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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 271 records · Page 15
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2022

Rotating Disk Electrode Standardization and Best Practices in Acidic Oxygen Evolution for Low-Temperature Electrolysis

Efforts in oxygen evolution catalyst development have significantly increased and often use rotating disk electrode half-cells to evaluate intrinsic kinetics and screen materials for short-term durability. Standardizing rotating disk electrode test protocols is critical to experimental accuracy, to realistically assess their potential impact at a device level and to assess how different catalyst approaches and concepts are prioritized. The goal of this study is to provide standardized test protocols and suggest best practices to help reduce variability in ex situ materials characterization in the broader community. Specifically, these protocols focus on test cleanliness and materials choices, including how electrodes are prepared and tested, and the impact on activity observations.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2024

Submerged Fatigue Testing of Marine Energy Advanced Materials

Marine energy structures are typically made of advanced composite materials and are subjected to extreme ocean environments in service. In extreme ocean environments, seawater currents and waves load structures repeatedly, which cause two environmental conditions: water intrusion and mechanical fatigue. In prior research, the two environmental conditions were applied sequentially, where composite specimens were aged and then mechanically tested. To understand the combined effects of dynamic loading and water intrusion on composite materials, the present study involves the static and fatigue four-point bend testing of composite coupons in a water tank. The water tank was designed and built to fit either a 100 kN or a 250 kN load frame. Flexural strength value, cycles to failure, and failure mode results from submerged fatigue testing will be used to inform marine energy structure designs. The coupon-scale test method will be used to scale up to and inform methods for subsequent subcomponent testing and standards development. The benefits of designing marine energy structures to informed standards are decreased lifetime costs and increased reliability and energy production, ultimately leading to a sustainable and low-carbon energy system.

composite materials↗
DOE OSTI2023

Review—Effects of Solution and Alloy Composition on Critical Crevice Temperature

Critical temperature for localized corrosion can be a good design parameter because localized corrosion is not likely to occur below that temperature. The critical temperature depends on alloy composition, microstructure, and environment chemistry (including its redox potential). This paper reviews the literature on critical temperature for localized corrosion, expressed either as Critical Pitting Temperature (CPT) or Critical Crevice Temperature (CCT). A history of various testing methods is presented. Different approaches for modeling the temperature of transition to active pit growth are reviewed, including probabilistic aspects of critical temperature. A semi-empirical, electrolyte-based, model is described that can be useful in predicting CCT in service environments that differ from standard laboratory test environments. The model predictions are compared to experimental data for various alloys. The effect of solvent on CCT/CPT is described briefly and future avenues of research are recommended.

02 PETROLEUM↗
DOE OSTI2024

ATLAS-MAP: An Automated Test Station for Gated Electronic Transport Measurements

The diversification of electronic materials in devices provides a strong incentive for methods to rapidly correlate device performance with fabrication decisions. In this work, we present a low-cost automated test station for gated electronic transport measurements of field-effect transistors. Utilizing open-source PyMeasure libraries for transparent instrument control, the “ATLAS-MAP” system serves as a customizable interface between sourcemeters and samples under test and is programmed to conduct transfer curve and van der Pauw methods with static and sweeping gate voltages. Zinc oxide transistors of variable thickness (5, 10, and 20 nm) and channel size (50 μm to 3 mm, of equal length and width) were fabricated to validate the design. Standardization of testing procedures and raw data formatting enabled automated data analysis. A detailed list of parts and code files for the system are provided.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Effects of Strain Gauge Coatings on Water Intrusion in Submerged Composite Coupon Testing

Marine energy structures are typically made using composite materials and are repeatedly loaded by currents and waves. Submersion and repeated loading lead to two environmental effects: moisture intrusion and mechanical fatigue. To understand their combined effects, submerged fatigue testing can be used. Submerged fatigue testing often requires submerged instrumentation to validate component manufacturing methods and models. Strain measurements are critical for understanding marine energy component loads. One common method for measuring strain is by using foil strain gauges, but the durability of strain gauges in submerged fatigue conditions is not well-understood. To increase strain gauge durability and protection from contamination, delamination, and water intrusion, strain gauge coatings may be applied over strain gauges and wire connections. In this study, strain gauges were adhered to composite coupons, coated, and mechanically tested in a water tank. Cycles to composite failure, cycles to strain gauge failure (SGF), strains, and SGF modes were used to measure the effects of strain gauge coatings on composite fatigue life and strain gauge durability. The coatings did not have significant effects on composite fatigue life or strain gauge durability. The methods developed and measurements taken at the coupon scale in this study will be used to inform methods and designs for subsequent submerged subcomponent testing, full-scale testing, and standards development. The benefits of designing marine energy structures to informed standards and designs are decreased lifetime costs and increased reliability and energy production, ultimately leading to a sustainable and low-carbon energy system.

