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At least 289 records · Page 16

Materials and Fuels Complex Operations Management Improvement Strategy for Fiscal Year 2023

The Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) has experienced substantial growth in terms of staff, research, and production in recent years. MFC operational performance has effectively kept pace with this growth. However, to capture the continuous improvement actions needed to improve effectiveness and increase the efficiency of our management systems, a broad operations management strategy is necessary. The MFC Operations Management Improvement (OMI) Strategy is complementary to the MFC Five-Year Mission and Investment Strategies and the MFC Management Plan. The OMI strategy is structured to address the management systems outlined in the Nuclear Facility Management Standard Operations Model. Selected management systems are evaluated independently in chapters that describe the prior 5 years of performance improvement, a description of improvement actions for the MFC staff that directly perform within or contribute to the management system, process improvements, and any needed equipment improvements. Chapter selection is based on a management system’s need for improvement. In some cases, management systems may be combined in a single chapter. Additional chapters are added to address subject areas not formally described in the standard operations model.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Euclid I. Overview of the Euclid mission

The current standard model of cosmology successfully describes a variety of measurements, but the nature of its main ingredients, dark matter and dark energy, remains unknown. Euclid is a medium-class mission in the Cosmic Vision 2015–2025 programme of the European Space Agency (ESA) that will provide high-resolution optical imaging, as well as near-infrared imaging and spectroscopy, over about 14 000 deg 2 of extragalactic sky. In addition to accurate weak lensing and clustering measurements that probe structure formation over half of the age of the Universe, its primary probes for cosmology, these exquisite data will enable a wide range of science. This paper provides a high-level overview of the mission, summarising the survey characteristics, the various data-processing steps, and data products. We also highlight the main science objectives and expected performance.

cosmology↗

NSUF Melt Wire Evaluations for BSU 8242 and GE Hitachi-10393 Irradiation Experiments

The Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF) is the United States Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy's only designated nuclear energy user facility. Its mission is to provide nuclear energy researchers access to world-class capabilities and to facilitate the advancement of nuclear science and technology. This mission is supported by providing access to state-of-the-art experimental irradiation testing, post-irradiation examination facilities, and high-performance computing capabilities as well as technical and scientific assistance for the design and execution of projects. Two NSUF irradiation experiments, Boise State University-8242 and General Electric Hitachi, used melt wire packs to determine peak temperatures reached during irradiation testing. This report will discuss the temperature evaluation process and present the associated data.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Physical Sciences Vistas (Issue 3 2020)

In this issue, highlights of our outstanding R&D supporting the Laboratory’s nuclear security mission include the following. 1. The essential nuclear materials science contributions of MST’s Materials Properties Team to a range of Lab missions, operations, and initiatives. 2. Work in the Sigma Complex supporting NNSA’s Advanced Manufacturing Development milestones by members of Sigma Division and colleagues across the Laboratory and other NNSA sites. 3. Greg Dale’s role in the Lab’s molybdenum program and today as a technical lead on the Scorpius project. 4. Measurements that reveal the role thermal interfaces play in dynamic compression experiments. 5. The first-ever synthesis of an actinide framework, which offers opportunities for understanding these structures as potential radioactive waste forms and provides new models of actinide species transport in the environment. This issue also showcases, as part of our commitment to simultaneous excellence in mission operations and community relations, the successful high-hazard repair of the LANSCE accelerator, which resulted in a large team Laboratory Distinguished Performance Award, and a virtual Summer Physics Camp for Young Women that brought together participants from around the world, even as COVID kept them socially distant in their homes.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Autonomous System Subversion Tactics: Prototypes and Recommended Countermeasures

