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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 343 records · Page 19

Materials for Advanced Ultrasupercritical Steam Turbines Task 3: Materials for Non-Welded Rotors, Buckets, and BoltingMaterials for Advanced Ultrasupercritical Steam Turbines

The primary objective of the task was to characterize the materials suitable for mechanically coupled rotor, buckets and bolting operating with an inlet temperature of 760°C (1400°F). A previous study DOE-FC26-05NT42442, identified alloys such as Haynes®282®, Nimonic 105, Inconel 740, Waspaloy, Nimonic 263, and Inconel 617 as potential alloys that met the requirements for the necessary operating conditions. Of all the identified materials, Waspaloy has been widely utilized in the aviation industry in the form of disk and other smaller forgings, and sufficient material properties and vendor experience exist, for the design and manufacture of large components. The European program characterizing materials for A-USC conditions are evaluating Nimonic 263 and Inconel 617 for large components. Inconel 740 has been studied extensively as a part of the boiler consortium and is code approved. Therefore, the consortium focused efforts in the development of material properties for Haynes®282® and Nimonic 105 to avoid replicative efforts and provide material choices/trade off during the detailed design of large components. Commercially available Nimonic 105 and Haynes®282® were evaluated for microstructural stability by long term thermal exposure studies. Material properties requisite for design such as tensile, creep / rupture, low cycle fatigue, high cycle fatigue, fatigue crack growth rate, hold-time fatigue, fracture toughness, and stress relaxation are documented in this report. A key requisite for the success of the program was a need demonstrate the successful scale up of the down-selected alloys, to large components. All property evaluations in the past were performed on commercially available bar/billet forms. Components in power plant equipment such as rotors and castings are several orders in magnitude larger and there is a real need to resolve the scalability issue. Nimonic 105 contains high volume fraction y’ [>50%], and hence the alloy is best suited for smaller forging and valve internals, bolts, smaller blades. Larger Nimonic 105 forgings, would precipitate y’ during the surface cooling during forging, leading to surface cracks. The associate costs in forging Nimonic 105 to larger sizes [hotter dies, press requirements], were beyond the scope of this task and not investigated further. Haynes®282® has 20 - 25% volume fraction y’ was a choice for large components, albeit untested. A larger ingot diameter is pre-requisite for a larger diameter forging and achieves the “typically” accepted working ratio of 2.5-3:1. However, Haynes®282® is manufactured via a double melt process [VIM-ESR] limited by size [<18-16” diameter], which limited the maximum size of the final forging. The report documents the development of a 24” diameter triple melt ingot, surpassing the current available technology. A second triple melt ingot was manufactured and successfully forged into a 44” diameter disk. The successful developments in triple melting process and the large diameter forging of Haynes®282® resolved the scalability issues and involved the first of its kind attempt in the world for this alloy. The complete characterization of Haynes®282® forging was performed and documented in this report. The dataset from the commercially available Haynes®282® [grain size ASTM 3-4] and the finer grain size disk forging [ASTM 8-9] offer an additional design tradeoff to balance creep and fatigue during the future design process.

Saha, Deepak↗

"FACILS 2014: Microbially-driven facilitation systems in environmental biotechnology" (hereafter "FACILS") presented here by the European Commission (EC)-United States (US) Task Force on Biotechnology Research

As we enter the 21st century, the sustainability of the biosphere is a global challenge that can best be met with a global response. This includes how we train and promote our next generation of research scientists in the emerging arenas of genome-enabled biology and a bio-based economy. It is this fundamental issue that formed the motivation for designing and conducting a shortcourse entitled “FACILIS 2014: Microbially-driven facilitation systems in environmental biotechnology” (hereafter “FACILIS”) presented here by the European Commission (EC)-United States (US) Task Force on Biotechnology Research. This WG was established in 1994 under the umbrella of the US-EC Task Force on Biotechnology Research, a transatlantic collaborative group overseen by the US Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the EC. The Environmental Biotechnology Working Group maintains several goals, including establishing research links between scientists in EU countries and the US and fostering the careers of junior scientists from both sides of the Atlantic to the global nature of scientific cooperation. To that end, a shortcourse was held at the University of Milan in Italy on July 12-25 2014 organized around cross-cutting themes of genomic science and designed to attract a stellar group of interdisciplinary early carrier researchers. A total of 22 students, 10 from the US and 12 from the EU participated. The course provided them with hands-on experience with the latest scientific methods in genomics and bioinformatics; using a format that combines lectures, laboratory research and field work with the final goal to enable researchers to finally turn data into knowledge.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Design and Operation of Power Systems with Large Amounts of Wind Power: Final Summary Report, IEA WIND Task 25, Phase Three 2012-2014

