Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “code modernization”

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.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 271 records · Page 15
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1988

Application of advanced computational technology to propulsion CFD

The Internal Fluid Mechanics Division of the NASA Lewis Research Center is combining the key elements of computational fluid dynamics, aerothermodynamic experiments, and advanced computational technology to bring internal computational fluid dynamics (ICFM) to a state of practical application for aerospace propulsion system design. This paper presents an overview of efforts underway at NASA Lewis to advance and apply computational technology to ICFM. These efforts include the use of modern, software engineering principles for code development, the development of an AI-based user-interface for large codes, the establishment of a high-performance, data communications network to link ICFM researchers and facilities, and the application of parallel processing to speed up computationally intensive and/or time-critical ICFM problems. A multistage compressor flow physics program is cited as an example of efforts to use advanced computational technology to enhance a current NASA Lewis ICFM research program.

Szuch, John R.↗
NASA NTRS1992

A discrete Fourier transform for virtual memory machines

An algebraic theory of the Discrete Fourier Transform is developed in great detail. Examination of the details of the theory leads to a computationally efficient fast Fourier transform for the use on computers with virtual memory. Such an algorithm is of great use on modern desktop machines. A FORTRAN coded version of the algorithm is given for the case when the sequence of numbers to be transformed is a power of two.

Galant, David C.↗
NASA NTRS2010

Analysis of Apex Seal Friction Power Loss in Rotary Engines

An analysis of the frictional losses from the apex seals in a rotary engine was developed. The modeling was initiated with a kinematic analysis of the rotary engine. Next a modern internal combustion engine analysis code was altered for use in a rotary engine to allow the calculation of the internal combustion pressure as a function of rotor rotation. Finally the forces from the spring, inertial, and combustion pressure on the seal were combined to provide the frictional horsepower assessment.

Handschuh, Robert F.↗
NASA NTRS2013

Simulations of the Mid-Pliocene Warm Period Using Two Versions of the NASA-GISS ModelE2-R Coupled Model

The mid-Pliocene Warm Period (mPWP) bears many similarities to aspects of future global warming as projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007). Both marine and terrestrial data point to high-latitude temperature amplification, including large decreases in sea ice and land ice, as well as expansion of warmer climate biomes into higher latitudes. Here we present our most recent simulations of the mid-Pliocene climate using the CMIP5 version of the NASAGISS Earth System Model (ModelE2-R). We describe the substantial impact associated with a recent correction made in the implementation of the Gent-McWilliams ocean mixing scheme (GM), which has a large effect on the simulation of ocean surface temperatures, particularly in the North Atlantic Ocean. The effect of this correction on the Pliocene climate results would not have been easily determined from examining its impact on the preindustrial runs alone, a useful demonstration of how the consequences of code improvements as seen in modern climate control runs do not necessarily portend the impacts in extreme climates.Both the GM-corrected and GM-uncorrected simulations were contributed to the Pliocene Model Intercomparison Project (PlioMIP) Experiment 2. Many findings presented here corroborate results from other PlioMIP multi-model ensemble papers, but we also emphasize features in the ModelE2-R simulations that are unlike the ensemble means. The corrected version yields results that more closely resemble the ocean core data as well as the PRISM3D reconstructions of the mid-Pliocene, especially the dramatic warming in the North Atlantic and Greenland-Iceland-Norwegian Sea, which in the new simulation appears to be far more realistic than previously found with older versions of the GISS model. Our belief is that continued development of key physical routines in the atmospheric model, along with higher resolution and recent corrections to mixing parameterisations in the ocean model, have led to an Earth System Model that will produce more accurate projections of future climate.

climate change↗
DOE OSTI2019

Development of an Automated J-R Curve Analysis Software Based on the ASTM E1820-18 Normalization Method

The J-integral versus crack-growth resistance curve (J-R curve) is a useful tool for evaluating material fracture toughness in the ductile region. A widely accepted practice for conducting J-R curve testing is ASTM standard E1820, which introduces the normalization method. This method does not require compliance measurements during testing, significantly simplifying J-R curve testing compared with the conventional elastic unloading compliance (EUC) method. Despite the advantage in testing, analysis procedures for the normalization method are very complicated. Also, there is no open source software currently available to perform such analysis.The authors developed an open source automated J-R curve-analysis software based on the normalization method in ASTM E1820-18. Source codes were written in MATLAB and the compiled software, in the form of a stand-alone executable, has a user-friendly graphic interface and is readily compatible with modern Windows operating systems. Both source codes and the compiled executable file are available for download at https://code.ornl.gov/xc8/ANJR.git. Comparisons between resulting J-R curves from the software and manual analysis procedures show essentially identical results, indicating the suitability of applying the automated software for J-R curve analysis.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2020

Benchmark of the LAMMPS code on CRESCO and SUMMIT HPC systems

In this work we present the benchmark results of a numerical model where the solid Deuterium grows under gas pressure. The two-phase molecular Deuterium systems (gas + solid) is modeled using classical molecular dynamics approach and the LAMMPS code. The performance between different modern supercomputers are analyzed and compared. In addition, the numerical simulations reach high accuracy to produce results that match with the data collected through laboratory experiments.