One of the fielding requirements for Advanced and Small Modular Reactors (AR/SMR) is the ability to support remote and autonomous operations. Autonomous Control Systems (ACS) are found on platforms such as Autonomous Space Vehicles, Cruise Missiles, and advanced driver-assistance systems. Each of these ACS implementations depends upon a set of decision support subsystems responsible for supporting Autonomous Mission Managers (names vary based upon field and author preferences). These Autonomous Mission Managers receive inputs from system sensors (e.g., LIDAR collection from an automobile travelling down a street; transients from a nuclear reactor), and perform a set of classifications (e.g., Red Traffic Light; Small Pedestrian at 10m; Load Rejection; Single Coolant Pump Trip), and then use these classifications in combination with recommendation algorithms to achieve platform goals (e.g., Stop the Vehicle at the Traffic Light, Avoid the Small Pedestrian; Trip the Reactor to prevent a Safety Event). The design, implementation, and fielding of an ACS capability will alter the cyber-attack surface such that existing risk management plans will need to be updated to include how to protect and defend against data-science and decision-support-system attack classes. These attack classes would include protection of the design and training environments where algorithm selection and testing and training data would be obvious attack vectors. These attack classes would also require an informed set of detection and response procedures to identify anomalous behaviors and document best practices for anomaly assessment and vulnerability mitigation and remediation. Last year we published a Cyber Threat Assessment Methodology for Autonomous and Remote Operations for AR/SMRs along with a companion publication on Cyber Attack and Defense Use Cases. The focus of the methodology was on describing and enumerating ACS processes, components, and functions such that security engineers could: evaluate subversion options against the target; identify threat actor attributes and capabilities derived from each subversion option; and identify security controls and response countermeasures. The Use Cases document offered detailed methodology examples including an assessment of a Military Base SMR, an Autonomous System Decision Loop, and implementation of AR/SMR Machine Learning algorithms. Our proposal at the end of last year was to focus on implementation of subversion prototypes related to the last Use Case area: AR/SMR Machine Learning (ML) Algorithms. We included six attack scenarios in our Use Cases paper: a Poisoning Attack against ML functions implemented using an FPGA; a Trojaning Attack against ML classifiers exploiting the excitability of Nuclear Engineers; a Backdooring Attack against ML Training environments to ensure persistence of an attack vector; a False Positive Evasion Attack against multi-factor Access Control Systems using clever inputs; an Inference Attack against ML models by an Insider with access to the Operational environment; and an Adversarial Reprogramming Attack against a Material Access Control Video Surveillance System. At the beginning of this year these six attack scenarios were provided to our research teams at Georgia Tech and Idaho State University and each team successfully implemented a subversion attack against a ML implementation to include transient misclassifications. While this is a notable outcome from this type of research, this paper offers the reader insight into not only how to structure and execute these types of attacks, but into the thought process behind how the researcher investigated the problem space, performed initial algorithm implementation, and the trial-and-error behind arriving at the successful subversion prototypes. We include in this paper a set of associated Scenarios on how these subversion prototypes could be implemented and an initial set of guidance for AR/SMR architects, Nuclear Regulators, and Cyber Defenders to implement awareness and defense capabilities into their current operational portfolios.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Neutron inelastic scattering measurements on KCl and NaCl samples at the Dome

Precise and accurate measurements of neutron inelastic scattering cross sections are vital for both the LLNL national security mission and for scientific applications such as the nuclear spectroscopy of planetary bodies. In this work, initial measurements of relative cross sections were performed by irradiating KCl and NaCl samples with a DD neutron generator, a DT neutron generator, and a PuB source in building 262, the Dome. The measurements allowed the existing experimental setup to be benchmarked. Several improvements to the setup are suggested for future experiments.

38 RADIATION CHEMISTRY, RADIOCHEMISTRY, AND NUCLEA↗

Results of Post-Process NDE Using Advanced Techniques on AM Parts

The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of the FY24 activities to apply advanced nondestructive examination (NDE) methods to materials and components produced using advanced manufacturing (AM) processes such as Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) and Direct Energy Deposition (DED) and assess the challenges of examining these materials to identify defects and microstructure variations. This work was performed as part of the U.S. Department of Energy‘s Office of Nuclear Energy Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies (AMMT) Program. The primary mission of the AMMT program is to develop advanced materials and manufacturing technologies that enable both the current fleet and the next generation of advanced nuclear reactors to operate safely and economically, and to maintain U.S. leadership in technology development for nuclear energy systems.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Future Generation High Performance Computing Center (FG-HPCC): RFI Technical Considerations

Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC (LLNS) is interested in receiving information about technologies that could be available in the 2029-2030 timeframe that may serve to enable the vision for a Future Generation High Performance Computing (HPC) Center (FG-HPCC) described in this document. The future HPC Center vision has been conceived to meet the future mission needs of the Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) Program within the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). LLNS envisions a center composed not of many independent clusters, but of heterogeneous elements accessible to users as a single system. The capabilities will be integrated to create a scalable, flexible, yet tightly coupled computing center capable of integrated HPC, AI, and cloud-like workloads.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Development and implementation of high-throughput proteomic and metabolomics assays by using advanced chromatographic and mass spectrometric systems (CRADA Final Report)

The mission of this CRADA with Agilent was to couple powerful MS platforms (QQQ, IM-QTOFMS) with Agilent’s novel Ultra-High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (UHPLC) fast metabolomic workflows and perform ABF Machine Learning (ML) to generated datasets. Agilent transferred UHPLC methods to PNNL and LBNL and methods were implemented and demonstrated in both labs, achieving total acquisition times of < 10 min. Metabolites analyzed using Agilent’s shared methods included metabolites from central carbon metabolism, common across hosts, and metabolites unique to engineered strains. Standards were acquired in an UHPLC-Drift Tube Ion Mobility Mass Spectrometer (DTIMS) system for the first time within the context of ABF and methods were optimized based on Agilent’s protocols. Samples from ABF hosts Pseudomonas putida, Aspergillus pseudoterreus, Aspergillus niger and Rhodosporidium toruloides were analyzed using the UHPLC-DTIMS platform for a total of 276 runs. A data analysis workflow compatible with the Experimental Data Depot (EDD) and completely shareable was developed for the acquired UHPLC-DTIMS data. Samples were analyzed using a Data Independent Acquisition Approach (DIA), which for most of the standards provided more transitions therefore increasing detection confidence. Using the data acquired by PNNL, LBNL, and Agilent’s specifications from previous ML projects, SNL applied an ensemble ML strategy to pick the best performing model for automated LC-method selection. Finally, with the contribution of the participant labs and Agilent, SNL developed an Automated Method Selection (AMS) software tool to predict the best liquid chromatography method for analysis of any new molecules of interest. Samples with novel pathways and new metabolite targets of interest are generated at a high pace in the ABF. Overall, the project advanced rapid metabolomics by combining liquid chromatography, ion mobility spectrometry, and data-independent mass spectrometry with machine learning. This multidimensional approach uses retention time, collision cross-section, precursor mass, and fragment-ion information to distinguish chemically similar metabolites that can be difficult to resolve using conventional liquid- or gas-chromatography methods. The resulting workflow also provided automated metabolite-identification error estimates, addressing a recognized need for statistical confidence measures in metabolomics.

Petzold, Christopher [Lawrence Berkeley National L↗

Materials and Fuels Complex Operations Management Improvement Strategy

The Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) has experienced substantial growth in terms of staff, research, and production in recent years. MFC operational performance has effectively kept pace with this growth. However, to capture the continuous improvement actions needed to improve effectiveness and increase the efficiency of our management systems, a broad operations management strategy is necessary. The MFC Operations Management Improvement (OMI) Strategy is complementary to the MFC Five-Year Mission and Investment Strategies and the MFC Management Plan. The OMI strategy is structured to address the management systems outlined in the Nuclear Facility Management Standard Operations Model. Each management system is evaluated independently in a chapter that describes the prior 5 years of performance improvement, a description of improvement actions for the MFC staff that directly perform within or contribute to the management system, process improvements, and any needed equipment improvements. Additional chapters are added to address subject areas not formally described in the standard operations model. The OMI strategy actions are structured to have cross cutting impacts for improvements pertaining to the entire directorate or a single division. All division improvement agendas are aligned to the OMI strategy.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

