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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 307 records · Page 17

Using an architectural approach to integrate heterogeneous, distributed software components

Many computer programs cannot be easily integrated because their components are distributed and heterogeneous, i.e., they are implemented in diverse programming languages, use different data representation formats, or their runtime environments are incompatible. In many cases, programs are integrated by modifying their components or interposing mechanisms that handle communication and conversion tasks. For example, remote procedure call (RPC) helps integrate heterogeneous, distributed programs. When configuring such programs, however, mechanisms like RPC must be used explicitly by software developers in order to integrate collections of diverse components. Each collection may require a unique integration solution. This paper describes improvements to the concepts of software packaging and some of our experiences in constructing complex software systems from a wide variety of components in different execution environments. Software packaging is a process that automatically determines how to integrate a diverse collection of computer programs based on the types of components involved and the capabilities of available translators and adapters in an environment. Software packaging provides a context that relates such mechanisms to software integration processes and reduces the cost of configuring applications whose components are distributed or implemented in different programming languages. Our software packaging tool subsumes traditional integration tools like UNIX make by providing a rule-based approach to software integration that is independent of execution environments.

Callahan, John R.↗

A Physics-Aligned Multi-Domain Machine Learning Framework for Time-Localised Diagnosis of Power Electronics Faults

This paper presents a physics-aligned framework for fault diagnosis in multi-phase power-electronic systems using cycle-synchronous windowing and multi-domain features derived from Fourier, wavelet, and Hilbert–Huang representations. While both logistic regression and multilayer perceptron (MLP) models achieve perfect performance under standard evaluation, blind unseen testing reveals a critical failure in a baseline MLP. This is shown to arise from model selection based on validation accuracy. Using validation-loss-based selection restores correct unseen performance and improves confidence. Feature ablation shows that Fourier and wavelet features dominate, while computational analysis indicates that feature extraction, particularly HHT, governs runtime.

Kumar, Praveen [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000291877857)↗

Structural Analysis Using Computer Based Methods

The stiffness of a flex hose that will be used in the umbilical arms of the Space Launch Systems mobile launcher needed to be determined in order to properly qualify ground umbilical plate behavior during vehicle separation post T-0. This data is also necessary to properly size and design the motors used to retract the umbilical arms. Therefore an experiment was created to determine the stiffness of the hose. Before the test apparatus for the experiment could be built, the structure had to be analyzed to ensure it would not fail under given loading conditions. The design model was imported into the analysis software and optimized to decrease runtime while still providing accurate rest~lts and allow for seamless meshing. Areas exceeding the allowable stresses in the structure were located and modified before submitting the design for fabrication. In addition, a mock up of a deep space habitat and the support frame was designed and needed to be analyzed for structural integrity under different loading conditions. The load cases were provided by the customer and were applied to the structure after optimizing the geometry. Once again, weak points in the structure were located and recommended design changes were made to the customer and the process was repeated until the load conditions were met without exceeding the allowable stresses. After the stresses met the required factors of safety the designs were released for fabrication.

Dietz, Matthew R.↗

Sparse Linear Algebra Toolkit for Computational Aerodynamics

Finding solutions to sparse linear systems of equations is an essential step in Computational Engineering applications of interest to NASA. Linear systems of equations are composed and solved in almost every computational engineering application. The characteristics of linear systems vary greatly from one application to another. Accordingly, there are a wide variety of methods for the solution of linear systems of equations. The operations and methods prepared by the authors are focused on linear systems of interest to NASA, primarily those associated with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Aeroelasticity, and Aeroacoustics. The Sparse Linear Algebra Toolkit (SLAT) is a coordinated collection of software featuring operations, methods, and data structures that are useful when solving sparse linear systems of equations on modern computer architectures. The implemented operations and methods are designed and tuned for parallelism in shared memory, in distributed memory, and across the hybrid combination of distributed-shared memory. The toolkit includes novel methods and implementations for modern architectures and facilitates development of new approaches for meeting NASA’s evolving computational engineering challenges using evolving computer architectures that are not available in vendor libraries. In this paper, significant features and interfaces within SLAT are presented and verified for simulations performed with NASA’s CFD solver, FUN3D. The runtime and scaling performance of the Generalized Minimum Residual (GMRES) method implemented in SLAT is analyzed for the linear subproblems within the solution of turbulent Navier-Stokes equations employed in the simulation of high-lift configurations. Prior to this work, the SPARSKIT GMRES implementation was the only Krylov subspace method available within FUN3D. A strong scaling study shows the SLAT GMRES implementation facilitates accurate Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes CFD solutions between 15% and 56% faster than the SPARSKIT GMRES implementation.

