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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 361 records · Page 20

Sensitivity Analyses for Monte Carlo Sampling-Based Particle Simulations

Computational design-based optimization is a well-used tool in science and engineering. Our report documents the successful use of a particle sensitivity analysis for design-based optimization within Monte Carlo sampling-based particle simulation—a currently unavailable capability. Such a capability enables the particle simulation communities to go beyond forward simulation and promises to reduce the burden on overworked analysts by getting more done with less computation.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

A Bayesian Approach for Estimating Uncertainty in Stochastic Economic Dispatch considering Wind Power Penetration

The increasing penetration of renewable energy resources in power systems, represented as random processes, converts the traditional deterministic economic dispatch problem into a stochastic one. To estimate the uncertainty in this stochastic economic dispatch problem for forecasting purposes, the conventional Monte-Carlo method is prohibitively time-consuming for practical applications. To overcome this problem, here we propose a novel Gaussian-process-emulator-based approach to quantify the uncertainty in the stochastic economic dispatch considering wind power penetration. Facing high-dimensional real-world data representing the correlated uncertainties from wind generation, a manifold-learning-based Isomap algorithm is proposed to efficiently represent the low-dimensional hidden probabilistic structure of the data. In this low-dimensional latent space, with Latin hypercube sampling as the computer experimental design, a Gaussian-process emulator is used, for the first time, to serve as a nonparametric, surrogate model for the original complicated stochastic economic dispatch model. This reduced-order representative allows us to evaluate the economic dispatch solver at sampled values with a negligible computational cost while maintaining a desirable accuracy. Simulation results conducted on the IEEE 118-bus test system reveal the impressive performance of the proposed method.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

Expanding the Domain of Applicability of Machine Learning Models with Limited Data for Drug Property Prediction

Accurate machine learning models for predicting small molecule interactions with biological targets are essential for therapeutic discovery, biothreat response, and computational drug design, but their performance is often limited for understudied targets with sparse experimental data. To address this challenge, we developed and evaluated methods to improve molecular property prediction under low-data conditions, using the NimA-related kinase (NEK) family as a proof-of-concept. This work focused on two complementary goals within the ATOM Modeling PipeLine (AMPL) and the Generative Molecular Design (GMD) loop: expanding model applicability through transfer learning, representation learning, feature scaling, sampling strategies, and active-learning-inspired compound selection; and enabling efficient virtual screening to prioritize compounds that balance predicted activity, design objectives, and synthetic accessibility.

organic↗

ATOMIC Simulations and Experimental Data for Sodium and Copper Mixtures

This data consists of simulations and experimental measurements of laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS). The simulations are produced by ATOMIC, a general purpose plasma modeling and kinetics code that has been designed to compute emission (or absorption) spectra from plasmas [1]. Our overall suite of simulations contains 12 sets of simulations: training and validation sets of simulations for each of two resolutions of each of sodium, copper, and mixtures of the two. The training data were produced using a 500-run design that varies input parameters temperature (T), electron density (Ne), proportion of sodium (pNa), and proportion of copper (pCu). The latter two variables sum to one and are unused in the single-element simulations. The validation data was produced with a 25-run design. The coarse simulations produce spectra over a range of 240nm - 880nm that roughly mimics the range collected by the ChemCam instrument on the Mars rover Curiosity. The fine resolution simulations produce spectra over a range of 550nm to 600nm and were produced to mimic the included experimental results. The experimental results cover four mixtures of sodium and copper. All data sets are kept in zip files whose names indicate the elemental composition (NaCu, Na, or Cu), resolution (coarse or fine), and purpose (training or validation) with file names numbered to indicate the line in the design files used to produce the simulation. The designs are provided as text files with names indicating their purpose. The experimental data is provided as a CSV file. See attached abstract for figures.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Inorganometallic Catalyst Design Center (ICDC) EFRC Accomplishments

