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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 325 records · Page 18

Conservation of Helium while Maintaining High System Purity

Recent helium shortages and helium price increases have lead to an increased emphasis being placed on conserving helium. The need to conserve helium must be balanced with need to maintain the high levels of purity necessary to prevent operational problems caused by contamination. Helium losses and contamination control are especially important for test stands that have cryogenic distribution systems operating continuously with frequent changeover of cryogenic temperature components that are being tested. This paper describes a mathematical model to estimate the quantity of helium lost and the purity of the helium after the pump and backfill procedure is complete. The process to determine the optimal time during pump down to cut off pumping and start backfilling is described. There is a tradeoff between trying to achieve the lowest possible pressure during pumping and the quantity of air leaking into the volume while pumping is occurring. An additional benefit of careful selection of pump and backfill parameters in conjunction with real-time pressure monitoring can reduce the labor and time required to complete a successful pump and backfill procedure. This paper is intended to be a tool for engineers to review their pump and backfill procedures and measured data to optimize helium losses, system purity, and labor required.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

A Convex Data-Driven Approach for Nonlinear Control Synthesis

We consider a class of nonlinear control synthesis problems where the underlying mathematical models are not explicitly known. We propose a data-driven approach to stabilize the systems when only sample trajectories of the dynamics are accessible. Our method is built on the density-function-based stability certificate that is the dual to the Lyapunov function for dynamic systems. Unlike Lyapunov-based methods, density functions lead to a convex formulation for a joint search of the control strategy and the stability certificate. This type of convex problem can be solved efficiently using the machinery of the sum of squares (SOS). For the data-driven part, we exploit the fact that the duality results in the stability theory can be understood through the lens of Perron–Frobenius and Koopman operators. This allows us to use data-driven methods to approximate these operators and combine them with the SOS techniques to establish a convex formulation of control synthesis. The efficacy of the proposed approach is demonstrated through several examples.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Fast meta-solvers for 3D complex-shape scatterers using neural operators trained on a non-scattering problem

Three-dimensional target identification using scattering techniques requires high accuracy solutions and very fast computations for real-time predictions in some critical applications. We first train a deep neural operator (DeepONet) to solve wave propagation problems described by the Helmholtz equation in a domain without scatterers but at different wavenumbers and with a complex absorbing boundary condition. We then design two classes of fast meta-solvers by combining DeepONet with either relaxation methods, such as Jacobi and Gauss-Seidel, or with Krylov methods, such as GMRES and BiCGStab, using the trunk basis of DeepONet as a coarse-scale preconditioner. We leverage the spectral bias of neural networks to account for the lower part of the spectrum in the error distribution while the upper part is handled inexpensively using relaxation methods or fine-scale preconditioners. The meta-solvers are then applied to solve scattering problems with different shape of scatterers, at no extra training cost. We first demonstrate that the resulting meta-solvers are shape-agnostic, fast, and robust, whereas the standard standalone solvers may even fail to converge without the DeepONet. We then apply both classes of meta-solvers to scattering from a submarine, a complex three-dimensional problem. We achieve very fast solutions, especially with the DeepONet-Krylov methods, which require orders of magnitude fewer iterations than any of the standalone solvers.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Precursor Analysis Report: Remote Access Attack on Oldsmar Water Treatment Facility 2021