Stephen L Wood↗

Generic and ML Workloads in an HPC Datacenter: Node Energy, Job Failures, and Node-Job Analysis

HPC datacenters offer a backbone to the modern digital society. Increasingly, they run Machine Learning (ML) jobs next to generic, compute-intensive workloads, supporting science, business, and other decision-making processes. However, understanding how ML jobs impact the operation of HPC datacenters, relative to generic jobs, remains desirable but understudied. In this work, we leverage long-term operational data, collected from a national-scale production HPC datacenter, and statistically compare how ML and generic jobs can impact the performance, failures, resource utilization, and energy consumption of HPC datacenters. Our study provides key insights, e.g., ML-related power usage causes GPU nodes to run into temperature limitations, median/mean runtime and failure rates are higher for ML jobs than for generic jobs, both ML and generic jobs exhibit highly variable arrival processes and resource demands, significant amounts of energy are spent on unsuccessfully terminating jobs, and concurrent jobs tend to terminate in the same state. We open-source our cleaned-up data traces on Zenodo (https://doi. org/10.5281/zenodo.13685426), and provide our analysis toolkit as software hosted on GitHub (https://github.com/atlarge-research/2024-icpads-hpc-workload-characterization). This study offers multiple benefits for data center administrators, who can improve operational efficiency, and for researchers, who can further improve system designs, scheduling techniques, etc.

crossanalysis↗

2025 Advances in NekRS: Supporting improved performance for nuclear applications

This report presents several 2025 advancements in NekRS, a high-fidelity spectral element CFD code developed at Argonne National Laboratory to support the NEAMS thermal-hydraulics program. The forthcoming v25 release consolidates several of these advances, adding new features for portability across heterogeneous GPU architectures, real-time in situ visualization, improved turbulence modeling, and conjugate heat transfer coupling. Over the past year, NekRS has demonstrated strong scalability and performance on DOE’s leading exascale platforms, including Aurora and Frontier, confirming its readiness for some of the largest and most complex simulations attempted to date. These achievements provide a powerful new platform for high-fidelity data generation, which in turn supports the development and validation of advanced closure models critical for reactor safety and design. Significant algorithmic innovations have also been introduced. A new global runtime h-refinement capability simplifies workflows by reducing mesh preparation burdens and enabling coarse-to-fine restarts. Building on this, a novel multigrid strategy was implemented to accelerate pressure and transport solves at scale, addressing long-standing bottlenecks in exascale CFD. Together, these developments improve both the efficiency and accessibility of high-fidelity simulations for reactor-relevant problems. Collectively, these enhancements represent a major step forward in simulation technology, positioning NekRS as a cornerstone of NEAMS efforts to enable accurate, efficient, and scalable high-fidelity analysis of advanced nuclear systems.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Designing and prototyping extensions to the Message Passing Interface in MPICH

As HPC system architectures and the applications running on them continue to evolve, the MPI standard itself must evolve. The trend in current and future HPC systems toward powerful nodes with multiple CPU cores and multiple GPU accelerators makes efficient support for hybrid programming critical for applications to achieve high performance. However, the support for hybrid programming in the MPI standard has not kept up with recent trends. The MPICH implementation of MPI provides a platform for implementing and experimenting with new proposals and extensions to fill this gap and to gain valuable experience and feedback before the MPI Forum can consider them for standardization. Here, in this work, we detail six extensions implemented in MPICH to increase MPI interoperability with other runtimes, with a specific focus on heterogeneous architectures. First, the extension to MPI generalized requests lets applications integrate asynchronous tasks into MPI’s progress engine. Second, the iovec extension to datatypes lets applications use MPI datatypes as a general-purpose data layout API beyond just MPI communications. Third, a new MPI object, MPIX_Stream, can be used by applications to identify execution contexts beyond MPI processes, including threads and GPU streams. MPIX stream communicators can be created to make existing MPI functions thread-aware and GPU-aware, thus providing applications with explicit ways to achieve higher performance. Fourth, MPIX Streams are extended to support the enqueue semantics for offloading MPI communications onto a GPU stream context. Fifth, thread communicators allow MPI communicators to be constructed with individual threads, thus providing a new level of interoperability between MPI and on-node runtimes such as OpenMP. Lastly, we present an extension to invoke MPI progress, which lets users spawn progress threads with fine-grained control to adapt the communication performance to their application designs. We describe the design and implementation of these extensions, provide usage examples, and highlight their expected benefits with performance results.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Air Traffic Complexity Measurement Environment (ACME): Software User's Guide