The ICDC focused largely on heterogeneous catalysis of oxidative chemical transformations, especially those that came to prominence as natural gas (wet shale gas) supplanted crude oil as the primary feedstock in North America for carbon-based manufacturing of commodity chemicals. Driven by fracking-enabled access to enormous stores of shale-trapped wet gas, the feedstock change from oil to gas enabled a shift away from high-temperature catalytic breakdown of large hydrocarbons to catalytic build-up of C4, C3, C2, and C1 into desired intermediates, but now at much more modest temperatures. In turn, the much lower thermal force accompanying these kinds of reactions facilitates catalyst stabilization and characterization, including operando characterization, while slowing on-stream catalyst evolution (i.e., preserving catalyst structure), accommodating catalyst complexity, and enabling creation of uniform arrays of heterogeneous catalysts with single-atom or near-single-atom precision—at least for model systems. Together these features have proven to be a boon to hypothesis-driven catalysis science and to experimentally testable computation-based design advances and mechanism explication. The ICDC has greatly facilitated the integration of catalyst synthesis, advanced characterization, performance assessment, and computational elucidation—with advances in each of these realms spurring achievements in catalysis science and complementary realms.

03 NATURAL GAS↗

Design and Flow Considerations of Additively Manufactured, Internal Cooling Geometries for Small Industrial Gas Turbines

Additive manufacturing is now a mainstream technology and can be utilized to rapidly develop and test turbine airfoil cooling networks. This paper reports on an ongoing effort to integrate advanced internal cooling architectures in a realistic blade profile for test in a high-speed cascade. Airfoil cooling schemes were developed using reduced order modeling and computer aided design. However, the additive manufacturing impacts on cooling channel flow performance were unknown. Test articles consisting of typical cooling features and networks were derived from the designs and flow proved to identify additive manufacturing impacts on performance and develop guidelines to mitigate these impacts.

additive manufacturing↗

Electromagnetic Transient Simulation Algorithms for Evaluation of Large-Scale Extreme Fast Charging Systems (Distribution Grid Models)

The distribution and transmission grids are observing an increased penetration of power electronics in loads and generations. For example, there is increasing interest in integrating in extreme fast charging (XFC) systems for fast charging of electrical vehicles. As these systems are integrated, developing high-fidelity electromagnetic transient model of XFC systems in distribution grids and evaluating their interactions with the power grid would be of significant interest. This model will be utilized for design of XFC systems, to identify upgrades in distribution and/or transmission grids, for planning purposes by transmission planners or operators or owners, among others. It can also be utilized in operations for improved reliable performance of the grid and/or XFC station. The challenge with simulating these models is the high computational complexity introduced by the large number of states present in the system and the time-step needed to simulate the system. In this paper, advanced simulations algorithms are applied to reduce the computational complexity of simulating large-scale XFC systems. The algorithms include numerical stiffness-based segregation, time constant-based segregation, clustering and aggregation on differential algebraic equations (DAEs), and multi-order integration approaches. While the first three algorithms split the matrix that needs to be inverted from a large matrix to much smaller matrices, the final algorithm reduces the computational burden of applying higher-order integration approaches in the complete system. The comparison made in the previous sentence is with respect to use of homogeneous integration approaches used in conventional electromagnetic transient simulators like power systems computer aided design (PSCAD). The approaches mentioned here have resulted in speed-up of 36x in the simulation of a single distribution system with 15 XFCs.

