Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “techniques and instrumentation”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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

At least 343 records · Page 19
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2020

ANNIE: Neutron multiplicity in neutrino interactions and new technologies

The Accelerator Neutrino Neutron Interaction Experiment (ANNIE) aims at measuring the neutron abundance in the final state of neutrino-nucleus interactions. This measurement will have a direct impact on our understanding of neutrino interactions and will lead to a better reduction of systematic errors and an improvement of signal-background discrimination in future large neutrino detectors, thus impacting long baseline oscillation experiments as well as proton decay searches and supernova detection. With a volume of about 26 tons of pure water doped with gadolinium to enhance neutron tagging efficiency, ANNIE will provide a measurement of the neutron yield of neutrino interactions as a function of the neutrino energy in the well-characterized Booster Neutrino Beam at Fermilab. The modularity of ANNIE will allow it to perform several fundamental tests of new technologies to be used in neutrino detectors, such as a novel kind of photodetectors called Large Area Picosecond Photodetectors and Water-based Liquid Scintillator, a newly-developed detection medium. The technology behind the ANNIE detector will have a noticeable impact on the development of future large water Cherenkov detectors as well as on detection techniques for neutrino physics.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2024

Extracting LANSCE Macrobunch Charge from WNR Fast Pickoff [Slides]

Over several days around December 18, 2023, high-charge minipulses and macropulses were sent to Target 2, also known as the Blue Room. This report presents the calibration of a stripline-type current monitor known as the Fast Pickoff, and subsequent charge data for many of these shots. This effort utilized a fast oscilloscope, a nearby Bergoz current monitor, and some data-reduction techniques.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Shielding an Infrasound Sensor for INL’s Fuel Conditioning Facility

Idaho National Laboratory (INL) has been pyroprocessing spent fuel from the Experimental Breeder Reactor II (EBR-II). This process occurs in the Fuel Conditioning Facility (FCF) which houses the treatment of DOE-owned sodium-bonded metal fuel. The electrometallurgical methods used in FCF treat the spent fuel from EBR-II for recycling of the uranium. The radiation field present inside FCF throughout the pyroprocessing stages affects any electronic sensors and devices that may be used for research. An example of such device is a seismoacoustic sensor which detects sound and vibration waves from the equipment in the facility. Seismoacoustic sensors are of interest to research nonproliferation techniques.

46 - INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AN↗
DOE OSTI2020

Use of Micro-Gravity Sensors for External Fluid Level Monitoring in Waste and Nuclear Related Applications - 20315

There are a number of applications in nuclear energy and hazardous waste disposal that require monitoring of fluids under extreme environments, including high levels of temperature, pressure, toxicity and radioactivity. Many of these applications will benefit from a monitoring technique that is external and non-invasive. Currently the sensors used are invasive, must reside inside the pressurized vessels and must penetrate the vessel walls, which can create a weakness in the vessel. Additionally, instruments that are used inside such containers must be exceptionally hardened to the environment. Information Systems Laboratories (ISL) has developed an external mass (gravimetric) measuring technique for monitoring nuclear coolant in Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), which will also work for measuring fluid levels in waste tanks, that avoids the problems inherent in invasive sensors. It utilizes a COTS gravitational sensor of unprecedented accuracy, leveraged via proper sensor placement geometry, to detect fluid changes of small amplitude from an outside position, obviating the need to penetrate the vessel. The technique is called Gravisense{sup TM}. ISL has proven via simulation and experiment that this concept can be usefully applied to monitoring fluid levels in both nuclear reactors and large waste tanks. Numerical simulation algorithms were developed to calculate the gravity effect of small changes in water level, which were verified by experiments at the NIST Physical Simulator facility at the Oregon State University. The measured ultralow noise levels of the superconducting gravimeter type which utilizes a Niobium sphere suspended in a magnetic field to attain its phenomenal accuracy, demonstrated that fluid levels in SMRs can be measured at least to within 3 cm. Furthermore, the method can distinguish between a contained leak (from reactor to containment vessel) from an external leak (from reactor to outside of containment). Additionally, simulations of waste canisters that hold spent fuel rods show that the fluid level measuring accuracy can potentially do better than 1 cm accuracy by measuring from below the vessel, and judicious placement of sensors on top of large waste tanks can potentially achieve a very impressive 2 mm measurement accuracy. These encouraging results prove that the Gravisense{sup TM} technique for fluid determination can be very useful in nuclear energy generation, testing, and research, as well as in waste monitoring situations that are difficult to monitor via traditional sensing technology. We believe that the next step should be to test the technique on canisters of the type that are currently storing waste in various DOE locations. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2021