composite materials↗
DOE OSTI2024

Effects of Coatings on Water Intrusion and Strain Gauge Durability in Submerged Fatigue Conditions: Preprint

Marine energy structures are typically made using composite materials and are repeatedly loaded by currents and waves. Submersion and repeated loading lead to two environmental effects: moisture intrusion and mechanical fatigue. To understand the combined effects of moisture intrusion and mechanical fatigue on marine energy structures, submerged fatigue testing can be used. Submerged fatigue testing often requires submerged instrumentation to validate component manufacturing methods and models. Measuring strain is critical for understanding marine energy component loads. One common method for measuring strain is by using foil strain gauges, but the durability of strain gauges in submerged fatigue conditions was not well-understood. To increase strain gauge durability and protection from contamination, delamination, and water intrusion, strain gauge coatings may be applied over strain gauges and wire connections. In this study, strain gauges were adhered to composite coupons, coated, and mechanically tested in a water tank. Cycles to composite failure, cycles to strain gauge failure, strains, and strain gauge failure modes were used to measure the effects of strain gauge coatings on composite fatigue life and strain gauge durability. The methods developed and measurements taken at the coupon scale in this study will be used to inform methods and designs for subsequent submerged subcomponent testing, full-scale testing, and standards development. The benefits of designing marine energy structures to informed standards and designs are decreased lifetime costs and increased reliability and energy production, ultimately leading to a sustainable and low-carbon energy system.

composite fatigue testing↗
DOE OSTI2026

Ultra-pure nickel for structural components of low-radioactivity instruments

The next generation of nuclear and particle physics rare-event search experiments demand structural materials combining ultra-low levels of radioactive contamination with exceptional mechanical strength. Here, this study evaluates chemical vapor deposition (CVD) nickel as a low radioactive background candidate structural material for such applications. Manufacturer-supplied CVD Ni grown on aluminum substrates was assayed via inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) employing isotope-dilution. These material assays produced measured bulk concentration of 232 Th, 238 U, and nat K at the levels of ~70 ppq, ≲100 ppq, and ~900 ppt, respectively, which is the lowest reported in nickel. Surface-etch profiling uncovered higher concentrations of these contaminants extending ~10 μ m beneath the surface, likely associated with the aluminum growth substrate. Additionally, the CVD Ni underwent tensile testing alongside standard Ni samples. CVD Ni exhibited a planar tensile strength of ~600 MPa, significantly surpassing standard nickel. However, heat treatment was found to reduce the tensile strength to levels comparable to standard Ni, with implications for high-temperature weld joining methods. The results reported are compared to the one other well documented usage of CVD Ni in a low radioactive background physics research experiment and a discussion is provided on how the currently reported results may arise from changes in CVD fabrication or testing process. These results establish CVD Ni as a promising low-radioactivity structural material, while outlining the need for further development in surface cleaning and weld-joining techniques to fully realize its potential in large-scale, low radioactive background rare-event search experiments.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2023

Snowmass white paper: beyond the standard model effects on neutrino flavor

Neutrinos are one of the most promising messengers for signals of new physics Beyond the Standard Model (BSM). On the theoretical side, their elusive nature, combined with their unknown mass mechanism, seems to indicate that the neutrino sector is indeed opening a window to new physics. On the experimental side, several long-standing anomalies have been reported in the past decades, providing a strong motivation to thoroughly test the standard three-neutrino oscillation paradigm. In this Snowmass21 white paper, we explore the potential of current and future neutrino experiments to explore BSM effects on neutrino flavor during the next decade.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2022

m-CUBES An efficient and portable implementation of multi-dimensional integration for gpus

