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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 55 records · Page 3

APOLLO: a facility-scale differentiable virtual accelerator at Fermilab FAST/IOTA

As the design complexity of modern accelerators grows, there is more interest in using advanced simulations that have fast execution time or yield additional insights like gradients. The FAST/IOTA facility has been working on implementing and experimentally validating an end-to-end digital twin that is both fast and gradient-aware, allowing for rapid prototyping of new software and experiments with minimal beam time costs. Our framework integrates physics and ML codes for linac and ring simulation through a set of generic interfaces between surrogate and physics-based sections. To reproduce device inputs and outputs, system state is exposed as a deterministic event loop in a specialized discrete event simulator architecture. Because Fermilab is undergoing control system transition, several APIs were implemented as final user interfaces - a fully asynchronous EPICS soft IOC, a gRPC-based Data Pool Manager (DPM), and legacy ACNET protocols. We discuss implementation details as well as challenges handling live data assimilation and future plans to extend modelling to main complex proton accelerators like PIPII and Booster.

Kuklev, Nikita [Fermilab]↗

The Fermilab Facility for Dark Matter Discovery (F2D2): A Conceptual PIP-II Beam Stop Facility for Dark Sector Physics

What do the accelerator target stations of the next decade look like? The NuMI beamline, fed by Fermilab s Main Injector, recently exceeded 1 MW beam power. Future experiments fed by the PIP-II superconducting linear accelerator might demand upwards of 2 MW in continuous-wave mode, compared to the pulsed beams typical of neutrino experiments. Looking further into the future, the Muon Collider front end includes a target station with even higher power 5 MW or beyond. How do we build a 2+ MW target facility? How does a high-power, low-energy, CW beam affect target design compared to conventional high-energy neutrino targets? How do we manage radiation and heat? How is the facility serviced? What is the current state of capability, and what technologies do we need to develop? These questions are answered in the context of F2D2, a conceptual target station design for dark sector physics experiments using beam from PIP-II.

Williams, Jonathan K.↗

A Multi-Dimensional Benefit Assessment of Automated Mobility Platforms (AMP) for Large Facilities: Mobility, Energy, Equity, and Facility Management & Design

The goal of the automated mobility platforms (AMPs) initiative is to raise the bar of service regarding equity and sustainability for public mobility systems that are crucial to large facilities, and doing so using electrified, energy efficient technology. Using airports as an example, the rapid growth in air travel demand has led to facility expansions and congested terminals, which directly impacts equity (e.g., increased challenges for Passengers with Reduced Mobility [PRMs]) and sustainability - both of which are important metrics often overlooked during the engineering design process. Therefore, to evaluate systems and inform critical near- and long-term decisions more effectively, a holistic evaluation framework is proposed focused on four key areas: (1) mobility, with emphasis on travel time and accessibility within an airport, (2) environment, focused on energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with intra-airport mobility, (3) equity, specifically to the PRM community, but with an eye to the whole of society, and (4) built environment, or the fundamental changes in building design enabled by different mobility systems for larger and more flexible, functional, and energy-efficient structures. Below, AMPs are defined, and each metric is discussed further, all with a focus on airport mobility.

ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗

The Linear Collider Facility (LCF) at CERN

In this paper we outline a proposal for a Linear Collider Facility as the next flagship project for CERN. It offers the opportunity for a timely, cost-effective and staged construction of a new collider that will be able to comprehensively map the Higgs boson's properties, including the Higgs field potential, thanks to a large span in centre-of-mass energies and polarised beams. A comprehensive programme to study the Higgs boson and its closest relatives with high precision requires data at centre-of-mass energies from the Z pole to at least 1 TeV. It should include measurements of the Higgs boson in both major production mechanisms, ee -> ZH and ee -> vvH, precision measurements of gauge boson interactions as well as of the W boson, Higgs boson and top-quark masses, measurement of the top-quark Yukawa coupling through ee ->ttH, measurement of the Higgs boson self-coupling through HH production, and precision measurements of the electroweak couplings of the top quark. In addition, ee collisions offer discovery potential for new particles complementary to HL-LHC.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

Design of Modular Test Facility for Particle/sCO2 Heat Exchanger Evaluation

Heliogen has designed a 1.3 MW particle and supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) test loop to retire technical and manufacturing risks. The data from this facility will be used to validate near commercial-scale particle heat exchanger modules. The heat exchanger is scaled to capture all features of the full-scale modules. Testing will be conducted with CARBOBEAD HSP 16/30, a larger particle size than other recent testing. The system was designed to ASME codes with the constraint that sCO2 piping and other major components are stainless steels.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

Hypersonic Research Facilities Study - Volume IV, Part 1: Phase III Final Studies Flight Research Facilities

The Phase III analyses of Flight Research Facilities performed as a portion of the Hypersonic Research Facilities (HYFAC) Study are presented herein. Two attractive flight research vehicle concepts, geared to the development needs of future (1980-2n00) operational hypersonic aircraft systems, are defined. The inherent research capability of each concept is further expanded by incorporating provisions within the basic vehicle design to accommodate the testing of several additional research options. The design feasibility of this approach to achieving increased research flexibility is examined. Near term propulsion systems are employed as the basic power plants to shorten acquisition time, reduce development costs, and provide high confidence in attaining the performance capability desired, Performance is determined for each basic vehicle and for the vehicles when incorporating several optional research packages. Total program cost estimates are developed for each vehicle and for the various research options. This study provides the necessary framework for the formulation of an attractive and needed flight research program which is a key element in the systematic development of an overall advanced research plan.

