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At least 199 records · Page 11

Three-dimensional in Situ Observations of Polycrystalline Microstructure Evolution During Directional Solidification of Transparent Alloys Aboard the ISS and Quantitative Comparison with Numerical Modeling

Cellular/dendritic microstructures formed during solidification have a crucial influence on the mechanical properties of a wide range of structural alloys. By minimizing the amount of gravity-induced convection in the liquid, directional solidification experiments using transparent organic alloys conducted in the DECLIC-DSI onboard the International Space Station have provided unique 3D in situ observations of the spatiotemporal evolution of the solid-liquid interface during the formation of cellular and dendritic microstructures under purely diffusive growth conditions in polycrystalline samples containing several grains with a small misorientation with respect to the temperature gradient. Those observations have made it possible to perform benchmark quantitative comparisons with the predictions of state-of-the-art phase-field simulations of microstructure formation in 3D on experimentally relevant length and time scales. This talk will report quantitative comparisons between microgravity experiments and phase-field simulations in succinonitrile-camphor alloys of two different compositions that shed new light on the role of subgrain boundaries in the spatiotemporal evolution of the primary cellular spacing and the selection of dendritic array structures.

Kaihua Ji↗

Anion Exchange of Ruddlesden–Popper Lead Halide Perovskites Produces Stable Lateral Heterostructures

Heterostructures of three-dimensional (3D) halide perovskites are unstable because of facile anion interdiffusion at halide interfaces. Two-dimensional (2D) Ruddlesden–Popper halide perovskites (RPPs) show suppressed and anisotropic ion diffu-sion that could enable stable RPP heterostructures, yet the direct and general growth of lateral RPP heterostructures remains challenging. Here we show that halide miscibility in RPPs decreases with perovskite layer thickness (n), enabling the for-mation of sharp halide lateral heterostructures from n = 1 and 2 RP lead iodide microplates via anion exchange with hydro-gen bromide vapor. In contrast, RPPs with n = 3 form more diffuse lateral heterojunctions, more similar to those in 3D perov-skites. The anion exchange behaviors are further modulated by the spacer and A-site cations in the RPP structures. These new insights, and kinetic studies of the exchange reactions, enable the preparation of lateral heterostructures from various n = 2 RPPs that are more stable against anion interdiffusion and degradation for potential device applications.

Roy, Chris R.↗

Tomographic optical emission spectroscopy of atmospheric pressure plasma interacting with complex surfaces

Plasma distribution in 3D space is heavily influenced by complex surfaces and the coupling interactions between plasma properties and interfacing material properties. For example, guided streamers that transition to surface ionization waves (SIWs) and propagate over structured dielectrics experience field enhancements that can lead to localized increases in ionization rates and complex 3D configurations that are difficult to analyze. Investigating these configurations requires techniques than can provide a more complete 3D picture. To help address this capability gap, a tomographic optical emission spectroscopy (tomo-OES) diagnostic system has been developed at Sandia National Laboratories that can resolve SIWs. The system includes four intensified cameras that measure the angular projections of the plasma light emission through bandpass filters. A dot calibration target co-registers each angular projection to the same voxel grid and an algebraic reconstruction technique (ART) recovers the light intensity at each voxel. An atmospheric pressure plasma jet (APPJ), provided by Peter Bruggeman, has been investigated and representative results are shown in Figure 1. Here, a bandpass filter was used to isolate emission from the N 2 second positive system (SPS) at 337.1 nm to capture the transition of the streamer to SIW on a planar dielectric surface (relative permittivity 3.3) located 3 mm below the APPJ [3]. The surface wave velocity was 3.5x10 4 (m/s), consistent with measurements made by Steven Shannon. Characterization of this APPJ will support the group effort of standing up a reproducible APPJ across institutions for applications such as liquid treatment, catalysis, and plasma aided combustion. Future work will investigate non-planar surfaces and eventually develop tomographic laser-induced fluorescence (tomo-LIF) approaches.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

CCSI Toolset 3.18 Release

CCSI Toolset 3.18 Release Highlights FOQUS was updated to allow installation for users using MacOS on Apple silicon. FOQUS Cloud support was added for user plugins. The Optimality-Based Design of Experiments tutorials were updated to reflect the latest changes in the user interface flow. The plot discrete sliders were fixed for CDF and 3D plots within Uncertainty Quantification, which were not working due to a matplotlib depreciation. The installation was updated to set the default location for the PSUADE executable if found in the environment. Updates were made to allow compatibility with NumPy 1.25. Additional documentation changes were made to fix typographical errors and fix a broken link to optional software.