The task of multi-dimensional numerical integration is frequently encountered in physics and other scientific fields, e.g., in modeling the effects of systematic uncertainties in physical systems and in Bayesian parameter estimation. Multi-dimensional integration is often time-prohibitive on CPUs. Efficient implementation on many-core architectures is challenging as the workload across the integration space cannot be predicted a priori. We propose m-Cubes, a novel implementation of the well-known Vegas algorithm for execution on GPUs. Vegas transforms integration variables followed by calculation of a Monte Carlo integral estimate using adaptive partitioning of the resulting space. m-Cubes improves performance on GPUs by maintaining relatively uniform workload across the processors. As a result, our optimized Cuda implementation for Nvidia GPUs outperforms parallelization approaches proposed in past literature. We further demonstrate the efficiency of m-Cubes by evaluating a six-dimensional integral from a cosmology application, achieving significant speedup and greater precision than the CUBA library's CPU implementation of VEGAS. We also evaluate m-Cubes on a standard integrand test suite. m-Cubes outperforms the serial implementations of the Cuba and GSL libraries by orders of magnitude speedup while maintaining comparable accuracy. Our approach yields a speedup of at least 10 when compared against publicly available Monte Carlo based GPU implementations. In summary, m-Cubes can solve integrals that are prohibitively expensive using standard libraries and custom implementations. A modern C++ interface header-only implementation makes m-Cubes portable, allowing its utilization in complicated pipelines with easy to define stateful integrals. Compatibility with non-Nvidia GPUs is achieved with our initial implementation of m-Cubes using the Kokkos framework.

Sakiotis, Ioannis↗
DOE OSTI2024

Submerged Fatigue Testing of Marine Energy Advanced Materials: Preprint

Marine energy structures are typically made of advanced composite materials and are subjected to extreme ocean environments in service. In extreme ocean environments, seawater currents and waves load structures repeatedly, which cause two environmental conditions: water intrusion and mechanical fatigue. In prior research, the two environmental conditions were applied sequentially, where composite specimens were aged and then mechanically tested. To understand the combined effects of dynamic loading and water intrusion on composite materials, the present study involves the static and fatigue four-point bend testing of composite coupons in a water tank. The water tank was designed and built to fit either a 100 kN or a 250 kN load frame. Flexural strength value, cycles to failure, and failure mode results from submerged fatigue testing will be used to inform marine energy structure designs. The coupon-scale test method will be used to scale up to and inform methods for subsequent subcomponent testing and standards development. The benefits of designing marine energy structures to informed standards are decreased lifetime costs and increased reliability and energy production, ultimately leading to a sustainable and low-carbon energy system.

composite materials↗
DOE OSTI2024

Submerged Fatigue Testing of Marine Energy Advanced Materials

Marine energy structures are typically made of advanced composite materials and are subjected to extreme ocean environments in service. In extreme ocean environments, seawater currents and waves load structures repeatedly, which cause two environmental conditions: water intrusion and mechanical fatigue. In prior research, the two environmental conditions were applied sequentially, where composite specimens were aged and then mechanically tested. To understand the combined effects of dynamic loading and water intrusion on composite materials, the present study involves the static and fatigue four-point bend testing of composite coupons in a water tank. The water tank was designed and built to fit either a 100 kN or a 250 kN load frame. Flexural strength value, cycles to failure, and failure mode results from submerged fatigue testing will be used to inform marine energy structure designs. The coupon-scale test method will be used to scale up to and inform methods for subsequent subcomponent testing and standards development. The benefits of designing marine energy structures to informed standards are decreased lifetime costs and increased reliability and energy production, ultimately leading to a sustainable and low-carbon energy system.

composite materials↗
DOE OSTI2024

Submerged Fatigue Testing of Marine Energy Advanced Materials

Marine energy structures are typically made of advanced composite materials and are subjected to extreme ocean environments in service. In extreme ocean environments, seawater currents and waves load structures repeatedly, which cause two environmental conditions: water intrusion and mechanical fatigue. In prior research, the two environmental conditions were applied sequentially, where composite specimens were aged and then mechanically tested. To understand the combined effects of dynamic loading and water intrusion on composite materials, the present study involves the static and fatigue four-point bend testing of composite coupons in a water tank. The water tank was designed and built to fit either a 100 kN or a 250 kN load frame. Flexural strength value, cycles to failure, and failure mode results from submerged fatigue testing will be used to inform marine energy structure designs. The coupon-scale test method will be used to scale up to and inform methods for subsequent subcomponent testing and standards development. Finally, the benefits of designing marine energy structures to informed standards are decreased lifetime costs and increased reliability and energy production, ultimately leading to a sustainable and low-carbon energy system.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2026