Debnath, Suman↗

DL-TODA: A Deep Learning Tool for Omics Data Analysis

Metagenomics is a technique for genome-wide profiling of microbiomes; this technique generates billions of DNA sequences called reads. Given the multiplication of metagenomic projects, computational tools are necessary to enable the efficient and accurate classification of metagenomic reads without needing to construct a reference database. The program DL-TODA presented here aims to classify metagenomic reads using a deep learning model trained on over 3000 bacterial species. A convolutional neural network architecture originally designed for computer vision was applied for the modeling of species-specific features. Using synthetic testing data simulated with 2454 genomes from 639 species, DL-TODA was shown to classify nearly 75% of the reads with high confidence. The classification accuracy of DL-TODA was over 0.98 at taxonomic ranks above the genus level, making it comparable with Kraken2 and Centrifuge, two state-of-the-art taxonomic classification tools. DL-TODA also achieved an accuracy of 0.97 at the species level, which is higher than 0.93 by Kraken2 and 0.85 by Centrifuge on the same test set. Application of DL-TODA to the human oral and cropland soil metagenomes further demonstrated its use in analyzing microbiomes from diverse environments. Compared to Centrifuge and Kraken2, DL-TODA predicted distinct relative abundance rankings and is less biased toward a single taxon.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Reinforcement learning for block decomposition of planar CAD models

Abstract The problem of hexahedral mesh generation of general CAD models has vexed researchers for over 3 decades and analysts often spend more than 50% of the design-analysis cycle time decomposing complex models into simpler blocks meshable by existing techniques. The decomposed blocks are required for generating good quality meshes (tilings of quadrilaterals or hexahedra) suitable for numerical simulations of physical systems governed by conservation laws. We present a novel AI-assisted method for decomposing (segmenting) planar CAD (computer-aided design) models into well shaped rectangular blocks. Even though the simple examples presented here can also be meshed using many conventional methods, we believe this work is proof-of-principle of a AI-based decomposition method that can eventually be generalized to complex 2D and 3D CAD models. Our method uses reinforcement learning to train an agent to perform a series of optimal cuts on the CAD model that result in a good quality block decomposition. We show that the agent quickly learns an effective strategy for picking the location and direction of the cuts and maximizing its rewards. This paper is the first successful demonstration of an agent autonomously learning how to perform this block decomposition task effectively, thereby holding the promise of a viable method to automate this challenging process for more complex cases.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Computational Study of a Cryopump Design for Fusion Exhaust Gas Purification Using Direct Simulation Monte Carlo

Cryopump-based direct internal recycling (DIR) of fusion fuel is an attractive prospect because it provides pumping of helium ash from a reactor along with separation of helium and other impurities from the fuel. Previous studies have demonstrated a continuously regenerating cryopump, referred to as the Snail pump, that separates helium ash from fusion fuel for reactor-relevant flow rates. Here, in this study, a conceptual cryopump was designed as a proof-of-principle study to target other impurities, besides helium ash, from the fusion exhaust that would complement the Snail pump. The impurity-removal cryopump consists of four sets of chevron fins, two sets operating at 80 K and the other two at 30 K. A computational study using direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) was performed with a gas mixture of 96.5% D2, 2.0% He, and 0.5% each of CO2, N2, and CH4. In this configuration, 80 K chevron fin sets are capable of capturing CO2 and 30 K sets capable of capturing CO2, N2, and CH4. The computational study showed that the cryopump is capable of reducing the impurity content by more than two orders of magnitude from the flow.

Adhikari, Nirajan [Oak Ridge National Laboratory (↗

Fulcrum House – Towards a Sustainable Composite Architecture

In the last decades, the accessibility to digital fabrication technologies positioned composites as an affordable, structurally efficient and low-maintenance alternative to traditional mineral-based and high-energy materials. Of special interest are carbon nanotubes (CNT) and carbon foam (CFoam) from methane and coal pyrolysis respectively, as an environmentally friendly substitute to glass and carbon fiber. This paper presents the design of a principled single-family house, as a first case study to identify the constraints of such a material system, including technology gap, techno-economic and life cycle assessment, as well as building code requirements. In turn, the investigation proposes a suitable design-to-fabrication workflow, which potentially could bring CNT and CFoam materials to the construction of buildings.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗

Scalable Deep-Learning-Accelerated Topology Optimization for Additively Manufactured Materials