AS↗

NASA Langley developments in response calculations needed for failure and life prediction

NASA Langley developments in response calculations needed for failure and life predictions are discussed. Topics covered include: structural failure analysis in concurrent engineering; accuracy of independent regional modeling demonstrated on classical example; functional interface method accurately joins incompatible finite element models; interface method for insertion of local detail modeling extended to curve pressurized fuselage window panel; interface concept for joining structural regions; motivation for coupled 2D-3D analysis; compression panel with discontinuous stiffener coupled 2D-3D model and axial surface strains at the middle of the hat stiffener; use of adaptive refinement with multiple methods; adaptive mesh refinement; and studies on quantity effect of bow-type initial imperfections on reliability of stiffened panels.

Housner, Jerrold M.↗

Macro-Scale Findings of the DebriSat Debris Field Obtained from X-Rays of the Catch Panels

The DebriSat project analyzes the debris from a hypervelocity impact test conducted on a 56 kg-simulated satellite target in 2014. Its purpose is to generate a comprehensive database of the size, mass, material, shape, and the radar and optical properties of fragments generated from orbital collisions of modern-built spacecraft. Three hundred ninety-one foam catch panels from the DebriSat test have been X-rayed to locate the particles within them for subsequent extraction and assessment. The data from the tens of thousands of extracted particles has heretofore been the focus of the debris assessment. The work presented here connects the X-ray sample location images to reconstruct the 3D distribution of the entire fragment cloud. Although some errors are inherent to the process, this 3D database is valuable for qualitative studies of size and energy distributions. Further, the 3D database can indicate the extent of bending or breaking of the fragments as they decelerated to full capture. By virtue of its full sphere perspective, the 3D database allows graphical insight to the physics of the collision and breakup. This 3D representation has been developed as a “point and click” graphical interface to retrieve the full data set on individual recovered and assessed fragments within the growing database. Overall, this macro-level screening technique has added enormous insight to the experiment in unexpected ways.

Allen, Anthony↗

Visualizing Interfacial Jamming Using an Aggregation-Induced-Emission Molecular Reporter

With the interfacial jamming of nanoparticles (NPs), a load-bearing network of NPs forms as the areal density of NPs increases, converting the assembly from a liquid-like into a solid-like assembly. Unlike vitrification, the lineal packing of the NPs in the network is denser, while the remaining NPs can remain in a liquid-like state. It is a challenge to determine the point at which the assemblies jam, since both jamming and vitrification lead to a solid-like behavior of the assemblies. Herein, we show a real-time fluorescence imaging method to probe the evolution of the interfacial dynamics of NP surfactants at the water/oil interface using aggregation-induced emission (AIE) as a reporter for the transition of the assemblies into the jammed state. The AIEgens show typical fluorescence behavior at densities at which they can move and rotate. However, when aggregation of these fluorophores occurs, the smaller intermolecular separation distance arrests rotation, and a significant enhancement in the fluorescence intensity occurs.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