This report summarizes recent findings on wind integration from the 16 countries participating in the International Energy Agency (IEA) Wind collaboration research Task 25 in 2012-2014. Both real experience and studies are reported. The national case studies address several impacts of wind power on electric power systems. In this report, they are grouped under long-term planning issues and short-term operational impacts. Long-term planning issues include grid planning and capacity adequacy. Short-term operational impacts include reliability, stability, reserves, and maximizing the value in operational timescales (balancing related issues). The first section presents variability and uncertainty of power system-wide wind power, and the last section presents recent wind integration studies for higher shares of wind power. Appendix 1 provides a summary of ongoing research in the national projects contributing to Task 25 in 2015-2017.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

An Asynchronous Task-based Fan-Both Sparse Cholesky Solver

Systems of linear equations arise at the heart of many scientific and engineering applications. Many of these linear systems are sparse; i.e., most of the elements in the coefficient matrix are zero. Direct methods based on matrix factorizations are sometimes needed to ensure accurate solutions. For example, accurate solution of sparse linear systems is needed in shift-invert Lanczos to compute interior eigenvalues. The performance and resource usage of sparse matrix factorizations are critical to time-to-solution and maximum problem size solvable on a given platform. In many applications, the coefficient matrices are symmetric, and exploiting symmetry will reduce both the amount of work and storage cost required for factorization. When the factorization is performed on large-scale distributed memory platforms, communication cost is critical to the performance of the algorithm. At the same time, network topologies have become increasingly complex, so that modern platforms exhibit a high level of performance variability. This makes scheduling of computations an intricate and performance-critical task. In this paper, we investigate the use of an asynchronous task paradigm, one-sided communication and dynamic scheduling in implementing sparse Cholesky factorization (symPACK) on large-scale distributed memory platforms. Our solver symPACK relies on efficient and flexible communication primitives provided by the UPC++ library. Performance evaluation shows good scalability and that symPACK outperforms state-of-the-art parallel distributed memory factorization packages, validating our approach on practical cases.

Jacquelin, Mathias↗

Methods, systems and computer program products for determining systems re-tasking

Methods, systems and computer program products to measure system re-taskability are disclosed. The methods, systems and computer program products may be used in the design of a new or redesign of an existing System of Systems (SoS). Systems re-tasking (aka substitutability or stand-in redundancy) is the process of using different systems to substitute for non-operational systems to meet required functionality, or using multi-function systems to fulfill higher-priority tasks. This ability can increase the overall operational availability of the SoS; it can also increase the adaptability and resilience of the SoS to unknown or changing conditions. The disclosed methods, systems and computer products include simulating an SoS over time, replacing systems that become non-operational (or damaged) with systems that can fulfill the same capability in order to maximize the SoS availability.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

An Integrated Approach to Scaling Task-Based Runtime Systems for Next Generation Engineering problems

The need to scale next-generation industrial engineering problems to the largest computational platforms presents unique challenges. Such problems may have complex coupled multi-physics models, as well as computationally and communication intensive algorithms not often seen in standard academic problems, while also needing high-demand I/O for analysis purposes. In such cases even codes with good existing scaling properties may need significant changes, addressed in a cross-cutting way to solve such problems at extreme scales. These challenges relate to system components that were not previously problematic on less complex problems and/or at smaller computational scales. This paper illustrates these challenges for Uintah, a highly scalable asynchronous many-task runtime system being applied to the modeling of a 1000 MWe ultra-supercritical coal boiler. In order to model this formidable, production engineering problem, not only was an integrated approach needed that built upon existing scalable components in areas such as complex stencil calculations and linear algebra, but the significant challenges of high demand I/O, complex task graphs, and infrastructure inefficiencies also had to be addressed. This integrated approach allowed this problem to run on 256K CPU cores on Mira, with good weak scaling to 512K CPU cores and similar strong scaling, except for radiation. The need for strong scaling of a new ray tracing-based radiation model required substantial Uintah infrastructure improvements before 119K CPU cores and 7.5K GPUs on Titan could be used, with scaling out to 256K CPU cores and 16K GPUs. The resulting code demonstrates not only excellent overall scalability but a significant improvement in overall performance for the full-scale, production boiler problem.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