Oak Ridge National Laboratory Annual Sustainability Report 2023

ORNL, managed under contract by UT-Battelle LLC, is DOE’s largest science and energy laboratory and, as such, executes the widest range of mission capabilities. Diverse expertise spans a broad range of scientific and engineering disciplines, enabling research and science achievements to accelerate the delivery of solutions to the marketplace. ORNL supports DOE’s national missions of scientific discovery, clean energy, and security. To execute these activities, ORNL has grown significantly over 80 years of continuous operations, consisting of facilities with commissioning dates ranging from the 1940s to the present—an extraordinary set of distinctive scientific facilities and equipment. The complexities of such a variety of facilities require teamwork among divisions, a wide variety of conservation projects, and creative strategies to achieve the desired energy and water savings. Such a diverse and unique set of major facilities, totaling over 5.5 million square feet, with 6,000 employees, requires an innovative plan to accomplish advancements in operational efficiencies. ORNL is tasked with the management of an extraordinary set of distinctive scientific facilities and equipment for DOE. ORNL is mission-driven, and its mission has grown substantially over the decades. ORNL’s core research capabilities provide broad science and technology support for DOE in the areas of energy, environment, and national security. Currently, ORNL is a world leader in materials, neutron, and nuclear science and engineering, and in high-performance computing and data analytics. ORNL’s vast portfolio of research facilities must be maintained and carefully upgraded to protect the nation’s investment in scientific analysis. The goal of sustainable and resilient operations is to enable more effective execution of ORNL’s science and technology mission. Sustainable operational practices and enhanced resilience strive for excellent results while remaining diligent in energy conservation, environmental stewardship, asset management, and community engagement. The Sustainable ORNL Program (Sustainable ORNL) Continuous improvements in operational and business processes must be integrated into the fabric of the ORNL culture to maximize the return from the investment made in modernizing facilities and equipment. The Sustainable ORNL program promotes the legacy of system-wide best practices, management commitment, and employee engagement that will lead ORNL into a future of efficient, resilient, and sustainable operations. ORNL leadership and Sustainable ORNL champions receive regular status reports on the progress of each project and focus area (i.e., roadmap) and periodic summary reports. More information can be found at the program’s website. The Sustainable ORNL roadmap structure endorses 15 vital roadmaps. The figure below summarizes the current project assignments and demonstrates that each project contributes to the wellbeing of the whole. Continuous employee engagement and regular status reports confirm the ideals of the program. The roadmap structure is not static; as the science mission advances and the needs of the organization evolve, the Sustainable ORNL roadmap structure elements are modified to align with developing priorities. In 2022, Sustainable ORNL made roadmap changes to better align ORNL to support new federal requirements that have been issued.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Position Papers for the ASCR Workshop on the Management and Storage of Scientific Data

The purpose of this workshop is to identify priority research directions in the area of data management for high-performance and scientific computing above and beyond HPC’s traditional "the parallel file system is the data-management system" model. Supporting the breadth of the DOE mission, including the explosion of AI uses and the growing needs of experimental and observational science, motivates revisiting our assumptions about data management. There are many facets of this topic to explore including: (1) Interfaces for accessing data that resides on traditional persistent storage as well as memory devices; (2) Storage-system architecture design that supports scientific workflows on varied hierarchical storage and networking devices; (3) Devising metadata management infrastructure to support FAIR principles (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability); (4) Capturing provenance information about scientific data; (5) Utilizing AI to learn I/O patterns of emerging workloads for efficient data management; (6) Providing data management support for AI and complex workflows; and (7) Understanding the overlap between traditional storage systems and I/O (SSIO) efforts and data management. While the program committee has identified these topics as important areas for discussion, we welcome position papers from the community that propose additional topics of interest for discussion at the workshop. The workshop agenda will include breakout sessions for discussing these and selected topic areas to inform priority research directions for data management for high-performance and scientific computing.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Report for the ASCR Workshop on the Management and Storage of Scientific Data

The purpose of this workshop is to identify priority research directions in the area of data management for high-performance and scientific computing above and beyond HPC’s traditional "the parallel file system is the data-management system" model. Supporting the breadth of the DOE mission, including the explosion of AI uses and the growing needs of experimental and observational science, motivates revisiting our assumptions about data management. There are many facets of this topic to explore including: (1) Interfaces for accessing data that resides on traditional persistent storage as well as memory devices; (2) Storage-system architecture design that supports scientific workflows on varied hierarchical storage and networking devices; (3) Devising metadata management infrastructure to support FAIR principles (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability); (4) Capturing provenance information about scientific data; (5) Utilizing AI to learn I/O patterns of emerging workloads for efficient data management; (6) Providing data management support for AI and complex workflows; and (7) Understanding the overlap between traditional storage systems and I/O (SSIO) efforts and data management. While the program committee has identified these topics as important areas for discussion, we welcome position papers from the community that propose additional topics of interest for discussion at the workshop. The workshop agenda will include breakout sessions for discussing these and selected topic areas to inform priority research directions for data management for high-performance and scientific computing.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Comparative evaluation of deep learning workloads for leadership-class systems

