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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 469 records · Page 26
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2026

Final Technical Report for U.S.-Japan Hadronic Physics Exchange Program for Studies of Hadron Structure and QCD

Nuclear physics explores the fundamental properties of matter -- how protons and neutrons emerge as quantum systems of elementary particles, how they form the atomic nuclei, and how they give rise to the wide variety of phenomena and applications at biological, technical, and astronomical scales. It is a global scientific effort centered around large-scale experimental user facilities (particle accelerators and detectors), advanced theoretical methods and concepts, and computational techniques and resources. Exchange of knowledge and ideas, scientific collaboration, and workforce development on a global scale are essential for the future of the field. The nuclear physics program envisaged in the 2023 DOE/NSF NSAC Long-Range Plan and pursued at the U.S. National Labs has strong synergies with programs at other facilities worldwide and will realize significant benefits from international collaboration. Nuclear physics is also recognized for promoting international cooperation in the broadest sense through joint construction and operation of experimental equipment, personal contacts between scientists, and education and training. The U.S.-Japan Hadronic Physics Exchange Program (USJPHE) supported collaborative scientific research in hadronic physics and quantum chromodynamics. USJHPE focused on subject areas related to the programs at current and future experimental facilities in the U.S.\ and Japan and supported both experimental and theoretical studies. USJHPE particularly aimed to realize synergies between the hadronic physics programs at Jefferson Lab 12 GeV and J-PARC resulting from the complementarity of electromagnetic and hadronic probes in the multi-GeV energy range. Subject areas of common interest included the quark-gluon structure of hadrons and nuclei, meson and baryon spectroscopy, strangeness and hypernuclear physics, and other related topics. USJHPE also supported research in hadronic physics and nuclear-physics-enabled tests of fundamental symmetries related to the programs at Brookhaven National Lab, Fermilab, KEK, Spring-8, and university-based facilities in the U.S. and Japan. USJHPE especially promoted collaboration between the U.S. and Japanese nuclear physics communities in developing the physics program and instrumentation for the future Electron-Ion Collider. USJHPE was intended to provide travel grants to U.S.-based scientists (primary institutional affiliation with a U.S.\ university, national laboratory, or other research center) to visit Japanese institutions and conduct collaborative research there. The program supported senior researchers, postdoctoral fellows, and students. Continuing the setup of the preceding grant period, J-PARC served as the Japanese “hub” for U.S. physicists for short- and long-term visits, and JLab served as the corresponding U.S. “hub”. The program was officially managed through the U. of Connecticut in Storrs, CT. Support for Japanese physicists visiting the U.S. was provided through funds from Japanese funding agencies. The USJHPE program promoted the scientific exchange and the collaborative spirit in hadronic physics between the two countries.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Robust Online Monitoring for Calibration Assessment of Transmitters and Instrumentation

Robust online monitoring (OLM) technologies are expected to enable the extension or elimination of periodic sensor calibration intervals in operating and new reactors. These advances in OLM technologies will improve the safety and reliability of current and planned nuclear power systems through improved accuracy and increased reliability of sensors used to monitor key parameters. In this article, we discuss an overview of research being performed within the Nuclear Energy Enabling Technologies (NEET)/Advanced Sensors and Instrumentation (ASI) program, for the development of OLM algorithms to use sensor outputs and, in combination with other available information, 1) determine whether one or more sensors are out of calibration or failing and 2) replace a failing sensor with reliable, accurate sensor outputs. Algorithm development is focused on the following OLM functions: • Signal validation • Virtual sensing • Sensor response-time assessment These algorithms incorporate, at their base, a Gaussian Process-based uncertainty quantification (UQ) method. Various plant models (using kernel regression, GP, or hierarchical models) may be used to predict sensor responses under various plant conditions. These predicted responses can then be applied in fault detection (sensor output and response time) and in computing the correct value (virtual sensing) of a failing physical sensor. The methods being evaluated in this work can compute confidence levels along with the predicted sensor responses, and as a result, may have the potential for compensating for sensor drift in real-time (online recalibration). Evaluation was conducted using data from multiple sources (laboratory flow loops and plant data). Ongoing research in this project is focused on further evaluation of the algorithms, optimization for accuracy and computational efficiency, and integration into a suite of tools for robust OLM that are applicable to monitoring sensor calibration state in nuclear power plants.