FCIC Task X - Project Management and Consortium Overview

The objective of the FCIC Program Management Task is to provide scientific direction and leadership to the nine participating labs, and to provide robust project management to ensure robust operational planning and execution. The FCIC directly supports the BETO portfolio by focusing on feedstock variability across the bioenergy value chain, and the Project Management Task ensures the smooth operation of the FCIC, making sure that the 9 independent projects with different objectives have a common focus - understanding and mitigating the impacts of feedstock variability across the value chain.

bioenergy↗

Task 2.1: Adsorption-Based ISPR for BETO-Relevant Bioproducts

This task focuses on the development of adsorption-based in situ product recovery (ISPR) integrated with simulated moving bed chromatography for the recovery and purification of carboxylate products that are relevant to BETO. ISPR has been pursued previously in the Separations Consortium to recover carboxylic acids near or below their pKa values with liquid-liquid extraction coupled to downstream distillation. However, there are many acid products in the BETO portfolio that require neutralization well above their pKa values wherein ISPR could still be a major benefit to the bioprocess performance, including muconic acid, beta-ketoadipic acid, 3-hydroxypropionic acid, itaconic acid, butyric acid, and others. In this task, we are combining dynamic filtration with a rotating ceramic disk, resin capacity measurements, tailored resin synthesis, and simulated moving bed chromatography into an ISPR system that can be used to recover BETO-relevant carboxylates from bioreactor cultivations. We are working across process scales and using computational modeling where applicable alongside techno-economic analysis and life cycle assessment to understand major cost, energy, and GHG emissions drivers. The impact of this project will be a bench-scale integrated approach to recover carboxylate products in situ, which will reduce the waste generation from biological carboxylate production processes and improve the productivities of biological systems.

bio-based acid↗

A Framework to Integrate Human Reliability Data Obtained from Different Sources Based on the Complexity Scores of Proceduralized Tasks

For many decades, PSA (Probabilistic Safety Assessment) or PRA (Probabilistic Risk Assessment) techniques have been used to enhance the operational safety of nuclear power plants (NPPs) based on the consideration of potential hazards that could result in an unexpected consequence. As human error is one of the potential hazards, diverse human reliability analysis (HRA) methods have been proposed to provide a systematic way to estimate the likelihood of human errors (i.e., human error probability, HEP) in specific task contexts. Accordingly, it is evident that the quality of HRA results strongly depends on the credibility of HEP estimations. This implies that, in terms of enhancing this credibility, the collection of raw information (HRA data) that is helpful for understating when and why human errors occur is a crucial issue. In order to address this issue, in this study, the feasibility of a framework to integrate HRA data obtained from different sources is investigated based on the complexity of proceduralized tasks.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

Principles and Tasks of the New Regulatory System for Radioactive Waste Management in the Russian Federation - 12020

This year the Federal Law 'On Radioactive Waste management' was adopted in the Russian Federation. The law significantly changes the existing radioactive waste management regulatory system and assigns a lot of new tasks in order to implement new principles and overcome inevitable respective difficulties. Nuclear Safety Institute was largely involved in the process of the development of the law as well as its further co-ordination among the stakeholders, during which some important initial provisions were excluded. In the paper special features of the Russian safety regulation system for radioactive waste management are analyzed. Most significant requirements adopted by the law as well as tasks and expected difficulties related to its implementation are discussed. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

Robotic Grasp Assistance for Decontamination and Decommissioning Tasks: Initial Applications with RoboGlove - 17310