Deep learning (DL) workloads and their performance at scale are becoming important factors to consider as we design, develop and deploy next-generation high-performance computing systems. Since DL applications rely heavily on DL frameworks and underlying compute (CPU/GPU) stacks, it is essential to gain a holistic understanding from compute kernels, models, and frameworks of popular DL stacks, and to assess their impact on science-driven, mission-critical applications. At Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), we employ a set of micro and macro DL benchmarks established through the Collaboration of Oak Ridge, Argonne, and Livermore (CORAL) to evaluate the AI readiness of our next-generation supercomputers. In this paper, we present our early observations and performance benchmark comparisons between the Nvidia V100 based Summit system with its CUDA stack and an AMD MI100 based testbed system with its ROCm stack. We take a layered perspective on DL benchmarking and point to opportunities for future optimizations in the technologies that we consider.

Yin, Junqi↗

REFSafE: A RAG-Enabled Framework for Predictive Risk Analysis and Automated Safety Report Generation in Mission-Critical Environments

Operational safety in mission-critical environments requires AI systems that are accurate, interpretable, and resistant to hallucination. We present an agentic Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) framework, REFSafe, for grounded hazard analysis and automated safety report generation. The system integrates Large Language Models (LLMs) with structured operational data, historical incident repositories, policy documents, and external authoritative sources. Through iterative agentic reasoning, the framework retrieves, verifies, and synthesizes evidence prior to generation, enforcing citation-backed outputs with explicit source attribution (documents, links, and prior events) to ensure traceability and trust. To mitigate hallucinations and unsupported claims, all risk assessments and forecasts are constrained to retrieved evidence, with confidence signals derived from retrieval relevance and source consistency. A transparent pipeline enables subject matter experts (SMEs) to validate predictions, and provide structured feedback, forming a continuous performance calibration loop. Preliminary deployment demonstrates improved reliability in hazard detection and safety/vulnerability report generation. This work advances trustworthy, evidence-grounded AI for predictive safety intelligence in mission-critical operations.

Das, Sanjay [ORNL] (ORCID:0009000542591915)↗

The Scientific Justification for a U.S. Domestic High-Performance Reactor-Based Research Facility

The Basic Energy Science Advisory Committee (BESAC) was charged with forming a subcommittee to assess the scientific justification for a U.S. domestic high-performance reactor-based research facility in order to continue providing the U.S scientific community with leading neutron capabilities in support of DOE's missions in science, energy, environment, and national security. The assessment included consideration of current international plans and existing domestic facility infrastructure. The subcommittee held a series of meetings from August 19, 2019 to April 24, 2020 that included DOE senior officials, leaders of national and international neutron facilities (SNS, HFIR, NIST, ILL, FRM-II), chairs of the NAS and POPA HEU-LEU committees, and outside experts on important areas of science, technology, and industry where high flux nuclear reactor facilities make important contributions. Also included were tours of neutron facilities (SNS, HFIR, NIST, BR2 reactor, and the planned Jules Horowitz Reactor). This July 2020 (revised 10-28-2020) report describes scientific use cases, brief summaries of existing and planned neutron facilities in the US and Europe, a comprehensive review of HFIR, a comprehensive discussion of the current state of progress on HEU-LEU conversion, user information from NIST and ORNL, and three recommendations to DOE for moving forward.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Agilent AgileBioFoundry CRADA (Final Report)