Lupo Pasini, Massimiliano↗
DOE OSTI2019

Initial Neutronics and Thermal-Hydraulic Coupling for Spent Nuclear Fuel Canister

This report documents work performed supporting the US Department of Energy (DOE) Nuclear Energy Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition, Spent Fuel and Waste Science and Technology, under work breakdown structure element 1.08.01.03.05, “Direct Disposal of Dual Purpose Canisters.” In particular, this appendix fulfills the M3 milestone, M3SF-19OR010305015, “Multiphysics criticality consequence analysis capability development status report,” as Revision 1 to M3SF-19OR010305016, “Initial neutronic and thermal hydraulic coupling for waste package” within work package SF-19OR01030501, “Direct Disposal of Dual Purpose Canisters–ORNL.” This report presents the initial development status of a multiphysics criticality consequence simulation framework, Terrenus. Terrenus currently couples two physics codes: the Monte Carlo radiation transport code Shift and the thermal-hydraulics code COBRA-SFS. The coupling capability has been demonstrated using a simplified 3 x 3 fuel pin lattice. Terrenus will be developed further to include (1) general geometry package support, allowing modeling of a spent nuclear fuel (SNF) cask with all structural details, (2) a depletion solver to determine the change in nuclide composition at the end of each time step, and (3) a mechanics code to determine any structural impact due to a criticality event. Future research and development works include identifying/developing a modern two-phase thermal-hydraulics code and developing an approach to solve fast neutronic transients. The goal of this multiphysics framework is to determine the feasibility of direct disposal of currently loaded SNF canisters by including or excluding a criticality event from a repository performance analysis framework in terms of consequences. The revision 1 to this report includes extending Terrenus to a 17 x 17 pressurized water reactor (PWR) fuel assembly. We also investigated the phenomena necessary to quench a critical reaction, and investigated the water level necessary to achieve criticality in a typical canister. Finally, we describe the initial implementation of a critical power search capability.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Modified versions of the fuel performance codes RTOP and RTOP-CA

RTOP code predicts thermal and mechanical behavior of LWR fuel rods and release of GFPs both in normal stationary and transient operation modes, and transient power ramps, specific to the reactivity-initiated accidents (RIA). Computational domains of the code include fuel column, zirconium cladding, gas under cladding, and fuel microstructure - UO{sub 2} grain and the development of gaseous porosity of different origin during irradiation. RTOP-CA code is based on the RTOP code. It simulates the behavior of a fuel rod with cladding rupture opening and RFPs release into the primary coolant circuit in normal operation modes. The paper presents the results of development and validation of engineering models, which take into account characteristics of the neutron spectrum during the fuel cycle and are integrated into modernized versions of the fuel performance codes RTOP and RTOP-CA. The paper focuses on the detailed description of two models. Four-group neutron-physical engineering model describes burn-out of gadolinium isotopes and calculates spatial power profile in a Gd-doped fuel rod pellet. The second engineering model presented is developed for fast estimation of fuel burnup in case of fuel rod cladding leakage accident. The comparison of the present calculations with the results of calculations by neutron codes shows that the model describes the heat rate distribution and the gadolinium burn-out with sufficient accuracy. The code also calculates the LHR of Gd-doped fuel rods given the heat rate of the adjacent UO{sub 2} fuel rods. This work allows determining the histories of LHR for the Gd-doped fuel rod from the average LHR of FA for various equilibrium WWER fuel cycles, power units and fuel enrichments. The presented model is implemented in the RTOP fuel performance code to calculate the thermomechanical behavior of the fuel rods. An engineering-physical model is developed for fast estimation of {sup 134}Cs/{sup 137}Cs activity ratio in fuel taking into account the parameters of the neutron spectrum during the fuel cycle. Implementation of the model enables to increase the reliability of correct fuel burnup determination in a failed fuel assembly (FA)based on the FERDS activity measurements during reactor operation. Results of the model calculations obtained for the FAs with a higher fuel enrichment and the NPP activity measurements have shown a higher {sup 134}Cs/{sup 137}Cs activity ratio compared to the values for the fuel with enrichment up to 3.6 wt. % in {sup 235}U. Currently, the engineering model is applicable within the range of UO{sub 2} enrichment from 3 to 5 wt. % in {sup 235}U, and Gd{sub 2}O{sub 3} enrichment from 5 to 8 wt. %.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Species Transport Framework Development in SAM for System-Level Tritium Source Term Analysis