A user's guide for the Air Traffic Complexity Measurement Environment (ACME) software is presented. The ACME consists of two major components, a complexity analysis tool and user interface. The Complexity Analysis Tool (CAT) analyzes complexity off-line, producing data files which may be examined interactively via the Complexity Data Analysis Tool (CDAT). The Complexity Analysis Tool is composed of three independently executing processes that communicate via PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) and Unix sockets. The Runtime Data Management and Control process (RUNDMC) extracts flight plan and track information from a SAR input file, and sends the information to GARP (Generate Aircraft Routes Process) and CAT (Complexity Analysis Task). GARP in turn generates aircraft trajectories, which are utilized by CAT to calculate sector complexity. CAT writes flight plan, track and complexity data to an output file, which can be examined interactively. The Complexity Data Analysis Tool (CDAT) provides an interactive graphic environment for examining the complexity data produced by the Complexity Analysis Tool (CAT). CDAT can also play back track data extracted from System Analysis Recording (SAR) tapes. The CDAT user interface consists of a primary window, a controls window, and miscellaneous pop-ups. Aircraft track and position data is displayed in the main viewing area of the primary window. The controls window contains miscellaneous control and display items. Complexity data is displayed in pop-up windows. CDAT plays back sector complexity and aircraft track and position data as a function of time. Controls are provided to start and stop playback, adjust the playback rate, and reposition the display to a specified time.

Source record↗

Precise 2D electric field density simulations for superconducting quantum devices

Dielectric loss due to two-level systems is a limiting factor for superconducting qubit relaxation times. These losses arise mostly from nanometer-scale interfacial defect regions in superconducting devices with planar dimensions of microns to millimeters, thus making it resource intensive to accurately simulate the electric field density in these regions with traditional electromagnetic solvers. In this work, we demonstrate a fast boundary integral equation solver that allows precise simulation of electric field density in these thin regions, showing a speedup of around two orders of magnitude over traditional solvers, with relative errors around $10^{-7}$ for a ten-minute solution runtime. By computing participation ratios through Green's first identity without squaring the electric field, our approach is less susceptible to the field singularities near conductor corners. We apply this solver to a basic untrenched coplanar waveguide cross-section, showing that the common assumption of participation ratio linearity with dielectric constant holds well for some interfaces and not others; in particular, while the metal-air (MA) top and corner follow this linear relationship strongly, the MA sidewall does not. We then compare isotropic and anisotropic etching, showing that the MA sidewall and the metal-air-substrate triple junction are the most strongly affected. We are currently leveraging this solver to explore geometries that will uniquely isolate the participation ratios of the different dielectrics. Finally, we are working to combine this solver framework with a full 3D microwave solver to accurately calculate participation ratios for the thin dielectrics that are known sources of loss in superconducting qubits.

Gimbutas, Z. [NIST, Boulder] (ORCID:00000003320982↗

Robust Trajectory Optimization for NRHO Rendezvous Using SPICE Kernel Relative Motion

In this paper, robust optimization is performed on trajectory correction maneuvers during the lunar lander return phase of an Artemis mission, treating the trajectory from one hour after low lunar orbit departure to arrival in the vicinity of the lunar Gateway as a relative motion problem. To enable rapid stochastic optimization techniques requiring many candidate trajectories, SPICE kernel relative motion as implemented by the Quadratic Interpolated State Transition (QIST) system is used as the underlying dynamics propagation. The optimization is performed with a genetic optimizer using linear covariance (LinCov) software in a simplified operational context, taking into account the availability of navigation sensors with varying measurement models, ranges, and accuracies. No numerical integration is used, since the relative motion around Gateway is fully characterized with the a priori computation of the QIST coefficients. Maneuver placements are computed to optimize the minimum 3σ delta-v of the trajectory, the position dispersion at a target point, and a convex combination of these two metrics. An order of magnitude runtime improvement is provided over legacy methods with less than 10% error introduced. All QIST results are shown to be in-family with legacy methods. The tradespace for optimal delta-v design is found to range from 77.0 to 93.9 m/s, while the range of optimal dispersion is between 1.4 and 11.7 km.

