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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

Modeling of surface mechanical behaviors of soft elastic solids: theory and examples

Surfaces of soft solids can have significant surface stress, extensional modulus and bending stiffness. Previous theoretical studies have usually examined cases in which both the surface stress and bending stiffness are constant, assuming small deformation. In this work we consider a general formulation in which the surface can support large deformation and carry both surface stresses and surface bending moments. We show that the large deformation theory can be reduced to the classical linear theory (Shuttleworth equation). We obtain exact solutions for problems of an inflated cylindrical shell and bending of a plate with a finite thickness. Our analysis illustrates the different manners in which surface stiffening and surface bending stabilize these structures. We discuss how the complex surface constitutive behaviors affect the stress field of the bulk. Our calculation provides insights into effects of strain-dependent surface stress and surface bending in the large deformation regime, and can be used as a model to implement surface finite elements to study large deformation of complex structures.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

NbTi_BCC_SolidSolution_128atoms_VASP6

We performed density functional theory (DFT) calculations for body-centered-cubic (BCC) structures with 128 lattices sites of solid solution binary alloys niobium-titanium (Nb-Ti). The electronic structures of alloys have been calculated using Vienna Ab initio Simulation Package (VASP), https://github.com/ORNL/ScalableWorkflow_VASP_Calculations. Within this package the DFT approach is used to reduce many-body Schrodinger equation to set of single particle Kohn-Sham (KS) equations. The generalized electronic exchange-correlation functional is described by generalized gradient approximation with the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof parametrization. The electron-ion interactions is described by pseudopotentials developed within the plane-wave basis projector augmented-wave (PAW) approach. These pseudopotentials are available at the VASP portal (http://cms.mpi.univie.ac.at/vasp/). Our calculations have been run with the pseudopotentials treating s and p semi-core states as valence in case for the elements Nb and Ti. The electronic densities and potentials are expanded over plane-waves with energy cutoff of 350 eV. 2x2x2 k-mesh and normal precision were used. The alloys were modeled by supercell containing 128 randomly distributed atoms. At initial step the atoms occupy perfect bcc lattice cites. This initial structure was optimized until energy changes less than 1e-6 eV, while forces acting on atoms don't exceed 1e-2 eV/angstrom. The electron-ion interaction is described by PAW pseudopotentials. The calculations have been collected by sampling chemical compositions across the entire compositional range. The chemical compositions have been sampled by progressively changing the number of atoms per constituent by 4. For each chemical composition of binaries and ternaries, the first-principle calculations have been run for 100 randomized arrangements of the constituents on the BCC lattice sites. We collected data for a total of 3,100 randomized atomic structures over 31 chemical compositions. The calculations have been collected on Air Force HPC11 cluster using the VASP 6.5.1. Additional methodology and file structure information is available in the dataset README.txt file.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

A combined theoretical-experimental investigation of thermal transport in low-dose irradiated thorium dioxide

During reactor operation, nuclear fuels are subject to extreme temperature and irradiation conditions which can significantly degrade the fuel's thermal transport properties. The reduction in thermal conductivity of the fuel as a result of irradiation-induced lattice defects is arguably the most important fuel performance metric in regard to reactor efficiency and safety. Because thorium dioxide (ThO2) is suitable as a model system for more complex materials such as UO2 and its mixed oxides, we present a theoretical investigation of thermal conductivity reduction seen in defect-bearing thorium dioxide and compare directly to experimental measurements. Phonon-mediated thermal transport of the fuel is modeled by a solution to the Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) for phonons. A cluster dynamics (CD) model for lattice defect evolution during irradiation predicts defect densities which are used as input to the BTE for modeling phonon-defect scatterings. Phonon scatterings by lattice defects include those from point defects and vacancy clusters and interstitial clusters of various sizes. The CD model is benchmarked against structural defect characterization of irradiated thorium dioxide using electron microscopy. Thermal conductivity predicted by the BTE model is compared to measured values for irradiated thorium dioxide specimens below room temperature to isolate effects of phonon-defect scattering from intrinsic 3-phonon processes, which dominate at higher temperatures. The computed conductivity values are in partial agreement at temperatures close to room temperature while slight deviations are observed at the lowest measured temperatures, suggesting that implemented phonon-defect scattering cross-section expressions may not be adequate for low temperatures. The presented work provides a necessary investigation of the influence of irradiation induced defects on fuel performance and represents a first step toward a full characterization of phonon mediated thermal transport in irradiated materials with complex defect microstructure.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