The Instrument of the Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer

While X-ray spectroscopy, timing, and imaging have improved much since 1962 when the first astronomical nonsolar source was discovered, especially wi the launch of the Newton/X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission, Rossi/X-ray Timing Explorer, and Chandra/Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility, the progress of X-ray polarimetry has been meager. This is in part due to the lack of sensitive polarization detectors, which in turn is a result of the fate of approved missions and because celestial X-ray sources appear less polarized than expected. Only one positive measurement has been available until now: the Orbiting Solar Observatory measured the polarization of the Crab Nebula in the 1970s. The advent of microelectronics techniques has allowed for designing a detector based on the photoelectric effect of gas in an energy range where the optics are efficient at focusing in X-rays. Here we describe the instrument, which is the major contribution of the Italian collaboration to the Small Explorer mission called IXPE, the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, which will launch in late 2021. The instrument is composed of three detector units based on this technique and a detector service unit. Three mirror modules provided by Marshall Space Flight Center focus X-rays onto the detectors. We show the technological choices, their scientific motivation, and results from the calibration of the instrument. IXPE will perform imaging, timing, and energy-resolved polarimetry in the 2–8 keV energy band opening this window of X-ray astronomy to tens of celestial sources of almost all classes.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2026

An Integrated Framework for Memory-Centric Analysis: From Trace Collection to Co-Design

The memory wall phenomenon—where advances in processor performance significantly outpace those in memory subsystems—poses a fundamental challenge for contemporary computing systems. In memory-bound applications, memory subsystem behavior dominates performance, yet existing analysis approaches present significant limitations: detailed microarchitectural simulators require days to weeks to simulate modest workloads; hardware performance counters provide only aggregate statistics that obscure temporal and spatial access patterns; and scaled simulation approaches face challenges in capturing certain behaviors that emerge at larger scales. These limitations reflect a processor-centric design philosophy increasingly misaligned with memory-bound workloads where detailed understanding of memory access patterns, cache hierarchy interactions, and contention is critical for effective optimization. This paper presents an integrated framework for memory-centric analysis that enables effective hardware-software co-design. We describe practical trace collection techniques, including hardware-assisted processor tracing with minimal overhead and portable software-based instrumentation with statistical sampling. We present multi-perspective analysis methods that examine memory behavior from temporal, sequential, spatial, and relational viewpoints, revealing distinct optimization opportunities invisible in aggregate metrics. We detail an architectural modeling framework that uses sampled traces with temporal interpolation and confidence-based filtering to evaluate cache and memory configurations. Evaluation on representative benchmarks demonstrates that this framework achieves practical accuracy (L2 cache errors of 2.64\%, confidence-filtered L3 errors of 9.92\%, bandwidth errors of 7.33\%) while providing substantial speedup (26.8×) over cycle-accurate simulation, enabling rapid design space exploration. We demonstrate how this integrated framework enables systematic identification of both hardware optimizations (memory controller tuning, bank partitioning, NUMA configuration) and software optimizations (data layout restructuring, prefetching strategies, memory-aware scheduling). Through this comprehensive treatment of the memory-centric analysis pipeline—from trace collection through architectural modeling to co-design application—we provide researchers and practitioners with practical techniques for addressing memory bottlenecks in contemporary computing systems.

Gajaria, Dhruv Mayur↗
DOE OSTI2024

Shielding development for the spallation neutron source VENUS instrument

VENUS is a neutron imaging instrument that will use a broad range of neutron wavelengths, from epithermal to cold energies, and will include enhanced contrast mechanisms. It will offer novel energy-selective imaging techniques directly connecting complex engineering materials and systems’ structures, properties, and functions to reveal practical and fundamental answers about their real-world performance. Here, the instrument will be built at SNS beamline 10, facing the decoupled poisoned hydrogen moderator. The driving cost for the instrument is the beamline and instrument cave shielding. Final analyses were performed to evaluate the thickness and composition of shielding materials for the instrument cave and beamline to meet radiation safety criteria for the instrument to start up in 2024 after completing the SNS proton power upgrade.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Shielding development for the VENUS imaging instrument