HAM: Hotspot-Aware Manager for Improving Communications with 3D-Stacked Memory

merging High-Performance Computing (HPC) workloads, such as graph analytics, machine learning, and big data science, are data-intensive. Data-intensive workloads usually present fine-grained memory accesses with limited or no data locality, and thus incur frequent cache misses and low utilization of memory bandwidth. 3D-stacked memory devices such as Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) and High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) can provide significantly higher bandwidth than conventional memory modules. However, the traditional interfaces and optimization methods for JEDEC DDR devices do not allow to fully exploit the potential performance of 3D-stacked memory with the massive amount of irregular memory accesses of data-intensive applications. In this paper, we propose a novel Hotspot-Aware Manager (HAM) infrastructure for 3D-stacked memory devices capable of optimizing memory access streams via request aggregation, hotspot detection, and in-memory prefetching. %and an associated hotspot-aware page policy. We present the HAM design and implementation, and simulate it on a system using RISC-V embedded cores with attached HMC devices. We extensively evaluate HAM with over 12 benchmarks and applications representing diverse irregular memory access patterns. The results show that, on average, HAM reduces redundant requests by 37.51\% and increases the prefetch buffer hit rate by 4.2 times, compared to a baseline streaming prefetcher. On the selected benchmark set, HAM provides performance gains of 21.81\% in average (up to 34.28\%) and power savings of 35.07\% over a standard 3D-stacked memory.

Wang, Xi↗

Mesh Computing Remote Automatic Workflow

The software suite uses a microservice architecture using Docker and `docker-compose`. The microservices are as follows: 1. User interface. This interface is written in JavaScript using the Svelte framework. It exposes form elements and a 3D visualizer to prompt the user through the definition of microstructure parameters, and setting parameters for mesh generation and refinement. 2. Mesh generator. This is a container running the Python package for DREAM3D to generate a voxelized mesh that represents a microstructure defined by the user in the interface. 3. Cubit runner. This is a secure shell protocol tool that makes the submitting the DREAM mesh to an HPC instance and starts to run Cubit shell commands to smooth the grain boundaries with its `sculpt` library, applies user-defined boundary node sets, and bundles and returns the simulation-ready meshes and input files as a zipped directory.

Harris, BrennanKay↗

3D printed lignin/polymer composite with enhanced mechanical and anti-thermal-aging performance

Lignin is the most abundant natural aromatic polymer globally but is still underutilized as a renewable material, even with its versatile properties. One approach to using lignin is to incorporate it in polymer composites, but this application is often limited by the poor mechanical performance of the resultant composite due to the poor interfacial adhesion. Following the structure–property relationship, stronger interactions were designed to be enhanced by alternating the functional groups of lignin. Here, this study applied a demethylation method to hardwood lignin (Ori-Lig) to introduce more phenolic hydroxyl groups. Research studies with rheology behavior and molecular simulations demonstrated that an increased phenolic hydroxyl content could improve the adhesion between the modified lignin (OH-Lig) and the polymer matrix at the interface. The tensile performance of the samples from the fused depositional modeling (FDM) 3D printing technique was also improved due to the improved interfacial adhesion. Specifically, by adding 10 wt% of the modified lignin, the tensile strength of the 3D printed samples could reach 46.1 MPa (40.2 MPa of Polyamide 12, PA12), and Young’s Modulus could be improved to 1.73 GPa (1.48 GPa of PA12). OH-Lig also improved anti-aging performance so that the tensile strength of the OH-Lig composite after thermo-aging (100 h at 140 °C) remained ~48MPa. The enhanced mechanical performance with anti-aging properties indicated that the OH-Lig composite may replace PA12 to reduce the use of petrol-based materials. This work showed the method of purposefully designing and modifying lignin structures to fulfill the interaction requirements between lignin and polymer matrix. The as-prepared lignin could be used to prepare functional composites to achieve improved mechanical performance and targeted functions at the same time.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Bulky Cation-Modified Interfaces for Thermally Stable Lead Halide Perovskite Solar Cells