On the mechanism of soot nucleation. II. E-bridge formation at the PAH bay

A recently proposed mechanism of soot nucleation based upon the formation of a rotationally-activated dimer in the collision of an aromatic molecule and a radical leading to a stable, doubly-bonded E-bridge between them, rooted in the existence of a five-membered ring on the molecule edge, has been further investigated with a focus on the 5-6 E-bridge forming in the reaction of a PAH cyclopenta group with a bay site of another PAH. As a prototype reaction of this kind, we examined the reaction between 4-phenanthrenyl and acenaphthylene and, to project these results to larger aromatic structures, we also explored the size effect of the E-bridge forming reactions by computing the 1-naphthyl + acenaphthylene system and comparing these results with the prior results for pyrenyl + acepyrene. The two systems have been studied through high-level G3(MP2,CC)//B3LYP/6-311G(d,p) ab initio calculations of their potential energy surfaces combined with the RRKM/Master Equation calculations of reaction rate constants. With PAH monomers of similar sizes involved, the formation of E-bridge structures at the bay radical sites appeared to be faster and lead to increased nucleation rates as compared to the zigzag-forming ones. Furthermore, a model combining both the bay and zigzag rotationally-induced formation of E-bridges successfully reaches the level of nucleation fluxes comparable to those of the irreversible pyrene dimerization, thus affirming the rotationally-activated dimerization as a feasible mechanism for soot particle nucleation.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Post-detonation fireball modeling: Validation of freeze out approximations

A numerical simulation study was performed to examine the post-detonation reaction processes produced by the detonation of a 12 mm diameter hemispherical pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) explosive charge. The simulations used a finite rate detailed chemical reaction model consisting of 59 species and 368 reactions to capture post-detonation reaction processes including air dissociation from Mach 19+ shock waves that initially break out of the PETN charge, reactions within the detonation products during expansion, and afterburning when the detonation products mix with the shock heated air. The multi-species and thermodynamically complete Becker-Kistiakowsky-Wilson real-gas equation of state is used for the gaseous phase to allow for the mixing of reactive species. A recent simplified reactive burn model is used to propagate the detonation through the charge and allow for detailed post-detonation reaction processes. The computed blast, shock structures, and mole fractions of species within the detonation products agree well with experimental measurements. A comparison of the simulation results to equilibrium calculations indicates that the assumption of a local equilibrium is fairly accurate until the detonation products rapidly cool to temperatures in the range of 1500-1900 K by expansion waves. Below this range, the computed results show mole fractions that are nearly chemically frozen within the detonation products for a significant portion of expansion. In conclusion, these results are consistent with the freeze out approximation used in the blast modeling community.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Quantum sensing effect of electron tunneling in DQD/analyte complex

We investigate electron tunneling between quantum dots and molecules to propose a quantum sensor. This sensor consists of double quantum dots (DQD) with energy levels specifically tailored to mirror those of the target analyte. By analyzing the spectral distribution of electron localizations in the DQD system, we can delineate the analyte’s spectrum and deduce its composition by comparing it with a reference sample. To understand electron tunneling dynamics within the DQD/analyte complex, we performed three-dimensional computational modeling applying the effective potential approach to the InAs/GaAs heterostructure. In this modeling, we mimicked the analyte spectrum by utilizing a quantum well characterized by a quasi-discrete spectrum. Our calculations reveal the inherent potential of utilizing this method as a highly sensitive and selective sensor.

