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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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220 records · Page 13

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DOE OSTI2025

Hierarchical Speed Planner for Automated Vehicles: A Framework for Lagrangian Variable Speed Limit in Mixed-Autonomy Traffic

Here, this article presents a novel hierarchical speed planning framework for variable speed limits in mixed-autonomy traffic environments, leveraging server-side macroscopic control and vehicle-side microscopic execution. The framework integrates real-time traffic state estimation (TSE) and reinforcement learning (RL)-based control to mitigate congestion and improve traffic flow. A TSE enhancement module combines macroscopic data from sources like INRIX with high-resolution observations from connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs), enabling predictive modeling to address latency and noise. The target speed design module employs kernel smoothing and a buffer zone strategy to optimize traffic density and flow around bottlenecks. The proposed system was validated in the largest open-road test to date with 100 CAVs, demonstrating an overall 8% traffic density decrease, with a specific decrease of 7% upstream, 10% downstream, and a 52% decrease during the congestion formation phase at bottlenecks.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

DOE OSTI2024

A Hybrid Heavy Duty Diesel Power System for Off-Road Applications—Concept Validation

A multiyear power system R&D program was completed with the objective of developing an off-road hybrid heavy duty diesel engine with front end accessory drive-integrated energy storage. This system was validated to deliver 10.5–25.6% reduction in fuel consumption over current Tier 4 Final-based 18L diesel engines, over various off-road machine application cycles. The power system consisted of a downsized heavy-duty diesel 13L engine containing advanced combustion technologies, capable of elevated peak cylinder pressures and thermal efficiencies, thermal barrier coatings, exhaust waste heat recovery via SuperTurbo™ turbocompounding, and hybrid energy assisting and recovery through both mechanical and electrical systems. Following the concept definition, design, and analysis phases of the program, the final phase focused on building and validating the performance and efficiency in laboratory tests. While aspects of the system such as start/stop and reduced off-road cooling package energy losses were only analytically evaluated, the main 13L concept engine with full hybrid system was successfully built and tested in steady-state and in transient certification and real-world application cycles. Extensive simulations in Caterpillar's DYNASTY™ software environment utilized the validation test data to assess performance more fully and confidently over varied cycles and strategies. An average fuel consumption reduction of 17.9% was realized, and the majority (~13%) of the benefit stemmed from the core concept 13L engine. In conclusion, a total cost of ownership analysis provides context to commercial viability and where adoption focus should be placed.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗

DOE OSTI2025

Report of the 2025 Workshop on Next-Generation Ecosystems for Scientific Computing: Harnessing Community, Software, and AI for Cross-Disciplinary Team Science

This report summarizes insights from the 2025 Workshop on Next-Generation Ecosystems for Scientific Computing: Harnessing Community, Software, and AI for Cross-Disciplinary Team Science, which convened more than 40 experts from national laboratories, academia, industry, and community organizations to chart a path toward more powerful, sustainable, and collaborative scientific software ecosystems. To address urgent challenges at the intersection of high-performance computing (HPC), AI, and scientific software, participants envisioned agile, robust ecosystems built through socio-technical co-design—the intentional integration of social and technical components as interdependent parts of a unified strategy. This approach combines advances in AI, HPC, and software with new models for cross-disciplinary collaboration, training, and workforce development. Key recommendations include building modular, trustworthy AI-enabled scientific software systems; enabling scientific teams to integrate AI systems into their workflows while preserving human creativity, trust, and scientific rigor; and creating innovative training pipelines that keep pace with rapid technological change. Pilot projects were identified as near-term catalysts, with initial priorities focused on hybrid AI/HPC infrastructure, cross-disciplinary collaboration and pedagogy, responsible AI guidelines, and prototyping of public-private partnerships. This report presents a vision of next-generation ecosystems for scientific computing where AI, software, hardware, and human expertise are interwoven to drive discovery, expand access, strengthen the workforce, and accelerate scientific progress.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

DOE OSTI2025

Traffic Control via Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs): An Open-Road Field Experiment with 100 CAVs

The CIRCLES project aims to reduce instabilities in traffic flow, which are naturally occurring phenomena due to human driving behavior. Also called “phantom jams” or “stop-and-go waves,” these instabilities are a significant source of wasted energy. Toward this goal, the CIRCLES project designed a control system, referred to as the MegaController by the CIRCLES team, that could be deployed in real traffic. Our field experiment, the MegaVanderTest (MVT), leveraged a heterogeneous fleet of 100 longitudinally controlled vehicles as Lagrangian traffic actuators, each of which ran a controller with the architecture described in this article. The MegaController is a hierarchical control architecture that consists of two main layers. The upper layer is called the Speed Planner and is a centralized optimal control algorithm. It assigns speed targets to the vehicles, conveyed through the LTE cellular network. The lower layer is a control layer, running on each vehicle. It performs local actuation by overriding the stock adaptive cruise controller, using the stock onboard sensors. The Speed Planner ingests live data feeds provided by third parties as well as data from our own control vehicles and uses both to perform the speed assignment. The architecture of the Speed Planner allows for the modular use of standard control techniques, such as optimal control, model predictive control (MPC), kernel methods, and others. The architecture of the local controller allows for the flexible implementation of local controllers. Corresponding techniques include deep reinforcement learning (RL), MPC, and explicit controllers. Depending on the vehicle architecture, all onboard sensing data can be accessed by the local controllers or only some. Likewise, control inputs vary across different automakers, with inputs ranging from torque or acceleration requests for some cars to electronic selection of adaptive cruise control (ACC) setpoints in others. The proposed architecture technically allows for the combination of all possible settings proposed previously, that is {Speed Planner algorithms} × {local Vehicle Controller algorithms} × {full or partial sensing} × {torque or speed control}. As a result, most configurations were tested throughout the ramp up to the MegaVandertest (MVT).

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