ZTF-SEDm Type Ia supernova sample for Twins Embedding spectrophotometric standardization

Aims. This paper has two aims: the first aim is to build a large homogeneous spectrophotometric sample of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) from the second data release of the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF DR2). We used the spectrum sample from the low-resolution ( R ∼ 100) SEDmachine (SEDm) Integral Field Spectrograph (IFS) that gathered 3069 spectra. This is one of the largest samples of such collections that can attempt to reproduce the Twins Embedding (TE) spectrophotometric standardization method. This is our second objective. The method was developed based on high-quality spectra from 200 SNe Ia of the Nearby Supernova factory (SNfactory) and led to an exceptionally low value of 0.073 mag for the intrinsic scatter. Methods. As the SEDm is not designed as a spectrophotometric instrument, we first improved the flux-calibration accuracy of the SN Ia spectrum sample using the ZTF photometric data, which were calibrated at the percent level. We corrected the spectra for second-order polynomials, fitted by comparing the synthetic photometry in the ZTF g , r , i filters with the light-curve (LC) data. We then applied the three steps of the TE parameterization to a subset of 783 ZTF SN spectra near maximum light while comparing results from SNfactory and ZTF. We finally analyzed the standardization methods based on the TE parameters. Results. The precision of the phase-correction model, which is the first step of the TE, is estimated at 0.01 mag in g band based on ZTF data. Despite the challenge posed by the spectrum-extraction pipeline associated with the SEDm (flux calibration, leftover host signal, low signal-to-noise ratio, and low resolution), we applied a first standardization in color based on the second step of the TE, called read between the lines (RBTL), to the ZTF sample. We reached a Hubble residual scatter of 0.153 mag, all in normalized median absolute deviation, which is to be compared to the ∼0.11 mag obtained with the SNfactory data. The SALT color and stretch standardization reaches a scatter of 0.164 mag for the same ZTF SN Ia sample, and its host steps are ∼0.1 mag and zero for RBTL. When considering the scatter due to the redshift error and flux calibration error, we estimated a RBTL scatter of ∼0.129 mag for this ZTF sample as an upper limit because we identified an additional contribution from a systematic error in color. We tested the standardization based on the nonlinear TE parameters, and, as expected from the low spectrum quality, it did not improve the overall dispersion. Conclusions. We release 1897 flux calibrated spectra of 1607 SNe Ia with an estimated photometric accuracy of 0.07 mag. We further demonstrate that some amount of spectrophotometric SN Ia standardization can be done with limited-quality spectra. The RBTL standardization is more efficient than that of SALT with one parameter less, and the resulting host steps are consistent with zero. This makes it less prone to astrophysical bias. For future spectroscopic surveys, targeting the extraction pipeline for a thorough flux calibration and good signal-to-noise ratio would enable us to compute the full TE standardization, which would further reduce the scatter in the distance estimate.

Ganot, C↗
DOE OSTI2024

Warm Unit Stand Assembly and Testing for Proton Improvement Plan - II

The Proton Improvement Project II (PIP II), situated at Fermilab, signifies a critical advancement in the realm of high-energy physics. PIP II, a linear accelerator renovation endeavor, aspires to double the output of the existing proton beam, reinforcing Fermilab’ s position as a vanguard in this field. The proton beam's creation involves a series of high-frequency cryomodules, necessitating environmental temperature arrays of magnets and vacuum pumps henceforth described as ‘Warm Units.’ The Warm Units include design features of : 1. insertion between the cryomodules, 2. multi-stage adjustments in six degrees of freedom to ensure precise beam alignment; 3. Natural frequency modes that avoid specified ranges. In adherence to Fermilab’ s stringent safety standards, comprehensive testing procedures are slated to validate the Warm Units' capacity to simultaneously achieve local alignment adjustments while averting low-frequency oscillation less than 15 Hertz. The testing regimen will scrutinize the Warm Units' alignment adjustment capabilities and their resilience against low-frequency oscillations, with an overarching objective of satisfying the Final Design Review criteria specific to the PIP II initiative. This project works to furnish technicians responsible for the assembly of Warm Units with a comprehensive guide for successful installation, concurrently documenting any requisite design modifications essential for achieving a real-world configuration.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Transactive Energy Communications Interface Standards Landscape