77 NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY↗

Volumetric Rendering on Wavelet-Based Adaptive Grid

Numerical modeling of physical phenomena frequently involves processes across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. In the last two decades, the advancements in wavelet-based numerical methodologies to solve partial differential equations, combined with the unique properties of wavelet analysis to resolve localized structures of the solution on dynamically adaptive computational meshes, make it feasible to perform large-scale numerical simulations of a variety of physical systems on a dynamically adaptive computational mesh that changes both in space and time. Volumetric visualization of the solution is an essential part of scientific computing, yet the existing volumetric visualization techniques do not take full advantage of multi-resolution wavelet analysis and are not fully tailored for visualization of a compressed solution on the wavelet-based adaptive computational mesh. Our objective is to explore the alternatives for the visualization of time-dependent data on space-time varying adaptive mesh using volume rendering while capitalizing on the available sparse data representation. Two alternative formulations are explored. The first one is based on volumetric ray casting of multi-scale datasets in wavelet space. Rather than working with the wavelets at the finest possible resolution, a partial inverse wavelet transform is performed as a preprocessing step to obtain scaling functions on a uniform grid at a user-prescribed resolution. As a result, a solution in physical space is represented by a superposition of scaling functions on a coarse regular grid and wavelets on an adaptive mesh. An efficient and accurate ray casting algorithm is based just on these coarse scaling functions. Additional details are added during the ray tracing by taking an appropriate number of wavelets into account based on support overlap with the interpolation point, wavelet coefficient magnitude, and other characteristics, such as opacity accumulation (front to back ordering) and deviation from frontal viewing direction. The second approach is based on complementing of wavelet-based adaptive mesh to the traditional Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) mesh. Both algorithms are illustrated and compared to the existing volume visualization software for Rayleigh-Benard thermal convection and electron density data sets in terms of rendering time and visual quality for different data compression of both wavelet-based and AMR adaptive meshes.

Vezolainen, Alexei V.↗

Explicit physics-informed neural networks for nonlinear closure: The case of transport in tissues

In upscaling methods, closures for nonlinear problems present a well-known challenge. While a number of theoretical methods have been proposed for handling such closures, nonlinearities still remain a significant obstacle for many problems. In this work, we use a combination of formal upscaling and data-driven machine learning for explicitly closing a nonlinear transport and reaction process in multiscale tissues. The classical effectiveness factor model is used to formulate the macroscale reaction kinetics. We train a multilayer perceptron network using training data generated by direct numerical simulations over microscale examples. Once trained, the network is used in an algorithm for numerically solving the upscaled (coarse-grained) differential equation describing mass transport and reaction in two example tissues. The network is described as being explicit in the sense that the network is trained using macroscale concentrations and gradients of concentration as components of the feature space rather than incorporating them as part of a constraint in the optimization process. Network training and solutions to the macroscale transport equations were computed for two different tissues. The two tissue types (brain and liver) exhibit markedly different geometrical complexity and spatial scale (cell size and sample size). The upscaled solutions for the average concentration are compared with numerical solutions derived from the microscale concentration fields by a posteriori averaging. There are three outcomes of this work of particular note. 1) Our overall approach results in an upscaled nonlinear PDE. The PDE is closed using a neural network, and our approach results in the definition of the classical effectiveness factor for effecting closure. 2) We identify particular source terms for the closure problem that are important for representing the structure of the closure. These source terms involve macroscale concentrations and their gradients. We adopt these source terms to use as explicit features in the learning algorithm. We find the trained networks that include the macroscale source terms generate models that are able to predict the correction factor with increased fidelity over those that do not. 3) We find that the trained network exhibits good generalizability, and it is able to predict the effectiveness factor with high fidelity for realistically-structured tissues despite the significantly different scale and geometrical complexity of the two example tissue types. This latter result emphasizes our purposeful connection between conventional averaging methods with the use of machine learning for closure; this contrasts with some machine learning methods for upscaling where the exact form of the macroscale equation remains unknown.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Fast matrix algebra for Bayesian model calibration