fault detection↗
DOE OSTI2019

Conceptual Design Report for the I2 Instrumentation Experiment in ATRC

The US Department of Energy In-Pile Instrumentation (I2) program is tasked with developing advanced sensors for in-pile service as well as supporting the engineering required to implement existing nuclear sensor technologies in US high-power test reactors. The ATRC instrumentation test has been conceived to address both of these missions, specifically with respect to neutron flux measurements. Space has been allocated in the test for Self-Powered Neutron Detectors (SPNDs), fission chambers, and Micro-Pocket Fission Detectors (MPFDs). The real-time flux readings obtained from these instruments will be compared with time integrated data obtained from passive neutron dosimetry (i.e., “flux” wires). This work will be complementary to data obtained from the TREAT MIMIC-N experiment. This experiment is expected to support instrumentation efforts related to the proposed Medium-I loop and to instrumenting loop experiments conducted in the ATR center flux trap. While the MIMIC-N experiment was conducted in a dry environment, the ATRC I-19 experiment will be conducted in an aqueous environment, similar to the center flux trap loop experiments but will take place at ambient temperature and pressure, and at a much lower neutron flux. One of the challenges of the ATRC I-19 experiment will be low amplitude signals produced by the sensors in the low neutron fluxes of ATRC. However, related work conducted several years ago in ATRC was able to reliably detect signals using a similar instrument set.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2021

Demonstrate the Out-of-Pile Performance of a Real-Time Measurement System to Measure Thermal Conductivity Based on Photo Thermal Radiometry

SUMMARY The goal of this project is to develop a fiber-based instrument to perform in-reactor thermal conductivity measurements of fuels and materials. This instrument is based on photothermal radiometry (PTR) and involves heating a sample locally and measuring the induced temperature gradient by collecting blackbody radiation [2]. Thermal conductivity of the sample is extracted by comparing experimental results with a continuum-based model [3,4]. As a laser-based technique, PTR is a non-contact measurement technique that can be performed remotely and non-destructively. In addition, it has several advantages over other photothermal techniques, making it an ideal approach for in-situ measurement of thermal conductivity of nuclear fuels. Because blackbody radiation increases with emissivity and temperature, the PTR technique works well with unprepared surfaces, and measurement accuracy increases with temperature. Moreover, this approach is capable of measuring samples with irregular or poorly defined boundary conditions, which is a common situation for friable spent fuels.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Advanced Method Optimization with Categorical and Constrained Continuous Parameters

Traditional approaches to analytical method optimization (e.g., univariate and “guess-and-check”) can be time-consuming, costly, and often fail to identify true optima within the parameter space. Previous work defined and implemented a generalized technique for method optimization for continuous method parameters, but a knowledge gap remains for the incorporation of categorical variables into these advanced method optimization schemes. This work presents and validates a generalized optimization approach that incorporates both continuous and categorical variables while also utilizing a multivariate, multiobjective optimization scheme with Karush–Kuhn–Tucker conditions to bound the optimization space to solutions within the physical limitations of the parameter space. Method optimization from a case study using GC–MS for the analysis of 11 analytical standards with objectives to minimize peak width and maximize peak height resulted in a 3 orders of magnitude improvement in the average peak height and a 2 orders of magnitude improvement in the average peak width compared to the least optimal (but reasonable) instrumental parameters utilized in this study. This approach to optimization allows for a customizable method optimization in which users can include both continuous and categorical variables to achieve objectives specific to their analytical goals. This approach significantly reduces the labor and cost associated with traditional method development approaches and can be applied in a variety of scientific fields across a range of laboratory techniques (e.g., instrument method development, sample preparation, and extraction techniques).

Amorphous materials↗
DOE OSTI2019

Blueprint Guide for Creating Gender-Sensitive Energy Policies

A policy that considers gender roles, differences and preferences driven by socio-cultural norms, can help to maximize the impact of energy projects, programs, and initiatives. Gender responsive regional and national energy policies and strategies can be a lever for addressing gender inequalities across the energy value chain, with collateral impacts on environmental sustainability, social inclusivity, and economic growth. Moreover, the equal participation of women and men is imperative for achieving universal energy access and meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Policy and regulatory instruments can be a way to help close gender gaps in the energy sector; create awareness and understanding of the role of women in the workforce; send a strong signal to developers and investors, creating the tone and space for bottom up change; and encourage information exchange, education and communication about gender informed approaches. This guide presents the critical components for developing a policy on gender mainstreaming for energy access, including different considerations around design, development, implementation procedures, critical success factors, challenges, and integrated strategies.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2021

New capability for neutron transmission measurements at LANSCE: The DICER instrument