Charged conjugated organic molecules offer promising prospects for reducing nonradiative recombination at interfaces in perovskite solar cells, while protecting the active layer from moisture. However, several studies have shown that the heat induced diffusion of these cations leads to irreversible solar cell degradation. Passivation molecules for perovskite can reconstruct the film surface into lower-dimensional phases when exposed to thermal stress, impeding charge extraction and affecting the photoconversion efficiency (PCE) of devices. In this work, we study how molecular interactions between passivation molecules and 3D CsFAPbI 3 perovskite impact stability and charge extraction at the perovskite/hole transport layer interfaces. Two model π- conjugated molecules are studied: 2-([2,2′-bithiophen]-5-yl)ethan-1-aminium iodide (2TI) and 2-(3‴,4′-dimethyl-[2,2′:5′,2″:5″,2‴- quaterthiophen]-5-yl)ethan-1-ammonium iodide (4TmI). We demonstrate that the speed of surface layer reconstruction under thermal stress can be controlled by the cation size and correlate these structural changes with the solar cell performance and stability. Devices treated with 2TI and 4TmI achieve PCEs over 21% and maintain their performance under thermal stress. Our findings demonstrate that thermal stability in PSCs can be achieved via the design engineering of passivation agents, offering a blueprint for developing next-generation passivation molecules.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Single-molecule 3D imaging of HIV cellular entry by liquid-phase electron tomography

Enveloped viruses, including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and SARS-CoV-2, target cells through membrane fusion process. The detailed understanding of the process is sought after for vaccine development but remains elusive due to current technique limitations for direct three-dimensional (3D) imaging of an individual virus during its viral entry. Recently, we developed a simple specimen preparation method for real-time imaging of metal dynamic liquid-vaper interface at nanometer resolution by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Here, we extended this method to study biology sample through snapshot 3D structure of a single HIV (pseudo-typed with the envelope glycoprotein of vesicular stomatitis virus, VSV-G) at its intermediate stage of viral entry to HeLa cells in a liquid-phase environment. By individual-particle electron tomography (IPET), we found the viral surface release excess lipids with unbound viral spike proteins forming ~50-nm nanoparticles instead of merging cell membrane. Moreover, the spherical-shape shell formed by matrix proteins underneath the viral envelope does not disassemble into a cone shape right after fusion. Further, the snapshot 3D imaging of a single virus provides us a direct structure-based understanding of the viral entry mechanism, which can be used to examine other viruses to support the development of vaccines combatting the current ongoing pandemic.

Kong, Lingli↗

Ig-VAE: Generative modeling of protein structure by direct 3D coordinate generation

While deep learning models have seen increasing applications in protein science, few have been implemented for protein backbone generation—an important task in structure-based problems such as active site and interface design. We present a new approach to building class-specific backbones, using a variational auto-encoder to directly generate the 3D coordinates of immunoglobulins. Our model is torsion- and distance-aware, learns a high-resolution embedding of the dataset, and generates novel, high-quality structures compatible with existing design tools. We show that the Ig-VAE can be used with Rosetta to create a computational model of a SARS-CoV2-RBD binder via latent space sampling. We further demonstrate that the model’s generative prior is a powerful tool for guiding computational protein design, motivating a new paradigm under which backbone design is solved as constrained optimization problem in the latent space of a generative model.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Towards a quantitative understanding of bonding in supersonic single particle impacts: A three-dimensional FIB-SEM exploration

Particle bonding is crucial to coating quality in cold spray, but it has been a challenge to accurately quantify bonding even in single particle impacts. This paper uses FIB-SEM to explicitly map the particle-substrate interface for Cu-on-Cu single microparticle impacts in a full 3D rendering that spans a wide range of impact velocities. This approach permits a detailed quantification of the total bonding area and all of its associated components. In addition to revealing why prior 2D characterization efforts have missed important details about impact bonding, these data quantitatively reveal the evolution of bonding from its onset at the “critical velocity” V cr (where bonding is generally poor, ∼6 %) to its peak at around 1.3‧V cr (where almost 90 % of the particle bonds). Further increase in the velocity to 1.5‧V cr and beyond finds the onset of hydrodynamic penetration and a decrease in bonding. These data then support the development of a simple analytical model based on oxide rarefication and extrusion of bare metal through gaps in the oxide layer as driving the development of bonding. As a result, the model reproduces the experiments and provides guidance on optimization of bonding as a function of material and process parameters.