In Bayesian model calibration, evaluation of the likelihood function usually involves finding the inverse and determinant of a covariance matrix. When Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are used to sample from the posterior, hundreds of thousands of likelihood evaluations may be required. In this paper, we demonstrate that the structure of the covariance matrix can be exploited, leading to substantial time savings in practice. Here, we also derive two simple equations for approximating the inverse of the covariance matrix in this setting, which can be computed in near-quadratic time. The practical implications of these strategies are demonstrated using a simple numerical case study and the "quack" R package. For a covariance matrix with 1000 rows, application of these strategies for a million likelihood evaluations leads to a speedup of roughly 4000 compared to the naive implementation

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

A survey of unsupervised learning methods for high-dimensional uncertainty quantification in black-box-type problems

Constructing surrogate models for uncertainty quantification (UQ) on complex partial differential equations (PDEs) having inherently high-dimensional O(10 n ), n ≥ 2, stochastic inputs (e.g., forcing terms, boundary conditions, initial conditions) poses tremendous challenges. The “curse of dimensionality” can be addressed with suitable unsupervised learning techniques used as a pre-processing tool to encode inputs onto lower-dimensional subspaces while retaining its structural information and meaningful properties. In this work, we review and investigate thirteen dimension reduction methods including linear and nonlinear, spectral, blind source separation, convex and non-convex methods and utilize the resulting embeddings to construct a mapping to quantities of interest via polynomial chaos expansions (PCE). Here, we refer to the general proposed approach as manifold PCE (m-PCE), where manifold corresponds to the latent space resulting from any of the studied dimension reduction methods. To investigate the capabilities and limitations of these methods we conduct numerical tests for three physics-based systems (treated as black-boxes) having high-dimensional stochastic inputs of varying complexity modeled as both Gaussian and non-Gaussian random fields to investigate the effect of the intrinsic dimensionality of input data. We demonstrate both the advantages and limitations of the unsupervised learning methods and we conclude that a suitable m-PCE model provides a cost-effective approach compared to alternative algorithms proposed in the literature, including recently proposed expensive deep neural network-based surrogates and can be readily applied for high-dimensional UQ in stochastic PDEs.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Intersubband Transitions in Lead Halide Perovskite-Based Quantum Wells for Mid-Infrared Detectors

Due to their excellent optical and electrical properties as well as versatile growth and fabrication processes, lead halide perovskites have been widely considered as promising candidates for green energy and applications related to optoelectronics. Here, we investigate their potential applications at infrared wavelengths by modeling the intersubband transitions in perovskite-based quantum well systems. Both single-well and double-well structures are studied, and their energy levels as well as the corresponding wave functions and intersubband transition energies are calculated by solving the one-dimensional Schrödinger equations. Via adjustment of the quantum well and barrier thicknesses, the intersubband transition energies can be tuned to cover a broad infrared wavelength range. We also find that the lead halide perovskite-based quantum wells possess high absorption coefficients. In conclusion, the widely tunable transition energies and high absorption coefficients of the perovskite-based quantum well systems, combined with their unique material and electrical properties, may enable an alternative material system for infrared photodetector applications.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Neutron Valence Structure from Nuclear Deep Inelastic Scattering

Mechanisms of spin-flavor SU(6) symmetry breaking in Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) are studied via an extraction of the free neutron structure function from a global analysis of deep inelastic scattering (DIS) data on the proton and on nuclei from $A = 2$ (deuterium) to 208 (lead). Modification of the structure function of nucleons bound in atomic nuclei (known as the EMC effect) are consistently accounted for within the framework of a universal modification of nucleons in short-range correlated (SRC) pairs. Our extracted neutron-to-proton structure function ratio $F_2^n/F_2^p$ becomes constant for $x_B \ge 0.6$, equalling $0.47 \pm 0.04$ as $x_B \rightarrow 1$, in agreement with theoretical predictions of perturbative QCD and the Dyson Schwinger equation, and in disagreement with predictions of the Scalar Diquark dominance model. Finally, we also predict $F_2^{^3\mathrm{He}}/F_2^{^3\mathrm{H}}$, recently measured, yet unpublished, by the MARATHON collaboration, the nuclear correction function that is needed to extract $F_2^n/F_2^p$ from $F_2^{^3\mathrm{He}}/F_2^{^3\mathrm{H}}$, and the theoretical uncertainty associated with this extraction.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Loop Antennas for Use On/Off Ground Planes