Source record↗

An inventory of aeronautical ground research facilities. Volume 2: Air breathing engine test facilities

The inventory covers free jet and direct connect altitude cells, sea level static thrust stands, sea level test cells with ram air, and propulsion wind tunnels. Free jet altitude cells and propulsion wind tunnels are used for evaluation of complete inlet-engine-exhaust nozzle propulsion systems under simulated flight conditions. These facilities are similar in principal of operation and differ primarily in test section concept. The propulsion wind tunnel provides a closed test section and restrains the flow around the test specimen while the free jet is allowed to expand freely. A chamber of large diameter about the free jet is provided in which desired operating pressure levels may be maintained. Sea level test cells with ram air provide controlled, conditioned air directly to the engine face for performance evaluation at low altitude flight conditions. Direct connect altitude cells provide a means of performance evaluation at simulated conditions of Mach number and altitude with air supplied to the flight altitude conditions. Sea level static thrust stands simply provide an instrumented engine mounting for measuring thrust at zero airspeed. While all of these facilities are used for integrated engine testing, a few provide engine component test capability.

Pirrello, C. J.↗

Noise measurements in a free-jet, flight simulation facility - Shear layer refraction and facility-to-flight corrections

The conversion of free-jet facility into equivalent flyover results is discussed. The essential problem is to 'calibrate out' the acoustic influence of the outer free-jet shear layer on the measurement, since this is absent in the flight case. Results are presented which illustrate the differences between current simplified models (vortex-sheet and geometric acoustics), and a more complete model based on the Lilley equation. Finally, the use of geometric acoustics for facility-to-flight data conversion is discussed.

Morfey, C. L.↗

A high-Reynolds-number seal test facility: Facility description and preliminary test data

A facility has been developed for testing the leakage and rotordynamic characteristics of interstage-seal configurations for the HPFTP (High Pressure Fuel Turbopump) of the SSME (Space Shuttle Main Engine). Axial Reynolds numbers on the order of 400,000 are realized in the test facility by using a Dupont freon fluid called Halon (CBrF3). The kinematic viscosity of Halon is of the same order as the liquid hydrogen used in the HPFTP. Initial testing has focused on the current flight configurations (a three-segment, stepped unit) and a convergent-taper candidate.

Childs, D. W.↗

Advanced Distributed Measurements and Data Processing at the Vibro-Acoustic Test Facility, GRC Space Power Facility, Sandusky, Ohio - an Architecture and an Example

A large-scale, distributed, high-speed data acquisition system (HSDAS) is currently being installed at the Space Power Facility (SPF) at NASA Glenn Research Center s Plum Brook Station in Sandusky, OH. This installation is being done as part of a facility construction project to add Vibro-acoustic Test Capabilities (VTC) to the current thermal-vacuum testing capability of SPF in support of the Orion Project s requirement for Space Environments Testing (SET). The HSDAS architecture is a modular design, which utilizes fully-remotely managed components, enables the system to support multiple test locations with a wide-range of measurement types and a very large system channel count. The architecture of the system is presented along with details on system scalability and measurement verification. In addition, the ability of the system to automate many of its processes such as measurement verification and measurement system analysis is also discussed.

Hill, Gerald M.↗

Space Propulsion Research Facility (B-2): An Innovative, Multi-Purpose Test Facility

The Space Propulsion Research Facility, commonly referred to as B-2, is designed to hot fire rocket engines or upper stage launch vehicles with up to 890,000 N force (200,000 lb force), after environmental conditioning of the test article in simulated thermal vacuum space environment. As NASA s third largest thermal vacuum facility, and the largest designed to store and transfer large quantities of propellant, it is uniquely suited to support developmental testing associated with large lightweight structures and Cryogenic Fluid Management (CFM) systems, as well as non-traditional propulsion test programs such as Electric and In-Space propulsion. B-2 has undergone refurbishment of key subsystems to support the NASA s future test needs, including data acquisition and controls, vacuum, and propellant systems. This paper details the modernization efforts at B-2 to support the Nation s thermal vacuum/propellant test capabilities, the unique design considerations implemented for efficient operations and maintenance, and ultimately to reduce test costs.