The SAM code is under development as a modern system-level modeling and simulation tool for advanced non–light water reactor safety analyses, with recent efforts to add capabilities to evaluate radiological source term risks in these novel reactor concepts. By leveraging the established system-level multiphysics thermal-hydraulic models in SAM, a framework for tightly coupled species transport modeling has been integrated into the code for engineering-scale source term evaluation. This species transport framework was first applied to the simulation of tritium, which is a well-known source term in conventional light water reactors. Tritium poses a unique risk in salt-cooled reactors, especially those with lithium-bearing salts such as the fluoride salt–cooled high-temperature reactor (FHR) concept, as tritium is generated in the salt coolant in significant quantities due to neutron interactions. A compounding factor is the increased mobility of tritium at high temperatures, which is able to permeate through metals while also potentially being retained in graphite pebbles and structures. Engineering-scale models for the tritium transport pathways in a FHR have been developed using the new species transport framework in SAM. The capabilities are assessed through analytical verification problems and validated with data from a graphite retention experiment. In conclusion, the system-level model is demonstrated by performing an initial estimate of baseline tritium generation and flows in a generic reference SAM FHR model, setting a foundation for future studies of source term transient analysis with the potential for further multiscale and multiphysics integration.

SAM↗
DOE OSTI2020

Electron transport in gaseous detectors with a Python-based Monte Carlo simulation code

Understanding electron drift and diffusion in gases and gas mixtures is a topic of central importance for the development of modern particle detection instrumentation. The industry-standard MagBoltz code has become an invaluable tool during its 20 years of development, providing capability to solve for electron transport (‘swarm’) properties based on a growing encyclopedia of built-in collision cross sections. We have made a refactorization of this code from FORTRAN into Cython, and studied a range of gas mixtures of interest in high energy and nuclear physics. The results from the new open source PyBoltz package match the outputs from the original MagBoltz code, with comparable simulation speed. An extension to the capabilities of the original code is demonstrated, in implementation of a new Modified Effective Range Theory interface. We hope that the versatility afforded by the new Python code-base will encourage continued use and development of the MagBoltz tools by the particle physics community.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2019

Reconstruction for Liquid Argon TPC Neutrino Detectors Using Parallel Architectures [Slides]

Neutrinos are particles that interact rarely, so identifying them requires large detectors which produce lots of data. Processing this data with the computing power available is becoming more difficult as the detectors increase in size to reach their physics goals. In liquid argon time projection chambers (TPCs) the charged particles from neutrino interactions produce ionization electrons which drift in an electric field towards a series of collection wires, and the signal on the wires is used to reconstruct the interaction. The MicroBooNE detector currently collecting data at Fermilab has 8000 wires, and planned future experiments like DUNE will have 100 times more, which means that the time required to reconstruct an event will scale accordingly. Modernization of liquid argon TPC reconstruction code, including vectorization, parallelization and code portability to GPUs, will help to mitigate these challenges. The liquid argon TPC hit finding algorithm within the L arSoft framework used across multiple experiments has been vectorized and parallelized. This increases the speed of the algorithm on the order of ten times within a stand alone version on Intel architectures. This new version has been incorporated back into LarSoft so that it can be generally used. These methods will also be applied to other low level reconstruction of the wire signals such as the deconvolution. The applications and performance of this modernized liquid argon TPC wire reconstruction will be presented.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
NASA NTRS2014

Development of an Object-Oriented Turbomachinery Analysis Code within the NPSS Framework

During the preliminary or conceptual design phase of an aircraft engine, the turbomachinery designer has a need to estimate the effects of a large number of design parameters such as flow size, stage count, blade count, radial position, etc. on the weight and efficiency of a turbomachine. Computer codes are invariably used to perform this task however, such codes are often very old, written in outdated languages with arcane input files, and rarely adaptable to new architectures or unconventional layouts. Given the need to perform these kinds of preliminary design trades, a modern 2-D turbomachinery design and analysis code has been written using the Numerical Propulsion System Simulation (NPSS) framework. This paper discusses the development of the governing equations and the structure of the primary objects used in OTAC.

Jones, Scott M.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Aeroelastic Stability of Modern Bearingless Rotors: A Parametric Investigation

The University of Maryland Advanced Rotorcraft Code (UMARC) is utilized to study the effects of blade design parameters on the aeroelastic stability of an isolated modern bearingless rotor blade in hover. The McDonnell Douglas Advanced Rotor Technology (MDART) Rotor is the baseline rotor investigated. Results indicate that kinematic pitch-lag coupling introduced through the control system geometry and the damping levels of the shear lag dampers strongly affect the hover inplane damping of the baseline rotor blade. Hub precone, pitchcase chordwise stiffness, and blade fundamental torsion frequency have small to moderate influence on the inplane damping, while blade pre-twist and placements of blade fundamental flapwise and chord-wise frequencies have negligible effects. A damperless configuration with a leading edge pitch-link, 15 deg of pitch-link cant angle, and reduced pitch-link stiffness is shown to be stable with an inplane damping level in excess of 2.7 percent critical at the full hover tip speed.