VENUS is an imaging instrument that will use a broad range of neutron wavelengths, from epithermal to cold, will include enhanced contrast mechanisms, and will offer novel energy-selective imaging techniques that directly connect the structures, properties, and function of complex engineering materials and systems to reveal practical and fundamental answers about their real-world performance. The instrument is to be built at SNS beam line 10 and will face the decoupled poisoned hydrogen moderator. The driving cost for the instrument is the beam line and instrument cave shielding. Initial scoping analyses were performed to estimate thickness and composition of shielding materials for the instrument cave and beam line. In light of the upcoming Proton Power Upgrade (PPU) project, these transport analyses were performed for proton beam on target at 1.3 GeV and 2 MW.

Popova, Irina I.↗
DOE OSTI2021

DeepMerge – II. Building robust deep learning algorithms for merging galaxy identification across domains

In astronomy, neural networks are often trained on simulation data with the prospect of being used on telescope observations. Unfortunately, training a model on simulation data and then applying it to instrument data leads to a substantial and potentially even detrimental decrease in model accuracy on the new target dataset. Simulated and instrument data represent different data domains, and for an algorithm to work in both, domain-invariant learning is necessary. Here we employ domain adaptation techniques— Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD) as an additional transfer loss and Domain Adversarial Neural Networks (DANNs)— and demonstrate their viability to extract domain-invariant features within the astronomical context of classifying merging and non-merging galaxies. Additionally, we explore the use of Fisher loss and entropy minimization to enforce better in-domain class discriminability. We show that the addition of each domain adaptation technique improves the performance of a classifier when compared to conventional deep learning algorithms. We demonstrate this on two examples: between two Illustris-1 simulated datasets of distant merging galaxies, and between Illustris-1 simulated data of nearby merging galaxies and observed data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The use of domain adaptation techniques in our experiments leads to an increase of target domain classification accuracy of up to ~20%. With further development, these techniques will allow astronomers to successfully implement neural network models trained on simulation data to efficiently detect and study astrophysical objects in current and future large-scale astronomical surveys.

galaxies: interactions↗
DOE OSTI2025

Plutonium isotope ratio measurements by total evaporation-thermal ionization mass spectrometry (TE-TIMS): an evaluation of uncertainties using traceable standards from the New Brunswick Laboratory

The accuracy and precision of isotope amount ratio measurements using thermal ionization mass spectrometry (TIMS) instrumentation are described, and the measurement of Pu materials is emphasized. The mass fractionation observed for Am, Ga, Pu, and U for isotope amount ratio measurements using the total evaporation (TE) technique is compared with theoretical estimates to demonstrate the advantage of the TE methodology and to investigate systematic biases in the major isotope amount ratios of U and Pu certified reference material (CRM) standards from the U.S. provider of CRMs. The quality of the Pu isotopic data generated by TIMS instruments in an analytical laboratory is demonstrated by the application of the double ratio technique to estimate the 241 Pu half-life. Analytical data on traceable Pu CRMs from the New Brunswick Laboratory (NBL), generated as part of routine measurements supporting various programs, are used for this half-life estimation. Although the 241 Pu abundances in CRMs of 136, 137, 138, and 126-A are approximately 200–2000× smaller than those in the 241 Pu material used in the previous Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements (IRMM) evaluation of the 241 Pu half-life, the half-life value estimated in this work shows excellent agreement with the currently accepted value from the IRMM. This agreement also demonstrates the pedigree of the Pu isotopic standards from the NBL and the quality of the isotope amount ratio measurements using TIMS instrumentation. For both the major and minor Pu isotope amount ratios, this report describes the relative importance of the factors affecting the uncertainty of TIMS measurements, which are considered the gold standard in isotope ratio measurements (LA-UR-24-29199).