RoboGlove, developed by NASA and General Motors, is a wearable robotic grasp assist device designed to augment human strength and endurance during manual tasks. Recent testing as part of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management's (DOE-EM's) Science of Safety Initiative has provided the opportunity to explore the glove's use within the context of decontamination and decommissioning work. Capable of providing a wearer with an additional 65-90 N (15-20 lb) of additional continuous grip strength, RoboGlove has the potential to decrease fatigue during long duration tasks, thereby reducing the risk of repetitive stress and other work related injuries. While current work at NASA focuses on integrating robotic grasp assistance with space suit gloves, the effort described herein focuses on the terrestrial application of RoboGlove to DOE-EM's cleanup mission. Following a brief technical description of RoboGlove, testing by United Steelworkers Union personnel at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant is described. Members of the workforce, in collaboration with NASA technologists, studied RoboGlove utility and performance while using tools common to the nuclear decontamination and decommissioning efforts at the plant. Results and feedback from this testing aim at identifying candidate activities for which RoboGlove holds particular promise as a workforce tool, in an effort to facilitate the infusion of robotic technology into routine workflow and processes across the DOE complex for the benefit of worker safety and health. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

Operator Evaluation of Mobile Robotic Systems for Inventory, Inspection, and Contamination Survey Tasks in D and D Environments - 17314

The Nuclear and Applied Robotics Group (NRG) has developed two mobile systems with simple, intuitive Human-Machine Interfaces (HMIs). Thus, the systems can be operated by operators who are not robotics experts to perform inventory, inspection and routine contamination surveys in areas where Special Nuclear Material (SNM) is stored and handled. This effort presents feedback collected from EM operators using the two systems at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, OH who used the robotic solutions to perform tasks on site and with minimal training. This approach has the potential to address issues related to ALARA, ergonomics, and reliably completing dull, repetitive tasks while maintaining domain-specific experts in the control loop. The two systems were shipped to - and demonstrated in - a DOE designated area and demonstrated completing contamination testing using a combination of real and surrogate sensors. This paper reviews the initial hardware development, demonstration requirements, and the modifications/improvements made to deploy the systems for this effort. It then summarizes the feedback garnered from EM operators who used the systems at the DOE facility. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

TeMoto 2.0: Source Agnostic Command-to-Task Architecture Enabling Increased Autonomy in Remote Systems - 18438

Tele-operated robots provide safe means for executing tasks in hazardous environments such as underground mines, space, disaster and legacy nuclear facility decommissioning sites, etc. The desire to use these systems in increasingly complex and dynamic environments presents a variety of technical and educational challenges including (i) insufficient field knowledge of system developers, (ii) restricted data bandwidth, and (iii) insufficient operator situational awareness. Lack of field knowledge is commonly addressed by actively educating robotics engineers in the perspective areas. The Nuclear Robotics Group (NRG) at the University of Texas at Austin trains students to have the necessary skill and knowledge in both the robotic and nuclear domains. To address the second two deficiencies, the NRG has developed TeMoto: a speech and hand gesture based supervisory teleoperation software. TeMoto addresses several chronic technical issues associated with most teleoperation systems including the operator's situational awareness, communication delays and interface intuitiveness. This paper reviews recent efforts to update and extend the TeMoto architecture (TeMoto 2.0) to support more complex semi-autonomous behaviors and eliminate the unnecessary and confining concept of a human interface as a separate component from the rest of the robot's sensors and actuators. This paper outlines the key architectural changes and demonstrations using a dual-arm mobile manipulator to complete semi-autonomous tasks. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

Keep It Smart and Simple - Henriette - The Advanced Designed Drum Gripper for Remote Handling Tasks - 19327