Topology optimization (TO) is a popular and powerful computational approach for designing novel structures, materials, and devices. Two computational challenges have limited the applicability of TO to a variety of industrial applications. First, a TO problem often involves a large number of design variables to guarantee sufficient expressive power. Second, many TO problems require a large number of expensive physical model simulations, and those simulations cannot be parallelized. To address these issues, we propose a general scalable deep-learning (DL) based TO framework, referred to as SDL-TO, which utilizes parallel schemes in high performance computing (HPC) to accelerate the TO process for designing additively manufactured (AM) materials. Unlike the existing studies of DL for TO, our framework accelerates TO by learning the iterative history data and simultaneously training on the mapping between the given design and its gradient. The surrogate gradient is learned by utilizing parallel computing on multiple CPUs incorporated with a distributed DL training on multiple GPUs. The learned TO gradient enables a fast online update scheme instead of an expensive update based on the physical simulator or solver. Using a local sampling strategy, we achieve to reduce the intrinsic high dimensionality of the design space and improve the training accuracy and the scalability of the SDL-TO framework. The method is demonstrated by benchmark examples and AM materials design for heat conduction. The proposed SDL-TO framework shows competitive performance compared to the baseline methods but significantly reduces the computational cost by a speed up of around 8.6x over the standard TO implementation.

Bi, Sirui↗

Co-design of Advanced Architectures for Graph Analytics using Machine Learning

A graph is an excellent way of representing relationships among entities. We can use graph analytics to synthesize and analyze such relational data, and extract relevant features that are useful for various tasks such as machine learning. Considering the crucial role of graph analytics in various domains, it is important and timely to investigate the right hardware configurations that can achieve optimal performance for graph workloads on future high-performance computing systems. Design space exploration studies facilitate the selection of appropriate configurations (e.g. memory) to achieve a desired system performance. Recently, the approach of accelerating graph analytics using persistent non-volatile memory has gained a lot of attention. Traditional system simulators such as Gem5 and NVMain can be used to explore the design space of these advanced memory architectures for graph workloads. However, these simulators are slow in execution thus limiting the efficiency of design space exploration studies. To overcome this challenge, we proposed a machine learning based approach to co-design advanced memory architectures for graph workloads. We tested our approach with DRAM, non-volatile memory, and hybrid memory (DRAM+NVM) using a breadth first search benchmark algorithm. Our results showed the applicability of the proposed machine learning based approach to the co-design of the advanced memory architectures. In this paper, we provide recommendations on selecting advanced memory architectures to achieve desired performance for graph workloads. We also discuss the performances of different machine learning models that were considered in this study.

Kurte, Kuldeep↗

RAP: Resource-aware Automated GPU Sharing for Multi-GPU Recommendation Model Training and Input Preprocessing

Ensuring high-quality recommendations for newly onboarded users requires the continuous retraining of Deep Learning Recommendation Models (DLRMs) with freshly generated data. To serve the online DLRM retraining, existing solutions use hundreds of CPU computing nodes designated for input preprocessing, causing significant power consumption that surpasses even the power usage of GPU trainers. To this end, we propose RAP, an end-to-end DLRM training framework that supports Resource-aware Automated GPU sharing for DLRM input Preprocessing and Training. The core idea of RAP is to accurately capture the remaining GPU computing resources during DLRM training for input preprocessing, achieving superior training efficiency without requiring additional resources. Specifically, RAP utilizes a co-running cost model to efficiently assess the costs of various input preprocessing operations, and it implements a resource-aware horizontal fusion technique that adaptively merges smaller kernels according to GPU availability, circumventing any interference with DLRM training. In addition, RAP leverages a heuristic searching algorithm that jointly optimizes both the input preprocessing graph mapping and the co-running schedule to maximize the end-to-end DLRM training throughput. The comprehensive evaluation shows that RAP achieves 78.3× speedup on average over CPU-based DLRM input preprocessing frameworks. In addition, the end-to-end training throughput of RAP is only 2.04% lower than the ideal case, which has no input preprocessing overhead.