A new capability for neutron transmission measurements has been developed at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE). The DICER (Device for Indirect Capture Experiments on Radionuclides) instrument is designed to tightly constrain neutron-capture cross sections for short-lived radionuclides that are beyond the reach of direct techniques, via measurement and analysis of neutron transmission resonances on these same radionuclides. The innovative DICER apparatus enables simultaneous sample-in and sample-out measurements, thus minimizing the amount of sample material needed and reducing the measurements time by half. A description of the current status of the new transmission station, along with a performance overview and results from known reactions, will be presented here.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI1968

Kryptonate Hydrogen Detection System (Final Report)

A prototype model of a multipurpose instrument which demonstrates the applicability of the Kryptonate® technique for detecting hydrogen gas was developed. This report describes the construction of the instrument and presents a laboratory evaluation of its performance. Performance was excellent. The instrument was designed to detect hydrogen in air at concentrations of 0-3% by volume, and to detect hydrogen in nitrogen or other inert gas at concentrations of 0-10% by volume. Other detection levels (both higher and lower) could be set if required. Ultimate response times can be made of the order of 0.5 seconds. The instrument is an all solid state device operating from 120V 60 Hz power source. The instrument has been designed to enable modifications to be made with a minimum amount of difficulty.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2021

Tools for supporting solution scattering during the COVID-19 pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, synchrotron beamlines were forced to limit user access. Performing routine measurements became a challenge. At the Life Science X-ray Scattering (LiX) beamline, new instrumentation and mail-in protocols have been developed to remove the access barrier to solution scattering measurements. Our efforts took advantage of existing instrumentation and coincided with the larger effort at NSLS-II to support remote measurements. Given the limited staff–user interaction for mail-in measurements, additional software tools have been developed to ensure data quality, to automate the adjustments in data processing, as users would otherwise rely on the experience of the beamline staff, and produce a summary of the initial assessments of the data. This report describes the details of these developments.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Enabling Autonomous Electron Microscopy for Networked Computation and Steering

Advanced electron microscopy workflows require an ecosystem of microscope instruments and computing systems possibly located at different sites to conduct remotely steered and automated experiments. Current workflow executions involve manual operations for steering and measurement tasks, which are typically performed from control workstations co-located with microscopes; consequently, their operational tempo and effectiveness are limited. We propose an approach based on separate data and control channels for such an ecosystem of Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopes (STEM) and computing systems, for which no general solutions presently exist, unlike the neutron and light source instruments. We demonstrate automated measurement transfers and remote steering of Nion STEM physical instruments over site networks. We propose a Virtual Infrastructure Twin (VIT) of this ecosystem, which is used to develop and test our steering software modules without requiring access to the physical instrument infrastructure. Additionally, we develop a VIT for a multiple laboratory scenario, which illustrates the applicability of this approach to ecosystems connected over wide-area networks, for the development and testing of software modules and their later field deployment.

Al Najjar, Anees↗
DOE OSTI2018

2017 Marine Hydrokinetic Instrumentation Workshop Report

The third Marine Hydrokinetic Instrumentation Workshop was held at Florida Atlantic University's Sea Tech Campus in Dania Beach, Florida, from February 28 to March 1, 2017. The workshop brought together 37 experts in marine energy measurement, testing, and technology development to present and discuss the instrumentation and data-processing needs of the marine energy industry. The workshop was comprised of a plenary session followed by two focused breakout sessions. The half-day plenary session reviewed findings from prior instrumentation workshops, presented research activities that aim to fill previously identified gaps, and had industry experts present the state of the marine energy measurement technologies. This report provides further detail on the workshop, objectives, and findings.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2019

New Technologies for Discovery

For the field of high energy physics to continue to have a bright future, priority within the field must be given to investments in the development of both evolutionary and transformational detector development that is coordinated across the national laboratories and with the university community, international partners and other disciplines. While the fundamental science questions addressed by high energy physics have never been more compelling, there is acute awareness of the challenging budgetary and technical constraints when scaling current technologies. Furthermore, many technologies are reaching their sensitivity limit and new approaches need to be developed to overcome the currently irreducible technological challenges. This situation is unfolding against a backdrop of declining funding for instrumentation, both at the national laboratories and in particular at the universities. This trend has to be reversed for the country to continue to play a leadership role in particle physics, especially in this most promising era of imminent new discoveries that could finally break the hugely successful, but limited, Standard Model of fundamental particle interactions. In this challenging environment it is essential that the community invest anew in instrumentation and optimize the use of the available resources to develop new innovative, cost-effective instrumentation, as this is our best hope to successfully accomplish the mission of high energy physics. This report summarizes the current status of instrumentation for high energy physics, the challenges and needs of future experiments and indicates high priority research areas.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2019