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

Optical image analysis for graphene layer detection: Enhanced green channel methodology

Graphene, a material of increasing research interest, requires accurate layer identification due to its sensitivity to layer count. Existing methods for graphene layer number identification are either time-consuming or of low accuracy, with high-accuracy methods often requiring expensive processes. This paper aims to address this challenge by proposing a cost-effective and efficient approach. Specifically, the current work highlights only the green channel—one of the three primary color channels (red, green, blue) that make up an optical image—from images of exfoliated graphene flakes for layer count identification. A linear regression is performed between pixel position and substrate green channel value, and this effect is subtracted from the entire optical image to mitigate background effects. By storing the range of green channel values for each type of flake (monolayer, bilayer, or tri-layer) based on a few images, we establish thresholds for identifying different types of layers in a particular setup. Additionally, our methodology allows for flexible threshold tuning using a single reference image, enabling adjustment to changes in detection setup such as illumination level, magnification, or microscope used. Finally, demonstrating high accuracy and flexibility, this methodology presents a suitable technique for graphene layer number identification without the need for large datasets or expensive instruments.

2D materials↗
DOE OSTI2021

Validating modern methods for impurity analysis in fluoride salts

Salt impurities directly affect degradation of structural materials in molten salt environments, so impurity quantification and analysis of salts is important for the deployment of next generation molten salt nuclear reactors. Despite the importance of moisture and other oxygen containing impurities, reliable methods of measuring these impurities are not well qualified or commonly used. Herein, we present two methods for analysis of oxygen content and one method for analysis of hydrogen content in fluoride salts demonstrated on two batches of LiF-NaF-KF (FLiNaK) salt with differing purity levels. The intentional addition of varying amounts of oxygen and hydrogen to the FLiNaK salt as internal standards produced a linear response using a commercial combustion analysis instrument, and measured amounts were consistent with the standards. Overall, these results indicate the technique is a valid method for measuring oxygen and hydrogen content in fluoride salts. Corrosion studies of 316H in FLiNaK revealed 5 times more mass loss in the salt containing more impurities including hydrogen and transition metals.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2023

AmeriFlux BASE data pipeline to support network growth and data sharing

Abstract AmeriFlux is a network of research sites that measure carbon, water, and energy fluxes between ecosystems and the atmosphere using the eddy covariance technique to study a variety of Earth science questions. AmeriFlux’s diversity of ecosystems, instruments, and data-processing routines create challenges for data standardization, quality assurance, and sharing across the network. To address these challenges, the AmeriFlux Management Project (AMP) designed and implemented the BASE data-processing pipeline. The pipeline begins with data uploaded by the site teams, followed by the AMP team’s quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC), ingestion of site metadata, and publication of the BASE data product. The semi-automated pipeline enables us to keep pace with the rapid growth of the network. As of 2022, the AmeriFlux BASE data product contains 3,130 site years of data from 444 sites, with standardized units and variable names of more than 60 common variables, representing the largest long-term data repository for flux-met data in the world. The standardized, quality-ensured data product facilitates multisite comparisons, model evaluations, and data syntheses.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Measurement of C P Violation Observables in D + → K − K + π + Decays

A search for violation of the charge-parity ( C P ) symmetry in the D + → K − K + π + decay is presented, with proton-proton collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5.4 fb − 1 , collected at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV with the LHCb detector. A novel model-independent technique is used to compare the D + and D − phase-space distributions, with instrumental asymmetries subtracted using the D s + → K − K + π + decay as a control channel. The p value for the hypothesis of C P conservation is 8.1%. The C P asymmetry observables A C P | S ϕ π + = ( 0.95 ± 0.4 3 stat ± 0.2 6 syst ) × 10 − 3 and A C P | S K ¯ * 0 K + = ( − 0.26 ± 0.5 6 stat ± 0.1 8 syst ) × 10 − 3 are also measured. These results show no evidence of C P violation and represent the most sensitive search performed through the phase space of a multibody decay. © 2024 CERN, for the LHCb Collaboration 2024 CERN

Aaij, R. (ORCID:0000000305331952)↗
DOE OSTI2020

Chapter 10 Supplement. Environmental Monitoring Technologies and Techniques for Detecting Interactions of Marine Animals with Marine Renewable Energy Devices

The Chapter 10 Supplementary Material provides information on instrument classes used for monitoring marine renewable energy devices such as passive acoustics, active acoustics, and video cameras. It also describes the applications and challenges of video cameras, and provides a technical glossary related to monitoring terminologies.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2020