Many applications benefit from the ability of an RFID tag to operate both on and off a conducting ground plane. This paper presents an electrically small loop antenna at 433 MHz that passively maintains its free-space tune and match when located a certain distance away from a large conducting ground plane. The design achieves this using a single radiation mechanism (that of a loop) in both environments without the use of a ground plane or EBG/AMC structure. An equivalent circuit model is developed that explains the dual-environment behavior and shows that the geometry balances inductive and capacitive parasitics introduced by the ground plane such that the free-space loop reactance, and thus resonant frequency, does not change. A design equation for balancing the inductive and capacitive parasitic effects is derived. Finally, experimental data showing the design eliminates ground plane detuning in practice is presented. The design is suitable for active, “hard” RFID tag applications.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Covariant color-kinematics duality

We show that color-kinematics duality is a manifest property of the equations of motion governing currents and field strengths. For the nonlinear sigma model (NLSM), this insight enables an implementation of the double copy at the level of fields, as well as an explicit construction of the kinematic algebra and associated kinematic current. As a byproduct, we also derive new formulations of the special Galileon (SG) and Born-Infeld (BI) theory. For Yang-Mills (YM) theory, this same approach reveals a novel structure — covariant color-kinematics duality — whose only difference from the conventional duality is that 1/$\square$ is replaced with covariant 1/D 2 . Remarkably, this structure implies that YM theory is itself the covariant double copy of gauged biadjoint scalar (GBAS) theory and an F 3 theory of field strengths encoding a corresponding kinematic algebra and current. Directly applying the double copy to equations of motion, we derive general relativity (GR) from the product of Einstein-YM and F 3 theory. This exercise reveals a trivial variant of the classical double copy that recasts any solution of GR as a solution of YM theory in a curved background. Covariant color-kinematics duality also implies a new decomposition of tree-level amplitudes in YM theory into those of GBAS theory. Using this representation we derive a closed-form, analytic expression for all BCJ numerators in YM theory and the NLSM for any number of particles in any spacetime dimension. By virtue of the double copy, this constitutes an explicit formula for all tree-level scattering amplitudes in YM, GR, NLSM, SG, and BI.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Advancing Understanding of Deep Convective Anvil Clouds

In this project we use ground-based DOE ARM observations, satellite observations, and Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model simulations to arrive at a more complete understanding (or, new theory) of how atmospheric heating profiles in thunderstorm cores drives how quickly air rises in the storms. The rate at which air motion increases or decreases with altitude directly relates to how much cloud mass is ejected laterally into the adjacent atmosphere, which then influences the development and maintenance of “stratiform raining cloud anvils”. Our work has led to new equations connecting the heating in these thunderstorms to these stratiform clouds, with the connection modulated by the stability structure of the atmosphere (i.e., if more stable, then a more rapid change in thunderstorm heating with altitude results in more stratiform cloud, independent of whether over land or ocean, or how organized the thunderstorms are). Improving knowledge of stratiform clouds is important, since they contribute to substantial accumulated rainfall (important to agriculture and local hydrology) as well as radiation, given their large areal extents and lifetime. The radiation impacts likely impact simulated cloud feedback in all Earth System models (ESMs).