The mission of this CRADA with Agilent was to couple powerful MS platforms (QQQ, IM-QTOF-MS) with Agilent’s novel Ultra-High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (UHPLC) fast metabolomic workflows and perform ABF Machine Learning (ML) to generated datasets. Agilent transferred UHPLC methods to PNNL and LBNL and methods were implemented and demonstrated in both labs, achieving total acquisition times of < 10 min. Metabolites analyzed using Agilent’s shared methods included metabolites from central carbon metabolism, common across hosts, and metabolites unique to engineered strains. Standards were acquired in an UHPLC-Drift Tube Ion Mobility Mass Spectrometer (DTIMS) system for the first time within the context of ABF and methods were optimized based on Agilent’s protocols. Samples from ABF hosts Pseudomonas putida, Aspergillus pseudoterreus, Aspergillus niger and Rhodosporidium toruloides were analyzed using the UHPLC-DTIMS platform for a total of 276 runs. A data analysis workflow compatible with the Experimental Data Depot (EDD) and completely shareable was developed for the acquired UHPLC-DTIMS data. Samples were analyzed using a Data Independent Acquisition Approach (DIA), which for most of the standards provided more transitions therefore increasing detection confidence. Using the data acquired by PNNL, LBNL, and Agilent’s specifications from previous ML projects, SNL applied an ensemble ML strategy to pick the best performing model for automated LC-method selection. Finally, with the contribution of the participant labs and Agilent, SNL developed an Automated Method Selection (AMS) software tool to predict the best liquid chromatography method for analysis of any new molecules of interest. Samples with novel pathways and new metabolite targets of interest are generated at a high pace in the ABF. Therefore, our accomplishment in this CRADA improved the efficiency and accuracy of strain testing by developing and implementing fast analytical methods, robust processing tools, and software for predicting the best methods for UHPLC analysis.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

WBG-Enabled Current-Source Inverters for Integrated PM Motor Drives

This project takes advantage of the special capabilities of wide-bandgap (WBG) power semiconductor devices to develop innovative power electronics in the form of new current-source inverters (CSIs) that offer promising advantages over the dominant voltage-source inverter (VSI) topology. These CSIs, in turn, are extremely well-suited for integration into the housings of permanent magnet synchronous machines (PMSMs) to form integrated motor drives (IMDs). These new IMDs offer great promise for achieving major energy savings in a wide variety of applications that benefit from adjustable-speed control, including air conditioners, laundry appliances, industrial pumps/compressors, electric vehicles, and aerospace drives. WBG devices play a critical enabling role in these new IMDs because of their transformative features including much higher switching frequencies, lower losses, and compatibility with high operating temperatures. When incorporated into new CSI-based IMDs with PM machines, these WBG switches open the door to achieving major increases in power density, drive system efficiency, and fault tolerance, as well as substantial reductions in electromagnetic interference (EMI), manufacturing cost, and temperature-induced failures. The higher operating temperature capability of WBG devices compared to conventional silicon power devices is very appealing in IMD applications because the power electronics is mounted in close proximity to the motors which typically operate at temperatures well above the maximum limits of today’s silicon-based power electronics. This project has succeeded in designing, building, and testing multiple prototype versions of this CSI-IMD that have overcome many technical challenges in order to demonstrate the impressive performance improvements that can be achieved by the WBG-enabled CSI-IMD. The preliminary demo and bench-top versions of the current-source inverter developed during the first two years of the project were critical to laying the technical foundations for the 3 kW prototype CSI-IMD unit that was successfully built and tested during the third year. This prototype CSI-IMD unit was designed to fit within the housing envelope of the original permanent magnet (PM) synchronous machine in order to meet the demanding power density requirements that were set at the beginning of the project. All of the remaining performance objectives set for the prototype CSI-IMD unit including efficiency and electromagnetic interference (EMI) were also met. The last 18 months of the project were devoted to developing further enhancements of the WBG-enabled CSI-IMD technology that better prepare it for commercial production. More specifically, an upgraded version of the prototype CSI-IMD unit was developed that moved the power electronics into the same machine housing chamber as the motor, substantially raising the thermal demands on the power electronics. Tests with five different combinations of motor enclosure types and air cooling configurations were evaluated. Importantly, this work confirmed that the power electronics can deliver its full rated power and still operate well within its maximum temperature limits even for worst-case conditions when the housing is “totally-enclosed” without any openings for air to enter or exit the enclosure, and no blower/fan is provided to blow air over the outside surface of the enclosure. Reaching the full performance and energy-savings potential of this disruptive CSI-IMD motor drive technology is highly consistent with ARPA-E’s stated mission to “enhance the economic and energy security of the United States” while also supporting its commitment to “ensure that the U.S. maintains a technological lead in developing and deploying advanced energy technologies”. Follow-on projects are under way to explore the scalability of WBG-enabled CSI-IMD technology to 100 kW (peak) electric vehicle traction drives and fault-tolerant modular motor drives for future electrified aircraft propulsion applications.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