Analytical methods↗

An electrochemical mesoscale tool for modeling the corrosion of structural alloys by molten salt

Understanding the impact of microstructure on corrosion rates can aid the development of corrosion-resistant alloys for molten salt reactors. Here in this work, we develop an electrochemical phase-field model for capturing the microstructure-dependent corrosion of structural alloys by molten salts. As a demonstration problem, we apply this model to capture the selective depletion of Cr from Ni-Cr grain boundaries during corrosion in molten FLiBe salt. We perform sensitivity analysis and model verification on 1D simulations to confirm that the model predicts diffusion-limited kinetics. The model is validated using 1D, 2D, and 3D simulations against experimental data for Ni-5Cr and Ni-20Cr corrosion in molten FLiBe. The 1D simulations predict the corrosion behavior with reasonable accuracy when using an effective diffusion coefficient that accurately represents the grain boundary diffusion. 2D simulations that represent the grain structure underpredict the corrosion. 3D simulations that represent the grain structure predict the corrosion with reasonable accuracy. The corrosion rate predicted by the 3D simulations is proportional to the average grain size at the alloy/salt interface.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Oxidation and microstructure of SiC f /SiC composites in moist air up to 1600°C by X‐ray tomographic characterization

Abstract SiC f /SiC composites that possess PyC or BN interface layers were fabricated and then oxidized in moist air at 1000, 1200, 1400, and 1600°C. High‐resolution CT was used for capturing 3D images and quantifying the SiC phase, mesophase, and voids. The oxidation behavior and microstructural evolution of SiC f /SiC with PyC or BN interface are discussed in this study. The microstructure of the SiC f /SiC with a PyC layer was seriously damaged in moist air at high temperature, whereas the BN interface layer enhanced the oxidation resistance of the SiC f /SiC. These results are also confirmed by using XRD, oxidation mass gain, tensile testing, and SEM measurements. The results of the oxidation behavior and microstructural evolution for SiC f /SiC oxidized in dry air are also compared with the results of this study. Comparing the SiC f /SiC with a PyC interface layer, the composite with a BN interface layer oxidized in moist air exhibits a high void growth rate and a low SiO 2 grain growth rate from 1000 to 1600°C. This work will provide guidance for predicting the service life of SiC f /SiC for multiscale damage rate models of materials at a local scale and will also provide guidance on the life service design of SiC f /SiC materials.

Lu, Zilong↗

The 3-D numerical study of airflow in the compressor/combustor prediffuser and dump diffuser of an industrial gas turbine

This paper describes the 3D computations of a flow field in the compressor/combustor diffusers of an industrial gas turbine. The geometry considered includes components such as the combustor support strut, the transition piece and the impingement sleeve with discrete cooling air holes on its surface. Because the geometry was complex and 3D, the airflow path was divided into two computational domains sharing an interface region. The body-fitted grid was generated independently in each of the two domains. The governing equations for incompressible Navier-Stokes equations were solved using the finite volume approach. The results show that the flow in the prediffuser is strongly coupled with the flow in the dump diffuser and vice versa. The computations also revealed that the flow in the dump diffuser is highly nonuniform.

Agrawal, Ajay K.↗

Collaborative Exploration of Scientific Datasets Using Immersive and Statistical Visualization: Preprint

We discuss the value of collaborative, immersive visualization for the exploration of scientific datasets and review techniques and tools that have been developed and deployed at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). We believe that collaborative visualizations linking statistical interfaces and graphics on laptops and high-performance computing (HPC) with 3D visualizations on immersive displays (head-mounted displays and large-scale immersive environments) enable scientific workflows that further rapid exploration of large, high-dimensional datasets by teams of analysts. We present a framework, PlottyVR, that blends statistical tools, general-purpose programming environments, and simulation with 3D visualizations. To contextualize this framework, we propose a categorization and loose taxonomy of collaborative visualization and analysis techniques. Finally, we describe how scientists and engineers have adopted this framework to investigate large, complex datasets.

collaborative visualization↗