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

One-bond 13 C– 13 C spin-coupling constants in saccharides: a comparison of experimental and calculated values by density functional theory using solid-state 13 C NMR and X-ray crystallography

Methyl aldohexopyranosides were 13 C-labeled at contiguous carbons, crystallized, and studied by single-crystal X-ray crystallography and solid-state 13 C nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to examine the degree to which density functional theory (DFT) can calculate one-bond 13C–13C spin-coupling constants ( 1 J CC ) in saccharides with sufficient accuracy to permit their use in MA'AT analysis, a newly-reported hybrid DFT/NMR method that provides probability distributions of molecular torsion angles in solution (Zhang et al., J. Phys. Chem. B, 2017, 121, 3042–3058; Meredith et al., J. Chem. Inf. Model., 2022, 62, 3135–3141). Experimental 1 J CC values in crystalline samples of the doubly 13 C-labeled compounds were measured by solid-state 13 C NMR and compared to those calculated from five different DFT models: (1) 1 J CC values calculated from single structures identical to those observed in crystalline samples by X-ray crystallography (all atom refinement); (2) 1 J CC values calculated from the single structures in (1) but after Hirshfeld atom refinement (HAR); (3) 1 J CC values calculated from the single structures in (1) after DFT-optimization of hydrogen atoms only; and (4 and 5) 1 J CC values calculated in rotamers of torsion angle θ 2 (C1–C2–O2–O2H) or ω(C4–C5–C6–O6) from which either specific or generalized parameterized equations were obtained and used to calculate 1 J CC values in the specific θ 2 or ω rotamers observed in crystalline samples. Good qualitative agreement was observed between calculated 1 J CC values and those measured by solid-state 13 C NMR regardless of the DFT model, but in no cases were calculated 1 J CC values quantitative, differing (over-estimated) on average by 4–5% from experimental values. These findings, and those reported recently from solution NMR studies (Tetrault et al., J. Phys. Chem. B 2022, 126, 9506–9515), indicate that improvements in DFT calculations are needed before calculated 1 J CC values can be used directly as reliable constraints in MA'AT analyses of saccharides in solution.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Connecting primordial gravitational waves and dark energy

Cosmic acceleration manifested in the early universe as inflation, generating primordial gravitational waves detectable in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. Cosmic acceleration is occurring again at present as dark energy, detectable in cosmic distance and structure surveys. We explore the intriguing idea of connecting the two occurrences through quintessential inflation by an α-attractor potential without a cosmological constant. For this model we demonstrate robustness of the connection 1 + w 0 ≈ 4/(3N 2 r) between the present day dark energy equation of state parameter w 0 and the primordial tensor to scalar ratio r for a wide range of initial conditions. Analytic and numerical solutions produce current thawing behavior, resulting in a tight relation w a ≈ -1.53(1 + w 0 )≈ -0.2 (4 × 10 -3 /r). Upcoming CMB and galaxy redshift surveys can test this consistency condition. In conclusion, within this model, lack of detection of a dark energy deviation from Λ predicts a higher r, and lack of detection of r predicts greater dark energy dynamics.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Discovering causal structure with reproducing-kernel Hilbert space ε -machines

We merge computational mechanics’ definition of causal states (predictively equivalent histories) with reproducing-kernel Hilbert space (RKHS) representation inference. The result is a widely applicable method that infers causal structure directly from observations of a system’s behaviors whether they are over discrete or continuous events or time. A structural representation—a finite- or infinite-state kernel ϵ-machine—is extracted by a reduced-dimension transform that gives an efficient representation of causal states and their topology. In this way, the system dynamics are represented by a stochastic (ordinary or partial) differential equation that acts on causal states. We introduce an algorithm to estimate the associated evolution operator. Paralleling the Fokker–Planck equation, it efficiently evolves causal-state distributions and makes predictions in the original data space via an RKHS functional mapping. We demonstrate these techniques, together with their predictive abilities, on discrete-time, discrete-value infinite Markov-order processes generated by finite-state hidden Markov models with (i) finite or (ii) uncountably infinite causal states and (iii) continuous-time, continuous-value processes generated by thermally driven chaotic flows. The method robustly estimates causal structure in the presence of varying external and measurement noise levels and for very high-dimensional data.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