Measuring the Elemental Composition of Phobos: The Mars-moon Exploration with GAmma rays and NEutrons (MEGANE) Investigation for the Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) Mission

The Mars-moon Exploration with GAmma rays and NEutrons (MEGANE) investigation will use gamma-ray and neutron spectroscopy to measure the elemental composition of Mars' moon Phobos. MEGANE is part of the Japanese Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission that will make comprehensive remote sensing measurements of both of Mars' moons Phobos and Deimos. MMX will also return to Earth regolith samples of Phobos. The science goals of the MEGANE investigation mirror those of the MMX mission. MEGANE will use elemental composition measurements to determine if Phobos is a captured asteroid or the end result of a giant impact event on Mars, study Phobos surface processes, provide reconnaissance to support the sample site selection, and supply compositional context for the returned samples. To accomplish its measurements, MEGANE will use a high-purity Ge gamma-ray spectrometer (GRS), and a neutron spectrometer (NS) that consists of two 3He gas proportional neutron sensors. The GRS derives heritage from similar instruments from NASA's MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging mission and the Psyche mission that is currently in development; the NS is based on similar instruments used for NASA's Lunar Prospector and Psyche missions.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Development and testing of a fission-like neutron field for dosimetry and instrument calibrations based on deuterium-tritium generator

For nearly five decades 252 Cf sources have been used for testing and calibration over a wide range of neutron detection devices used for nuclear safety and radiation protection. However, the vastly increased cost of 252 Cf sources, its short half-life, and concerns about future shortage have prompted nuclear facilities and radiological calibration laboratories that rely on high-intensity neutron sources to seek alternatives. There appear to be no other radionuclide neutron sources that would match “like-to-like” 252 Cf performance characteristics. Alternatives of producing a fission-like neutron spectrum based on commercially available deuterium-tritium (D-T) generators, and without any fissionable materials or beryllium, have been explored. This paper describes efforts of designing the spectrum shaping assembly, its construction and installation. The produced neutron field was evaluated both from the perspective of the neutron fluence spectrum and the resulting dosimetric outcome. Finally, it was tested for practical application by examining response of various health physics instruments and personal monitoring devices in comparison to the response of those devices when exposed to 252 Cf. In conclusion, the response of survey-type instruments tested within the prototype, surrogate fission, reference field are acceptably close to their response in the targeted 252 Cf field.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2025

Multi-Functional Smart Structures for Smart Vehicles

This report summarizes the development of a new class of recyclable multi-functional composite materials for production of lightweight smart structures and surfaces. Functional high stiffness conductive composites were processed using molding methods that integrated continuous fiber and additively manufactured features. Methods for integration of sensing functionality and controls were also developed to reduce system cost while providing a new capability for structural health monitoring. This new class of composites is applicable to a broad range of vehicle interior, exterior and battery enclosure systems. By way of demonstration, a vehicle instrument panel cross car beam was developed that provided a 38% mass savings compared to steel while maintaining a cost penalty competitive to alternate lightweight material solutions. These technologies were validated for implementation by a uniquely qualified project team comprising a US automotive OEM, Tier 1 and Tier 2 supplier, with key contributions from Oak Ridge National Lab, Purdue University and Michigan State University.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2017

The Hyper Suprime-Cam software pipeline

Here in this article, we describe the optical imaging data processing pipeline developed for the Subaru Telescope’s Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) instrument. The HSC Pipeline builds on the prototype pipeline being developed by the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope’s Data Management system, adding customizations for HSC, large-scale processing capabilities, and novel algorithms that have since been reincorporated into the LSST codebase. While designed primarily to reduce HSC Subaru Strategic Program (SSP) data, it is also the recommended pipeline for reducing general-observer HSC data. The HSC pipeline includes high-level processing steps that generate coadded images and science-ready catalogs as well as low-level detrending and image characterizations.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Ion Mobility Spectrometry-Mass Spectrometry for High-Throughput Analysis

Ion mobility spectrometry is a widely used analytical technique providing gas phase separation of molecules. It has received increasing attention in the recent years with the advancement in technology development and the availability of commercial instruments. In this chapter, we introduced the ion mobility fundamental theory and provided examples of IMS applications, especially for isomer separation, collision cross section database generation, high throughput analysis workflows, software tools for IMS data analysis, and ongoing high resolution SLIM IMS development. While IMS is not yet routinely utilized in drug discovery and pharmaceutical industry, there has been increased interest in high throughput library screening and antibody characterization. With all the ongoing development in IMS technology and informatics, we foresee more and more exciting applications of high throughput IMS analysis in different fields including omics studies, drug discovery and clinical applications in the near future.

Ross, Dylan H.↗