The Remote Access Attack on Oldsmar Water Treatment Facility 2021 Precursor Analysis Report leverages publicly available information about the Oldsmar cyber attack and catalogs anomalous observables for each technique employed in the attack. This analysis is based upon the methodology of the Cybersecurity for the Operational Technology Environment (CyOTE) program. On 5 February 2021, an adversary gained unauthorized remote access to Bruce T. Haddock Water Treatment Plant in Oldsmar, Florida, which provides treated water to 15,000 customers. The adversary accessed the facility’s Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) workstation and human machine interface (HMI) to change the chemical concentration of sodium hydroxide, commonly referred to as lye and used to regulate acidity levels, from 100 parts per million (PPM) to 11,100 PPM. The chemical was raised to lethal levels that if ingested could lead to serious soft tissue damage, burns, or even death. The facility, however, had redundancies and alarms in place to alert personnel of dangerous chemical levels, and facility officials stated it would have taken 24 to 36 hours for the chemical changes to affect the water supply. Researchers and analysts identified six unique techniques utilized during the attack with a total of 23 observables using MITRE ATT&CK® for Industrial Control Systems. The CyOTE program assesses observables accompanying techniques used prior to the triggering event to identify opportunities to detect malicious activity. If observables accompanying the attack techniques are perceived and investigated prior to the triggering event, earlier comprehension of malicious activity can take place. Four of the identified techniques used during the Oldsmar cyber attack were precursors to the triggering event. Analysis identified 21 observables associated with these precursor techniques, 20 of which were assessed to have an increased likelihood of being perceived in the minutes preceding the triggering event. The response and comprehension time could have been reduced if the observables had been identified earlier. The information gathered in this report contributes to a library of observables tied to a repository of artifacts, data sources, and technique detection references for practitioners and developers to support the comprehension of indicators of attack. Asset owners and operators can use these products if they experience similar observables or to prepare for comparable scenarios.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗

The waterSHED Model: User Guide

The ideal design and operation of small hydropower plants is a complex optimization problem with economic, social, and environmental objectives. The waterSHED (Water Allocation Tool Enabling Rapid Small Hydropower Environmental Design) model is a user-friendly tool that allows hydropower stakeholders to model the trade-offs among these objectives using the Standard Modular Hydropower (SMH) framework. The SMH framework employs modular technologies that can be represented as blackbox objects and combined within a river to create a hydropower facility. For a given site, the waterSHED model aims to determine which modules should be placed in a facility and how those modules should be operated. This user guide describes how to use the graphical user interface and related functionalities. This document also summarizes the background research and mathematical formulations that are explained indepth in the accompanying doctoral dissertation. This model is an early step toward a new hydropower design process that employs standardization and modularity to reduce costs, development timelines, and challenges regarding social and environmental mitigation measures for low-head, small hydropower development. The waterSHED model is a Python application that will require the ability to download a GitHub repository, import the necessary packages, and run a set of Python script files using an integrated development environment. The script produces a graphical user interface to coordinate inputs, simulate operation, and visualize results, so no coding experience is needed once the script is running. Additionally, the waterSHED Workbook is a Microsoft Excel file that works with the Python script to facilitate data entry

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗

Precursor Analysis Report: Blackmatter Ransomware Attack on New Cooperative 2021

The BlackMatter Ransomware Attack on New Cooperative 2021 Precursor Analysis Report leverages publicly available information about the New Cooperative cyber attack and catalogs anomalous observables for each technique employed in the attack. This analysis is based upon the methodology of the Cybersecurity for the Operational Technology Environment (CyOTE) program. The BlackMatter ransomware was first identified in July 2021 and is reported to have infected more than 50 corporations around the world. , The Iowa-based grain cooperative, New Cooperative, was impacted by the BlackMatter ransomware on or before 18 September 2021. The adversary likely resided on New Cooperative’s networks for 15 days prior to encrypting its network and demanding New Cooperative pay $5.9 million in ransom by 25 September to unlock systems and prevent 1 terabyte (TB) of sensitive data from being publicly released. It is not clear if New Cooperative paid the ransom. The full impact of the ransomware attack is not known; however, according to New Cooperative’s general manager, the attack caused the company’s automated processes to revert back to processes used in the 1970s. , As of 6 October, only 50 percent of New Cooperative’s operations were utilizing automated processes. The company took eight weeks to rebuild the entire network and information technology (IT) systems from the ground up, which puts the date of fully recovery around 13 November. Researchers and analysts identified 20 unique techniques utilized during the attack with a total of 404 observables using MITRE ATT&CK® for Industrial Control Systems. The CyOTE program assesses observables accompanying techniques used prior to the triggering event to identify opportunities to detect malicious activity. If observables accompanying the attack techniques are perceived and investigated prior to the triggering event, earlier comprehension of malicious activity can take place. Seventeen of the identified techniques used during the New Cooperative cyber attack were precursors to the triggering event. Analysis identified 360 observables associated with these precursor techniques, 284 of which were assessed to have an increased likelihood of being perceived in the 15 days preceding the triggering event. The response and comprehension time could have been reduced if the observables had been identified earlier. The information gathered in this report contributes to a library of observables tied to a repository of artifacts, data sources, and technique detection references for practitioners and developers to support the comprehension of indicators of attack. Asset owners and operators can use these products if they experience similar observables or to prepare for comparable scenarios.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗

Accelerated Sparse Recovery via Gradient Descent with Nonlinear Conjugate Gradient Momentum

This paper applies an idea of adaptive momentum for the nonlinear conjugate gradient to accelerate optimization problems in sparse recovery. Specifically, we consider two types of minimization problems: a (single) differentiable function and the sum of a non-smooth function and a differentiable function. In the first case, we adopt a fixed step size to avoid the traditional line search and establish the convergence analysis of the proposed algorithm for a quadratic problem. This acceleration is further incorporated with an operator splitting technique to deal with the non-smooth function in the second case. As a result, we use the convex ι 1 and the nonconvex ι 1 – ι 2 functionals as two case studies to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed approaches over traditional methods.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Differentiable physics-enabled closure modeling for Burgers’ turbulence

Abstract Data-driven turbulence modeling is experiencing a surge in interest following algorithmic and hardware developments in the data sciences. We discuss an approach using the differentiable physics paradigm that combines known physics with machine learning to develop closure models for Burgers’ turbulence. We consider the one-dimensional Burgers system as a prototypical test problem for modeling the unresolved terms in advection-dominated turbulence problems. We train a series of models that incorporate varying degrees of physical assumptions on an a posteriori loss function to test the efficacy of models across a range of system parameters, including viscosity, time, and grid resolution. We find that constraining models with inductive biases in the form of partial differential equations that contain known physics or existing closure approaches produces highly data-efficient, accurate, and generalizable models, outperforming state-of-the-art baselines. Addition of structure in the form of physics information also brings a level of interpretability to the models, potentially offering a stepping stone to the future of closure modeling.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Modeling Data Movement Performance on Heterogeneous Architectures

The cost of data movement on parallel systems varies greatly with machine architecture, job partition, and nearby jobs. Performance models that accurately capture the cost of data movement provide a tool for analysis, allowing for communication bottlenecks to be pinpointed. Modern heterogeneous architectures yield increased variance in data movement as there are a number of viable paths for inter-GPU communication. In this paper, we present performance models for the various paths of inter-node communication on modern heterogeneous architectures, including the trade-off between GPUDirect communication and copying to CPUs. Furthermore, we present a novel optimization for inter-node communication based on these models, utilizing all available CPU cores per node. Finally, we show associated performance improvements for MPI collective operations.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

A Numerical Scheme for Wave Turbulence: 3-Wave Kinetic Equations

Here, we introduce a finite volume scheme to solve a special case of isotropic 3-wave kinetic equations. We test our numerical solution against theoretical results concerning the long time behavior of the energy and observe that our solutions verify the energy cascade phenomenon. To our knowledge, this is the first numerical scheme that can capture the long time asymptotic behavior of solutions to those isotropic 3-wave kinetic equations, where the energy cascade can be observed. Our numerical energy cascade rates are in good agreement with previously obtained theoretical results. The finite volume scheme given here relies on a new identity, allowing one to reduce the number of terms needed in the collision operators.

3-wave equation↗

Cooperative Systems in Presence of Cyber-Attacks: A Unified Framework for Resilient Control and Attack Identification

Here, this paper considers a cooperative control problem in presence of unknown attacks. The attacker aims at destabilizing the consensus dynamics by intercepting the system’s communication network and corrupting its local state feedback. We first revisit the virtual network based resilient control proposed in our previous work and provide a new interpretation and insights into its implementation. Based on these insights, a novel distributed algorithm is presented to detect and identify the compromised communication links. It is shown that it is not possible for the adversary to launch a harmful and stealthy attack by only manipulating the physical states being exchanged via the network. In addition, a new virtual network is proposed which makes it more difficult for the adversary to launch a stealthy attack even though it is also able to manipulate information being exchanged via the virtual network. A numerical example demonstrates that the proposed control framework achieves simultaneously resilient operation and real-time attack identification.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Convex Relaxations of Maximal Load Delivery for Multi-Contingency Analysis of Joint Electric Power and Natural Gas Transmission Networks