Relative Motion↗

An End-to-End Framework for Verifying and Validating Manufacturing Design Integrity

Cyber attacks on networked automated manufacturing systems can severely impact part quality. In fact, malicious modifications may be introduced at any point during the manufacturing lifecycle. Therefore, it is vital to verify and validate that manufactured parts conform to their designs. This chapter describes a formal, end-to-end framework that verifies and validates the design integrity of manufactured parts by considering all potential points of alteration during precision manufacturing processes. The framework prevents unauthorized changes to computer-aided designs, verifies the correctness of translations from CAD models to G-code, maintains the integrity of G-code transferred to manufacturing machines, verifies the runtime execution of G-code and part geometry, and considers the contexts of manufacturing machine operations and how manufactured parts could be altered.

Jablonski, Matthew [Cybersecurity Manufacturing In↗

Hybrid PDES Simulation of HPC Networks Using Zombie Packets

Although high-fidelity network simulations have proven to be reliable and cost-effective tools to peer into architectural questions for high-performance computing (HPC) networks, they incur a high resource cost. The time spent in simulating a single millisecond of network traffic in the highest detail can take hours, even for static, well-behaved traffic patterns such as uniform random. Surrogate models offer a significant reduction in runtime, yet they cannot serve as complete replacements and should only be used when appropriate. Thus, there is a need for hybrid modeling, where high-fidelity simulation and surrogates run side-by-side. Here, we present a surrogate model for HPC networks in which: packets bypass the network, while the network state is left untouched, i.e., suspended. To bypass the network, we use historical data to estimate the arrival time at which every packet should be scheduled at; to suspend the network, all in-flight packets are scheduled to arrive at their destinations, and are kept in the system to awaken as zombies when switching back to high-fidelity. Speedup for a hybrid model is relative to the proportion of surrogate to high-fidelity. This light-weight surrogate obtained up to 76× speedup. Keeping the zombies in the network showed an increase in the accuracy of the high-fidelity simulation on restart when compared to restarting the network from an empty state.

HPC networks↗

Automatic Data Filter Customization Using a Genetic Algorithm

This work predicts whether a retrieval algorithm will usefully determine CO2 concentration from an input spectrum of GOSAT (Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite). This was done to eliminate needless runtime on atmospheric soundings that would never yield useful results. A space of 50 dimensions was examined for predictive power on the final CO2 results. Retrieval algorithms are frequently expensive to run, and wasted effort defeats requirements and expends needless resources. This algorithm could be used to help predict and filter unneeded runs in any computationally expensive regime. Traditional methods such as the Fischer discriminant analysis and decision trees can attempt to predict whether a sounding will be properly processed. However, this work sought to detect a subsection of the dimensional space that can be simply filtered out to eliminate unwanted runs. LDAs (linear discriminant analyses) and other systems examine the entire data and judge a "best fit," giving equal weight to complex and problematic regions as well as simple, clear-cut regions. In this implementation, a genetic space of "left" and "right" thresholds outside of which all data are rejected was defined. These left/right pairs are created for each of the 50 input dimensions. A genetic algorithm then runs through countless potential filter settings using a JPL computer cluster, optimizing the tossed-out data s yield (proper vs. improper run removal) and number of points tossed. This solution is robust to an arbitrary decision boundary within the data and avoids the global optimization problem of whole-dataset fitting using LDA or decision trees. It filters out runs that would not have produced useful CO2 values to save needless computation. This would be an algorithmic preprocessing improvement to any computationally expensive system.

Mandrake, Lukas↗

Performance Impact and Trade-Offs for Tuning Key Architectural Parameters on CPU+GPU Systems

In this work, we performed an initial design space exploration of an accelerated processing unit (APU)—a hybrid CPU+GPU architecture that integrates both compute units (CUs) and memory into a unified system. This integration aims to reduce data movement, enhance memory locality, and improve energy efficiency by enabling the CPU and GPU to share memory directly. This effort focused on the interplay of key design components—cache line size, the number of CUs, and main memory technology—and the trade-offs of each configuration were analyzed. This paper highlights the various configurations’ impact on memory accesses, data reuse, and power utilization. The results provide valuable insights that can be leveraged to optimize APU architectures for high-performance and energy-efficient computing and thus create a balanced architecture. This optimization can be achieved by adopting dynamic cache management, runtime CU scaling, and advanced memory integration, highlighting the potential of APUs to address critical challenges in compute, data movement, and memory power consumption.