Nguyen, Khanh Q.↗
DOE OSTI2016

Updating a PWR Simulator in Python

A nuclear reactor is a complicated system that is comprised of many systems and components. In order to fully model a reactor, several approximations and correlations must be used for a real-time simulation. In 1984 as part of a doctoral dissertation at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a FORTRAN 77 program was developed to simulate a four-loop, Westinghouse pressurized water reactor (PWR). The program was later called PRISM and extended to include a comprehensive set of features accessible in a DOS-based user interface. This present work seeks to update the original PRISM program for cross platform deployment using the Python language. The goal of this present work is to update and improve a teaching tool for both students and reactor operators. Originally, PRISM was created as part of a PhD project in FORTRAN 77, but the code no longer works readily on modern operating systems. Python was chosen to rewrite the program because of the ease of use of the Python modules including Kivy as well as the portability of the program to various operating systems. This project aims to develop desktop and mobile versions of the software, allowing the user flexibility in choice of platform. This simulator is scheduled to be deployed in time for a live demonstration at the 2016 Annual ANS meeting. The project aims to produce a reactor simulator that will showcase the dynamics of a PWR system in real-time under various conditions. Some potential scenarios include startup conditions, scram operations, or failure conditions such as a break in a coolant leg. The user will be able to induce various failure scenarios and the program will simulate how the reactor will behave. The simulation will include a suite of monitoring functions that will allow automatic systems to attempt to adapt to the changing conditions, e.g., control rod movement. This program will provide an educational resource for anyone learning about nuclear reactor kinetics or dynamics of a reactor system. (authors)

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Modern Monte Carlo methods for efficient uncertainty quantification and propagation: A survey

Uncertainty quantification (UQ) includes the characterization, integration, and propagation of uncertainties that result from stochastic variations and a lack of knowledge or data in the natural world. Monte Carlo (MC) method is a sampling-based approach that has widely used for quantification and propagation of uncertainties. However, the standard MC method is often time-consuming if the simulation-based model is computationally intensive. This article gives an overview of modern MC methods to address the existing challenges of the standard MC in the context of UQ. Specifically, multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) extending the concept of control variates achieves a significant reduction of the computational cost by performing most evaluations with low accuracy and corresponding low cost, and relatively few evaluations at high accuracy and corresponding high cost. Multifidelity Monte Carlo (MFMC) accelerates the convergence of standard Monte Carlo by generalizing the control variates with different models having varying fidelities and varying computational costs. Multimodel Monte Carlo method (MMMC), having a different setting of MLMC and MFMC, aims to address the issue of UQ and propagation when data for characterizing probability distributions are limited. Multimodel inference combined with importance sampling is proposed for quantifying and efficiently propagating the uncertainties resulting from small data sets. All of these three modern MC methods achieve a significant improvement of computational efficiency for probabilistic UQ, particularly uncertainty propagation. Finally, an algorithm summary and the corresponding code implementation are provided for each of the modern MC methods. The extension and application of these methods are discussed in detail.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2017

A General Sparse Tensor Framework for Electronic Structure Theory

Linear-scaling algorithms must be developed in order to extend the domain of applicability of electronic structure theory to molecules of any desired size. But, the increasing complexity of modern linear-scaling methods makes code development and maintenance a significant challenge. A major contributor to this difficulty is the lack of robust software abstractions for handling block-sparse tensor operations. We therefore report the development of a highly efficient symbolic block-sparse tensor library in order to provide access to high-level software constructs to treat such problems. Our implementation supports arbitrary multi-dimensional sparsity in all input and output tensors. We then avoid cumbersome machine-generated code by implementing all functionality as a high-level symbolic C++ language library and demonstrate that our implementation attains very high performance for linear-scaling sparse tensor contractions.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2025

Applications of the modified Hulthén-Kohn method for bound and scattering states

We adapt the Hulthén–Kohn method suggested by Efros [Phys. Rev. C 99, 034620 (2019)] for calculating various observables in the continuum and discrete spectrum using two-body interactions in single- and coupled channel systems. We explore the convergence of phase shifts and wave functions as well as the location of S-matrix poles which enables obtaining both resonance and bound state parameters. We find that employing a harmonic oscillator basis, together with an interaction smoothing scheme introduced by Gyarmati et al. [Nucl. Phys. A 326, 119 (1979)], and adopting approximate bound-state solutions for the short-range components of basis wave functions lead to good convergence even with restricted oscillator quanta accessible for modern no-core shell model codes. The adapted Efros method will facilitate ab initio many-body nuclear structure applications.

Nuclear reactions↗