A New CIERRA Gridded Product Climatology for LIS/OTD

The GLM-CIERRA processing generates two products: A level-2 cluster feature dataset that merges flashes that should have been a single flash following the clustering algorithm flash definition (for GLM, this is due to the LCFA thresholds); A set of level-3 gridded products including Flash Extent Density, Convective Probability, etc. The CIERRA Level-3 products are generated on a 0.1 degree grid. This is suboptimal given the spatial variations in GLM pixel size AND the size of gridpoints in the output grid. As a stepping-stone towards developing improved GLM-CIERRA grids, I am testing pixel matching techniques on the LIS/OTD data. The goal is to maintain accuracy while vastly improving computational efficiency. The CIERRA reclustering codes are also being applied to LIS / OTD to merge flashes split by the “first fit” clustering technique. The end result will be standardized grids at the nominal resolution of each instrument (5 km for LIS, 10 km for OTD) that take into account the pixel geometry for each event that comprises a given reclustered flash.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

WIRE-21 Sensor Irradiation Experiment Ready for HFIR Insertion

The ability to deploy new nuclear fuels for current or future reactor concepts requires a wealth of data regarding fuel performance during normal operation, anticipated operational occurrences, and design-basis accidents. Most of these data have historically been collected during experiments in materials test reactors, ideally with online instrumentation to collect as much data as possible. However, advanced instrumentation could also allow for in situ monitoring of fuel operating conditions during commercial reactor operation to maximize fuel utilization, reduce unnecessary conservativism in design margins, and improve operator understanding of limiting peaking factors. The latter approach would complicate fuel handling, particularly during refueling, unless the instrumentation could be placed inside the fuel rods and transmitted wirelessly to a receiver located outside the fuel’s primary pressure boundary. To this end, Westinghouse Electric Company (WEC) developed wireless sensors based on inductive coupling that can transmit information regarding fuel centerline temperatures and rod internal pressures wirelessly from within a fuel rod to a nearby instrument thimble. After testing these sensors in lower-power university research reactors, the next step is to perform high neutron fluence testing to characterize the performance of these wireless sensors under conditions that are more representative of the intended application—in this case, light-water reactors (LWRs). The removable Be (RB) positions of the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) provide the neutron flux, experiment volume, and access to instrument leads required to achieve these sensor testing goals. This report summarizes the design, analysis, and assembly of the Wireless Instrumented RB Experiment 2021 (WIRE-21). This is the most highly instrumented irradiation experiment ever performed in HFIR. The experiment will use seven different sensing techniques to measure temperature, pressure, neutron flux, and neutron fluence during reactor operation. In addition to WEC’s wireless temperature and pressure sensors, WIRE-21 includes an array of thermocouples, self-powered neutron detectors, spatially distributed fiber optic temperature sensors, passive SiC temperature monitors, and flux wires. The design of WIRE-21 and the cabling that was installed in HFIR also provide the infrastructure to enable accelerated, economical testing of advanced sensor technologies while leveraging the extremely high neutron flux that is available in HFIR. The containment for WIRE-21 is similar to previous RB irradiation vehicles but includes a few modifications, most notably the use of integrated compression seals to pass a larger number of sensor leads through the experiment’s pressure boundary. In addition to the sensor leads, inert gas lines are passed into the experiment to enable active temperature control and the ability to pneumatically actuate a bellows-driven pressure sensor. WIRE-21 is targeting component temperatures (300–350°C) and neutron fluence levels (~10 22 n/cm 2 ) that would be expected in the plenum region of LWR fuels, except for the active sensing region of the wireless temperature sensor, which is targeting LWR fuel centerline temperatures (~800–1,100°C). WIRE-21 was successfully assembled, passed all nondestructive examination, and was delivered to HFIR for insertion during upcoming cycle 498 (April 2022).

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2023

TRUST Sensors in Environments: Fiber Optic Displacement (SEFOD) Report

The sensors in environments for fiber optic displacement gages (SEFOD) testbed is a collaboration between W-13, and E-14. Testbeds in this project are focused on characterization and propagation of the uncertainty in experimental techniques used by E-14 in WR-like environments. Discussions with SMEs identified instrumentation as the best candidates for single feature testbeds addressing experimental uncertainty sources. Previous work and student projects have addressed instrumentation uncertainty quantification of thermocouples, load cells, and accelerometers.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