Asifuzzaman, Kazi [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000240044791)↗

Application of Fuel Depletion Chain Simplification to Experiment Analysis in the Advanced Test Reactor

An irradiation experiment analysis can be informed by high-fidelity reactor engineering depletion results, but this comes at a computational cost. Applying depletion chain simplification to the advanced test reactor driver fuel before performing experiment depletions permits their programmatic parameters to be calculated faster, with a small penalty to accuracy. Here, this work contrasts the results of two irradiation experiments with different neutronic characteristics. Overall, the simplified nuclide library produced using a simple one-group microscopic cross-section library for a pressurized water reactor in the depletion chain simplification process performed comparably in terms of accuracy and runtime to the simplified nuclide library produced using a three-group microscopic cross-section library generated specifically for the advanced test reactor experiments being modeled. This is attributed to the additional nuclides and transmutation pathways preserved in the one-group cross-section library, which has data for 297 nuclides, compared to the three-group cross-section library, which has data for 217 nuclides. This indicates that a cross-section library with more nuclides is better than a cross-section library with fewer nuclides for the depletion chain simplification process, even if the cross-section library with fewer nuclides better represents the flux spectrum of the system being considered.

11 - NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Concurrent file operations in a high performance FORTRAN

Distributed memory multiprocessor systems can provide the computing power necessary for large scale scientific applications. A critical performance issue for a number of these applications is the efficient transfer of data to secondary storage. Recently several research groups have proposed FORTRAN language extensions for exploiting the data parallelism of such scientific codes on distributed memory architectures. However, few of these high performance FORTRAN's provide appropriate constructs for controlling the use of the parallel I/O capabilities of modern multiprocessing machines. In this paper, we propose constructs to specify I/O operations for distributed data structures in the context of Vienna Fortran. These operations can be used by the programmer to provide information which can help the compiler and runtime environment make the most efficient use of the I/O subsystem.

Brezany, Peter↗

Predicting Unreinforced Fabric Mechanical Behavior with Recurrent Neural Networks

Unreinforced woven fabrics are widely employed in various high-performance applications, including parachute deployment systems, airbags, and ballistic armor. The analysis of such materials is inherently complex due to the multiscale structure of these materials, and the dependence of macroscale behavior on changes that occur at lower scales. Previously, NASA’s Multiscale Analysis Tool (NASMAT) showed its capability in predicting unreinforced fabric behavior at the macroscale by capturing finite rotations that occur at the mesoscale. Though effective, the tool can face high computational cost for large, complex problems, motivating the need for the development of a surrogate model that can capture the same behavior. A recurrent neural network (RNN) was developed and trained on virtual NASMAT data to mimic the physics-based solutions while improving the computational runtime. The architecture of the RNN to best simulate the fabric behavior was carefully crafted based on heuristic knowledge of predicting physics-based temporal data, manual hyperparameter case studies, and Hyperband optimization.. The resultant model was able to predict a variety of stress-strain curves for fabrics with different mesoscale geometries, and was further validated by comparing to experimental data for the K706 style Kevlar plain-weave fabric, demonstrating the ability of the model to effectively capture the geometric changes in the fabric without explicitly calculating them, as is done in NASMAT. Furthermore, the tool showed its ability to improve on the runtime by a factor of 10 for fabric solutions compared to the multiscale tool, which would further enable the simulation of complex loading scenarios on unreinforced fabrics.

Fabric↗

Scaling kinetic Monte-Carlo simulations of grain growth with combined convolutional and graph neural networks

Graph neural networks (GNN) have emerged as a promising machine learning method for microstructure simulations such as grain growth. However, accurate modeling of realistic grain boundary networks requires large simulation cells, which GNN has difficulty scaling up to. To alleviate the computational costs and memory footprint of GNN, we suggest a hybrid architecture combining a convolutional neural network (CNN) based bijective autoencoder to compress the spatial dimensions, and a GNN that evolves the microstructure in the latent space of reduced spatial sizes. Our results demonstrate that the new design significantly reduces computational costs with using fewer message passing layer (from 12 down to 3) compared with GNN alone. The reduction in computational cost becomes more pronounced as the spatial size increases, indicating strong computational scalability. For the largest mesh evaluated (160 3 ), our method reduces memory usage and runtime in inference by 117× and 115×, respectively, compared with GNN-only baseline. More importantly, it shows higher accuracy and stronger spatiotemporal capability than the GNN-only baseline, especially in long-term testing. Such combination of scalability and accuracy is essential for simulating realistic material microstructures over extended time scales. The improvements can be attributed to the bijective autoencoder’s ability to compress information losslessly from spatial domain into a high dimensional feature space, thereby producing more expressive latent features for the GNN to learn from, while also contributing its own spatiotemporal modeling capability. Training data are generated from stochastic grain growth simulations, providing realistic variability for learning robust microstructure evolution. Comprehensive system validation confirms that the model is accurate, robust, and scalable.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