cost. We use this estimator to construct an unbiased, finite variance estimation of ∂E/∂p for a multi-Slater–Jastrow trial wave function on the LiH molecule and in the optimization of a multi-Slater–Jastrow trial wave function on the CuO molecule. This regularized estimator is a simple and efficient estimator of ∂E/∂p for VMC optimization techniques.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Validation of EDGDE2D-EIRENE predicted 2D distributions of electron temperature and density against divertor Thomson scattering measurements in the low-field side divertor leg in DIII-D

Comparisons of profiles of the electron temperature (T e ), density (n e ) and pressure (p e ) measured with Divertor Thomson Scattering in DIII-D low-confinement mode discharges to predictions from the edge fluid code EDGE2D-EIRENE show that the models implemented in EDGE2D-EIRENE predict the measurements within their collective uncertainties if the T e at the separatrix (T e,sep ) is 10 eV, or higher. The simulations do not predict, however, the peaked T e and ne profiles measured adjacent to the target plate when T e,sep , is below 10 eV, i.e., for the plasma downstream from the region of ionization of deuterium atoms. Inclusion of cross-field drifts and a five-fold reduction of radial transport cannot reconcile the discrepancy between the measurements and predictions.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Modeling of the TRIGA IPR-R1 research reactor with the Serpent2/RINNOVO Nodal core analysis package

The Serpent2/RINNOVO nodal core analysis code system, a dedicated tool for modeling research reactors, has the capability to accurately predict important core physics parameters involved in the safety of reactor operation, such as various reactivity coefficients, control rod and bank worths including the shutdown margin, power distributions as well as local neutron flux predictions at various core locations of high importance, e.g., at irradiation rigs. In this work, a hexagonal model of the unrodded initial core of the Brazilian IPR-R1 Mark I type TRIGA nuclear reactor has been created using the Serpent2/RINNOVO code system. The choice of employing a hexagonal core geometry representation has mainly been made to facilitate subsequent fuel shuffling operations and core follow calculations of this reactor. Numerical results in terms of the core eigenvalue and the assembly power distribution have then been compared against corresponding full core Serpent2 results to prove feasibility of using the Serpent2/RINNOVO code system for modeling small and highly heterogeneous TRIGA reactors. Overall, RINNOVO predicts the power distribution very accurately but the eigenvalue error still remains quite large. In light of being the very first evaluation of a TRIGA reactor with the RINNOVO nodal core simulator, these results are also considered to be very preliminary. Improved accuracy is expected by incorporating a proper methodology in the current code system for computing discontinuity factors for multi-assembly configurations. Furthermore, improved results are expected by increasing the number of energy groups used by RINNOVO in these core calculations.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

Improved analytic modeling of the linear Rayleigh–Taylor instability with plasma transport

The Rayleigh–Taylor (R–T) instability with transport effects has long been studied analytically in the neutral fluid regime. How this picture may differ in plasmas has been given less consideration, however. Leveraging previous numerical simulations with plasma viscosity and diffusion of R–T at a binary plasma interface, we show how plasma transport and kinetic effects alter the linear R–T dispersion relation. Our insight informs a much improved analytical dispersion relation, which better matches the simulation data than previously established models. Additionally, we demonstrate the importance of employing asymptotically correct viscosity coefficients in fluid codes for accurately capturing plasma R–T growth.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Sequential Kalman tuning of the t -preconditioned Crank-Nicolson algorithm: efficient, adaptive and gradient-free inference for Bayesian inverse problems

Ensemble Kalman Inversion (EKI) has been proposed as an efficient method for the approximate solution of Bayesian inverse problems with expensive forward models. However, when applied to the Bayesian inverse problem EKI is only exact in the regime of Gaussian target measures and linear forward models. Here, in this work we propose embedding EKI and Flow Annealed Kalman Inversion, its normalizing flow (NF) preconditioned variant, within a Bayesian annealing scheme as part of an adaptive implementation of the t-preconditioned Crank-Nicolson (tpCN) sampler. The tpCN sampler differs from standard pCN in that its proposal is reversible with respect to the multivariate t-distribution. The more flexible tail behaviour allows for better adaptation to sampling from non-Gaussian targets. Within our Sequential Kalman Tuning (SKT) adaptation scheme, EKI is used to initialize and precondition the tpCN sampler for each annealed target. The subsequent tpCN iterations ensure particles are correctly distributed according to each annealed target, avoiding the accumulation of errors that would otherwise impact EKI. We demonstrate the performance of SKT for tpCN on three challenging numerical benchmarks, showing significant improvements in the rate of convergence compared to adaptation within standard SMC with importance weighted resampling at each temperature level, and compared to similar adaptive implementations of standard pCN. The SKT scheme applied to tpCN offers an efficient, practical solution for solving the Bayesian inverse problem when gradients of the forward model are not available. Code implementing the SKT schemes for tpCN is available at https://github.com/RichardGrumitt/KalmanMC.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Measurements of inner-shell excited levels of Na-, Mg-, and Al-like europium on the LLNL EBIT

We report on a measurement of several n = 3 → n = 2 inner-shell transitions in sodiumlike, magnesiumlike, and aluminumlike europium, performed at the EBIT-I electron beam ion trap facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory using an x-ray calorimeter. Although the inner-shell x-ray lines of such M-shell ions are typically dominated by electric dipole allowed transitions, we have also identified a weak feature that appears to be the result of electric quadrupole decay in sodiumlike Eu 52+ . Here, we compare the measured transitions energies to the calculated values obtained using the flexible atomic code. We find agreement in most cases within 2 eV or better.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗

FLEXO: A Portably Performant Code for Pulsed Power Target Physics

FLEXO (Flux-Limited Extended-MHD Ohm's Law) is a production-line multiphysics code developed at Sandia to enable more predictive modeling of target physics on pulsed-power devices. FLEXO uses an extended magnetohydrodynamics (XMHD) model which includes a generalized Ohm's law (GOL), an electron inertia term, and Hall physics. This report describes the code's numerical methods, its computational performance, and test problems of interest.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Implementation of Monte Carlo Transport in the General Relativistic SpEC Code

Neutrino transport and neutrino-matter interactions are known to play an important role in the evolution of neutron star mergers and of their post-merger remnants. Neutrinos cool remnants, drive post-merger winds, and deposit energy in the low-density polar regions where relativistic jets may eventually form. Neutrinos also modify the composition of the ejected material, impacting the outcome of nucleosynthesis in merger outflows and the properties of the optical/infrared transients that they power (kilonovae). So far, merger simulations have largely relied on approximate treatments of the neutrinos (leakage, moments) that simplify the equations of radiation transport in a way that makes simulations more affordable but also introduces unquantifiable errors in the results. To improve on these methods, we recently published a first simulation of neutron star mergers using a low-cost Monte Carlo algorithm for neutrino radiation transport. Our transport code limits costs in optically thick regions by placing a hard ceiling on the value of the absorption opacity of the fluid, yet all approximations made within the code are designed to vanish in the limit of infinite numerical resolution. We provide here an in-depth description of this algorithm, of its implementation in the SpEC merger code, and of the expected impact of our approximations in optically thick regions. We argue that the last is a subdominant source of error at the accuracy reached by current simulations and for the interactions currently included in our code. We also provide tests of the most important features of this code.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Porting Fragmentation Methods to Graphical Processing Units Using an OpenMP Application Programming Interface: Offloading the Fock Build for Low Angular Momentum Functions

Here, a framework to offload four-index two-electron repulsion integrals to graphical processing units (GPUs) using OpenMP is discussed. The method has been applied to the Fock build for low angular momentum s and p functions in both the restricted Hartree–Fock (RHF) and in the effective fragment molecular orbital (EFMO) framework. Benchmark calculations for the GPU code for the pure RHF method show an increasing speedup relative to the existing OpenMP CPU code in GAMESS from 1.04 to 52× for clusters of 70–569 water molecules. The parallel efficiency on 24 NVIDIA V100 GPU boards also increases when increasing the system size: from 75 to 94% for water clusters that contain 303–1120 molecules. In the EFMO framework, the GPU Fock build shows a high linear scalability up to 4608 V100s with a parallel efficiency of 96% for calculations on a solvated mesoporous silica nanoparticle system with ~67,000 basis functions.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Evolution and feedback of AGN jets of different cosmic ray composition

Jet feedback from active galactic nuclei (AGN) is one of the most promising mechanisms for suppressing cooling flows in cool-core clusters. However, the composition of AGN jets and bubbles remains uncertain; they could be thermally dominated, or dominated by cosmic ray proton (CRp), cosmic ray electron (CRe), or magnetic energy. In this work, we investigate the evolution and feedback effects of CRp and CRe dominated jets by conducting 3D magnetohydrodynamic simulations of AGN jet-inflated bubbles in the intracluster medium using the FLASH code. We present the evolution of their energies, dynamics, and heating, and model their expected cavity-power versus radio-luminosity relation (P cav –L R ). We find that bubbles inflated by CRe dominated jets follow a very similar dynamical evolution to CRp dominated bubbles even though CRe within bubbles suffer significantly stronger synchrotron and inverse-Compton cooling. This is because, as CRe lose their energy, the jet-inflated bubbles quickly become thermally dominated within ∼30 Myr. Their total energy stops decreasing with CR energy and evolves similarly to CRp dominated bubbles. The ability of CRe and CRp dominated bubbles to heat the intracluster medium is also comparable; the cold gas formed via local thermal instabilities is well suppressed in both cases. The CRp and CRe bubbles follow different evolutionary trajectories on the P cav –L R plane, but the values are broadly consistent with observed ranges for FR-I sources. We also discuss observational techniques that have potential for constraining the composition of AGN jets and bubbles.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Development of a high-fidelity multi-physics coupling between MCNP6.2 and CTF4.0 for VVER applications

Ensuring system safety in the design, licensing, and operation phases is a priority in the nuclear industry. Performing extensive, full-scale reactor safety experiments is often prohibitive due to the large associated costs. Computational simulations offer an alternative safety analysis method, typically with significant cost reductions. Recent high-level developments in technology and increased availability of computational resources have allowed the development of high-fidelity, high-resolution multi-physics coupled codes. Such developments may be used to generate reference models for deterministic core calculations. Under this framework, the high-fidelity continuous energy Monte Carlo-based neutron transport code MCNP6.2 was coupled externally with the state-of-the-art thermal-hydraulics subchannel code, CTF4.0 for VVER (Water-Water Energetic Reactor) applications. A VVER-1000 fuel assembly model was used to demonstrate the capability of the coupled code. The converged coupled solution is compared to initial results, consisting of the first MCNP evaluation and first CTF evaluation after initialization. The VVER-1000 type assembly results are compared to other evaluations of the same assembly model. The findings indicate good agreement with expectations and reference cases, where available. The initial results of the coupled MCNP6.2/CTF4.0 calculations at the assembly level for steady-state calculations are presented in this study, which may support future work toward high-fidelity coupled full-core modeling capabilities. The multi-physics model may be further improved, enhanced, and expanded for both cycle depletion and transient applications. Such a multi-physics system will also be applicable to the VVER-1200 and other triangular lattice designs and support their deployment and operation safely and economically. (authors)

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