Transactive energy represents distributed, optimal-seeking coordination approaches for managing the operation of large numbers of energy-related devices and systems. The concept assumes intelligent agents interact with other agents on behalf of their owners to balance the supply and demand of energy and coordinate other operation services in an electric system. They do this by exchanging value signals for services in near-term and forward time periods using market mechanisms. The technique is particularly applied to coordination of flexibility in operating distributed energy resources. The integration of large numbers of devices requires that they be able to connect and interoperate easily and reliably. Given the many technologies and solution providers integrating products, communications interfaces based on clear, unambiguous specifications with supporting tests require standardization and adoption by the community of system integrators. This report reviews the state of communications interface standards that show promise for transactive energy approaches to the coordination of distributed energy resources. It reviews promising standards to highlight challenges and gaps. It offers structured comparisons between standards and the features offered by their ecosystems of participants.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2025

Quantum entropy as a harbinger of factorizability

Deeply inelastic scattering (DIS) is a powerful probe for investigating the QCD structure of hadronic matter and testing the standard model (SM). DIS can be described through QCD factorization theorems which separate contributions to the scattering interaction arising from disparate scales — e.g ., with nonperturbative matrix elements associated with long distances and a perturbative hard scattering kernel applying to short-distance parton-level interactions. The fundamental underpinnings of factorization may be recast in the quantum-theoretic terms of entanglement, (de)coherence, and system localization in a fashion which sheds complementary light on the dynamics at work in DIS from QCD bound states. In this Letter, we propose and quantitatively test such a quantum-information theoretic approach for dissecting factorization in DIS and its domain of validity; we employ metrics associated with quantum entanglement such as a differential quantum entropy and associated Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergences in numerical tests. We deploy these methods on an archetypal quark-spectator model of the proton, for which we monitor quantum decoherence in DIS as underlying model parameters are varied. On this basis, we demonstrate quantitatively how factorization-breaking effects may be imprinted on quantum entropies in a kinematic regime where leading-twist factorization increasingly receives large corrections from finite- Q 2 effects; our findings suggest potential applications of quantum simulation to QCD systems and their interactions.

Deep inelastic scattering↗
DOE OSTI2020

Conversion, Stability, and Selectivity Improvements Through Catalyst Development for the Reductive Etherification Reaction

Economical pathways from lignocellulosic non-food biomass feedstocks to biofuels with appropriate fuel properties are necessary for displacing fossil-fuel derived diesel use in medium-/heavy duty vehicles. Oxygenated compounds have recently shown promise due to low sooting tendencies and autoignition properties and molecules with sufficiently high carbon numbers can meet the requisite standards for water solubility and flash point. Coupling waste biomass derived small molecules into bioblendstock targets through the reductive etherification reaction shows potential for increasing molecular weight without losing the advantages of oxygenates. However, the transition to industrial viability for this process is limited by strong catalyst deactivation in typical flow reactor systems. Strong acid resins such as Amberlyst-15 (A-15) show excellent activity in batch reactions but are limited to low temperatures and are poisoned by the side-product, water. In this talk, I will describe our recent work in catalyst synthesis and testing to select superior options with improved aqueous and thermal stability in reductive etherification flow reactions. Water-tolerant solid acid catalysts have potential to improve the conversion and selectivity to the ether target at temperatures above the degradation point of A-15. Analysis techniques such as physisorption, chemisorption, x-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy are being used to characterize the active sites. These techniques are also being used to evaluate degradation of the catalyst after extensive flow reactions in addition to comparative efficiency testing with standardized cyclohexene hydrogenation reactions. Finally, I will discuss a demonstration of the full pathway from bio-derived butyric acid to the performance-advantaged ether product and the additional obstacles from side-products and purification limitations in the preliminary upgrading reactions.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