A power manipulator has many applications in the handling, treatment and packaging of radioactive waste. In high radiation environments, where humans cannot work safely, a power manipulator is essential to perform difficult and heavy tasks. For more than 40 years, Waelischmiller has provided power manipulators to the nuclear market. Specifically in a high radiation nuclear environment, electrical driven manipulators are preferred. The basic design of a power manipulator is divided into the following parts: Bridge, carriage, telescopic mast and manipulator arm. All parts are customizable in length, width and capacity. The standard power manipulator version is equipped with a manipulator arm. For the nuclear waste disposal industry, there is a special need for a drum gripper. Drums are used for packing low, medium or high activated material and for storage. After packing, the drums must be handled remotely. For both tasks, a power manipulator with a drum gripper is needed. For this project KTE (Kerntechnische Entsorgung Karlsruhe GmbH) required a total refurbishment of equipment in a cell used for handling, sorting and packaging radioactive waste drums. The power manipulator was obsolete and provided low availability and through put. This cell was an essential asset in their decommissioning process and was impacting KTE's ability to meet their volume objectives. Our challenge was to develop a new system with few details from the original cell construction. The new manipulator must meet all capabilities of the old system and in addition have the ability to achieve 180 degree tilting of the drums. An additional challenge was the requirement to use the existing rails in the cell which were very close to the roof structure which required a special design. Our project, named internally Henriette, is the first of its kind. The drum gripper is based on the power manipulator A1000 series. The biggest challenges in this project were to adapt the standard components of the power manipulator to the non-standard type of gripper to have 180 deg. tilting of the drum and a handling capacity of 1200 kg in the whole working range. The new manipulator fits to the old rails and is mountable in a hot cell with restricted access and can operate with the other A1000 manipulator which is located in the cell. The result is a system with no external wiring, maintenance-free and easy to decontaminate. Other features include a 5 t auxiliary hoist on additional and parallel carriages, emergency drives for bridge and carriage, emergency drive for telescope turn movement and emergency lifting unit for telescope. A tilt and pan holder for camera on the telescope and external mechanical emergency drives on the gripper were also essential. This paper will address the complexity, challenges and engineering ingenuity required to replace very old and obsolete equipment with a state-of-the-art system within very limited physical space and within a high radiation environment. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

Overview of International Activities in Hydrogen System Safety in IEA Hydrogen TCP Task 43

Safety and reliability have long been recognized as key issues for the development, commercialization, and implementation of new technologies and infrastructure, and hydrogen systems are no exception to this rule. Reliability engineering, quantitative risk assessment (QRA), and knowledge exchange each play a key role in proactive addressing safety - before problems happen - and help us learn from problems if they happen. Many international research activities are focusing on both reliability and risk assessment for hydrogen systems. However, the element of knowledge exchange is sometimes less visible. To support international collaboration and knowledge exchange, the International Energy Agency (IEA) convened a new Technology Collaboration Program, "Task 43: Safety and Regulatory Aspects of Emerging Large Scale Hydrogen Energy Applications" started in June 2022. Within Task 43, Subtask E focuses on Hydrogen Systems Safety. This paper discusses the structure of the Hydrogen Systems Safety subtask and the aligned activities and introduces opportunities for future work.

HYDROGEN↗

Briefing Human Reliability Analysis Tasks in the KINS-INL Project

Under the SPP with Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety (KINS) (SPP No. 24SP91), INL research team has a plan to visit KINS on December 3, 2024 and have a project meeting with KINS in-person. INL researchers will give this presentation about what we have done on Task 2 under the contract as below. Task 2: Support KINS in the treatment of human actions. INL efforts consist of: Provide technical expertise on recovery analysis based on INL’s methods or recent research Provide technical expertise on dependency analysis based on INL’s methods or recent research Provide technical expertise on analyzing the effects of HSI degradation on operator actions

99 - GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

IEA Wind TCP Task 55: The IEA Wind 740-10-MW Reference Offshore Wind Plants

This report describes the first version of the regular and irregular IEA-Wind 740-10MW Reference Offshore Wind Plants (v0.1). The two plants have been developed within the second work package of IEA Wind Task 37 on Wind Energy Systems Engineering: Integrated RD&D. The plants aim at acting as reference for future research projects on wind energy, representing modern offshore wind plants. The designs are based on the Borssele III and IV offshore wind plant projects. The associated wind resource, allotted territory, and bathymetry measurements are used to define the site characteristics. 74 IEA 10-MW Reference Wind Turbines are arranged in two suggested layouts that are optimized for maximum annual energy production: one regular grid layout, one irregular layout. These reference wind plants have been described using the WindIO ontology and have been made available through an open-source repository on GitHub.

17 WIND ENERGY↗