Recent increases in gas-fired power generation have engendered increased interdependencies between natural gas and power transmission systems. These interdependencies have amplified existing vulnerabilities in gas and power grids, where disruptions can require the curtailment of load in one or both systems. Although typically operated independently, coordination of these systems during severe disruptions can allow for targeted delivery to lifeline services, including gas delivery for residential heating and power delivery for critical facilities. To address the challenge of estimating maximum joint network capacities under such disruptions, we consider the task of determining feasible steady-state operating points for severely damaged systems while ensuring the maximal delivery of gas and power loads simultaneously, represented mathematically as the nonconvex joint Maximal Load Delivery (MLD) problem. To increase its tractability, we present a mixed-integer convex relaxation of the MLD problem. Then, to demonstrate the relaxation’s effectiveness in determining bounds on network capacities, exact and relaxed MLD formulations are compared across various multi-contingency scenarios on nine joint networks ranging in size from 25 to 1191 nodes. The relaxation-based methodology is observed to accurately and efficiently estimate the impacts of severe joint network disruptions, often converging to the relaxed MLD problem’s globally optimal solution within ten seconds.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

An Evaluation of Sustainable Power System Resilience in the Face of Severe Weather Conditions and Climate Changes: A Comprehensive Review of Current Advances

Natural disasters pose significant threats to power distribution systems, intensified by the increasing impacts of climate changes. Resilience-enhancement strategies are crucial in mitigating the resulting social and economic damages. Hence, this review paper presents a comprehensive exploration of weather management strategies, augmented by recent advancements in machine learning algorithms, to show a sustainable resilience assessment. By addressing the unique challenges posed by diverse weather conditions, we propose flexible and intelligent solutions to navigate disaster complications effectively. This proposition emphasizes sustainable practices that not only address immediate disaster complications, but also prioritize long-term resilience and adaptability. Furthermore, the focus extends to mitigation strategies and microgrid technologies adapted to distribution systems. Through statistical analysis and mathematical formulations, we highlight the critical role of these advancements in mitigating severe weather conditions and ensuring the system reliability.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

NREL Project CloudZero

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL's) CloudZero project is evaluating the ability to reliably and securely manage complex energy systems from the cloud, identifying major technical and regulatory barriers to cloud adoption, suggesting new security controls and best practices for cloud applications, and empowering industry to embrace the cloud, where appropriate.

cloud↗

Advantages of imperfect dice rolls over coin flips for random number generation

With an eye toward neural-inspired probabilistic computation, recent work has examined the development of true random number generators via stochastic devices. Typically, these devices are operated in a two-state regime to produce a sequence of binary outcomes (i.e., coin flips). However, there is no guarantee that stochastic devices will infallibly produce fair outputs and small deviations from a uniform distribution may have unwanted complications in applications. Using mathematical analysis, we contend that opting instead for a multi-state device (i.e., a dice roll) has benefits in these unfair paradigms. To demonstrate these benefits, we apply this framework to the analysis of a tunnel diode operated in a stochastic regime. In particular, interpreting the binary stochastic output of the tunnel diode as a multi-state die roll output also sees advantages in remaining closer to uniform. Overall, our approach provides a compelling argument for mathematical driven co-design and development of novel probabilistic computing devices and hardware.

applied mathematics↗

State-of-the-art short-term electricity market operation with solar generation: A review

With the accelerating penetration of solar energy in energy systems, market operations concerning the solar-associated intermittency are widely discussed. How to correctly model the solar generation in the market and solve the uncertainty-based operation problems call for solutions. Unlike other renewable resources, solar power can be more easily applied to the demand side through behind-the-meter installations in a distributed manner with significant future extensibility. The corresponding operational rules in the markets are largely being revised. Over the past two decades, with the development of deregulated power markets, numerous studies related to uncertainty-based market operations tend to transform the market from a deterministic and centralized framework to a stochastic and decentralized one. As the relevant literature is most recent, this paper reviews their contributions to electricity market operations with solar integration and underlines the research directions of this topic and ongoing industry practices. A thorough review of the electricity markets worldwide with solar energy is provided. A variety of proposed mathematical solutions to the problem are also addressed.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