Hill, Gerald M.↗

Synthesis of ARM User Facility Surface Rainfall Datasets to Construct a Best Estimate Value Added Product (PrecipBE)

Surface precipitation measurements are essential for Earth system model (ESM) evaluation and understanding cloud processes. An ever-growing need for robust, temporally evolving, and easy-to-use statistical datasets provides motivation for a baseline ground-based precipitation properties data product. The U.S. Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility operates an extensive suite of precipitation instruments with various sensitivities and operating mechanisms, which render the decision of which instrument to use based on one or more fixed thresholds challenging and prone to errors and bias. Using a long-term instrument inter-comparison from a unique per-precipitation event perspective, rather than instantaneous sample comparison, we demonstrate that ARM rainfall-measuring instruments are generally consistent with each other at the statistical level. Inter-instrument deviations at the single event level can be large, especially for specific rainfall event properties such as maximum precipitation rates. A machine-learning (ML) analysis using a random forest regressor indicates that in some cases, depending on instrument, local site climatology, and/or specific deployment configuration, certain atmospheric state variables influence the measured quantities in an unpredictable manner. Thus, a-priori weighting of different instruments does not necessarily lead to more accurate and less biased synthesis of instrument data. These results motivate the design of the ARM precipitation best-estimate (PrecipBE) value-added product, which incorporates all valid precipitation data while considering data quality and other instrument limitations. PrecipBE consists of time series and tabular statistics datasets in an easy-to-use and insightful per-precipitation event format. It provides a large set of precipitation event properties supplemented with ancillary data from ARM datasets that correspond to the detected precipitation events. We describe the PrecipBE algorithm and demonstrate its use via the examination of a single-day output as well as a long-term trend analysis of precipitation events at the ARM Southern Great Plains (SGP) site, covering more than 30 years of data. The trend analysis tentatively suggests a long-term temporal tendency for mainly shorter and less intense precipitation events at the SGP site, but a long-term increase in annual rainfall by more than 36 mm (5 %) per decade. This rainfall trend is catalyzed primarily by more extreme event properties of relatively rare, intense precipitation events, with event total and 1 min maximum precipitation rate at a 1 year timeframe increasing up to 5 mm and 9 mm h −1 (several percent) per decade, respectively. While the currently available PrecipBE datasets (at https://adc.arm.gov/discovery/, last access: 8 December 2025) cover rainfall from multiple ARM deployments up to March 2025, PrecipBE is planned to be expanded to include solid-phase precipitation and will soon become an operational product with a several-day lag from real-time. We invite the ARM user community to leverage this new product and welcome user feedback to further enhance the dataset.

Silber, Israel [Pacific Northwest National Laborat↗

Over three decades, and counting, of near-surface turbulent flux measurements from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility

Processes mediating the coupling of terrestrial, aquatic, biospheric, and atmospheric systems influence weather, climate, and ecosystem dynamics via transfer of energy, momentum, water, and carbon (or other species). These exchange processes are quantified by measurements of near-surface turbulent fluxes. Understanding processes at these interfaces provides insight toward understanding and predicting current and future states within the Earth system. The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility has been conducting measurements of near-surface turbulent fluxes since the early 1990s at long-term fixed locations and shorter-term mobile deployments across the Earth. ARM has utilized two established methods for conducting these measurements: energy balance Bowen ratio (EBBR) and eddy covariance (EC). Primary measurements from the former include sensible and latent heat flux, while the latter also measures fluxes of momentum and carbon (primarily carbon dioxide, with methane fluxes measured at two locations to date). The EBBR systems have been deployed at 22 locations, and, to date, the EC systems have been deployed at over 50 sites, with plans for additional novel site locations in the future. Herein, the history, evolution, and key aspects of these instrument systems are documented, along with information on data quality assurance and post-processing, as well as best use practices. Additionally, three data validation experiments were recently conducted, and their key findings are summarized. Finally, ancillary datasets acquired by ARM, which can contextualize and aid interpretation of the near-surface turbulent flux measurements, are discussed. The datasets described herein include the eddy correlation flux measurement system: 30ECOR (https://doi.org/10.5439/1879993, Sullivan et al., 1997), 30QCECOR (https://doi.org/10.5439/1097546, Gaustad, 2003), ECORSF (https://doi.org/10.5439/1494128, Sullivan et al., 2019a), and associated AmeriFlux and Methane Value-Added Product, AMCMETHANE (https://doi.org/10.5439/1508268, Billesbach, 2011); the energy balance Bowen ratio system: 30EBBR (https://doi.org/10.5439/1023895, Sullivan et al., 1993) and 30BAEBBR (https://doi.org/10.5439/1027268, Gaustad and Xie, 1993); and the carbon dioxide flux measurement system: CO2FLX (https://doi.org/10.5439/1287574, https://doi.org/10.5439/1287575, https://doi.org/10.5439/1287576, Koontz et al., 2015a, b, c; https://doi.org/10.5439/1989774, https://doi.org/10.5439/1989776, https://doi.org/10.5439/1992202, Biraud and Chan, 2002a, b, c). These data can be found by searching the above data stream names at https://adc.arm.gov/discovery/#/results/ (last access: 8 September 2025).

Sullivan, Ryan C. [Argonne National Laboratory (AN↗