Wang, Zheng↗

Energy Efficient Computing R&D Roadmap Outline for Automated Vehicles

Automated vehicles (AV) hold great promise for improving safety, as well as reducing congestion and emissions. In order to make automated vehicles commercially viable, a reliable and highperformance vehicle-based computing platform that meets ever-increasing computational demands will be key. Given the state of existing digital computing technology, designers will face significant challenges in meeting the needs of highly automated vehicles without exceeding thermal constraints or consuming a large portion of the energy available on vehicles, thus reducing range between charges or refills. The accompanying increases in energy for AV use will place increased demand on energy production and distribution infrastructure, which also motivates increasing computational energy efficiency.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

In Silico Design of Methyl-Driven Overhauser Dynamic Nuclear Polarization Agents

Overhauser effect (OE) dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) has drawn attention owing to its enhanced performance at ultrahigh magnetic fields. The lack of design principles has, nevertheless, limited the development of OE polarizing agents when compared to those used for cross-effect DNP. Here, we measured the 19 F OE DNP performance of a series of CF 3 -functionalized Blatter-type radicals. Using density functional theory calculations, we accurately predict the methyl-driven OE performance, paving the way for computer-aided design of optimized OE DNP polarizing agents.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

DAQs Quick Start Guide

DAQs is a Windows® computer app designed to communicate with the Advanced List Mode Module (ALMM), MC-15, and instrumentation based off these platforms. The ALMM communicates with DAQS over the Ethernet using TCP/IP. If you register the IPv4 address of the ALMM on the local network the ALMM can be operated remotely. However, if the ALMM is not connected to the local network then the computer running DAQs will need to be connected directly to the ALMM or an additional Ethernet adapter will need to be installed on the acquisition computer. The IPv4 address can be changed in the rei.ini file located on the µSD card. Please see the appendices for more information on the rei.ini file. This document is intended to be a quick start guide on how to get an ALMM connected to a computer and how to start a data acquisition. DAQs has much more capability than is presented in this document.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Predicting the viability of beta-lactamase: How folding and binding free energies correlate with beta-lactamase fitness

One of the long-standing holy grails of molecular evolution has been the ability to predict an organism’s fitness directly from its genotype. With such predictive abilities in hand, researchers would be able to more accurately forecast how organisms will evolve and how proteins with novel functions could be engineered, leading to revolutionary advances in medicine and biotechnology. In this work, we assemble the largest reported set of experimental TEM-1 β-lactamase folding free energies and use this data in conjunction with previously acquired fitness data and computational free energy predictions to determine how much of the fitness of β-lactamase can be directly predicted by thermodynamic folding and binding free energies. We focus upon β-lactamase because of its long history as a model enzyme and its central role in antibiotic resistance. Based upon a set of 21 β-lactamase single and double mutants expressly designed to influence protein folding, we first demonstrate that modeling software designed to compute folding free energies such as FoldX and PyRosetta can meaningfully, although not perfectly, predict the experimental folding free energies of single mutants. Interestingly, while these techniques also yield sensible double mutant free energies, we show that they do so for the wrong physical reasons. We then go on to assess how well both experimental and computational folding free energies explain single mutant fitness. We find that folding free energies account for, at most, 24% of the variance in β-lactamase fitness values according to linear models and, somewhat surprisingly, complementing folding free energies with computationally-predicted binding free energies of residues near the active site only increases the folding-only figure by a few percent. This strongly suggests that the majority of β-lactamase’s fitness is controlled by factors other than free energies. Overall, our results shed a bright light on to what extent the community is justified in using thermodynamic measures to infer protein fitness as well as how applicable modern computational techniques for predicting free energies will be to the large data sets of multiply-mutated proteins forthcoming.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