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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

AI-Driven Crack Detection for Remanufacturing Cylinder Heads Using Deep Learning and Engineering-Informed Data Augmentation

Detecting cracks in cylinder heads traditionally relies on manual inspection, which is time-consuming and susceptible to human error. As an alternative, automated object detection utilizing computer vision and machine learning models has been explored. However, these methods often face challenges due to a lack of sufficiently annotated training data, limited image diversity, and the inherently small size of cracks. Addressing these constraints, this paper introduces a novel automated crack-detection method that enhances data availability through a synthetic data generation technique. Unlike general data augmentation practices, our method involves copying cracks from one location to another, guided by both random and informed engineering decisions about likely crack formations due to cyclic thermomechanical loads. The innovative aspect of our approach lies in the integration of domain-specific engineering knowledge into the synthetic generation process, which substantially improves detection accuracy. We evaluate our method’s effectiveness using two metrics: the F2 score, which emphasizes recall to prioritize detecting all potential cracks, and mean average precision (MAP), a standard measure in object detection. Experimental results demonstrate that, without engineering insights, our method increases the F2 score from 0.40 to 0.65, while maintaining a stable MAP. Incorporating detailed engineering knowledge further enhances the F2 score to 0.70 and improves MAP to 0.57, representing increases of 63% and 43%, respectively. These results confirm that our approach not only mitigates the limitations of traditional data augmentation but also significantly advances the reliability and precision of crack detection in industrial settings.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Emulation Modeling for Development of Cyber-Defense Capabilities for Satellite Systems

The objective of this project was to develop a novel capability to generate synthetic data sets for the purpose of training Machine Learning (ML) algorithms for the detection of malicious activities on satellite systems. The approach experimented with was to a) generate sparse data sets using emulation modeling and b) enlarge the sparse data using Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). We based our emulation modeling on the Open Source NASA Operational Simulator for Small Satellites (NOS3) developed by the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) program in West Virginia. Significant new capabilities on NOS3 had to be developed for our data set generation needs. To expand these data sets for the purpose of training ML, we experimented with a) Extreme Learning Machines (ELMs) and b) Wasserstein-GANs (WGAN-GP).

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗

Battery state-of-health diagnostics during fast cycling using physics-informed deep-learning

Rapid, in-situ Li-ion battery state-of-health (SOH) quantification is challenging. Li-ion battery aging can vary significantly with chemistry, operating conditions, cycling demands, electrode design, and operation history. As a cell ages, optimal and safe operating conditions need to be adapted to account for battery degradation by tracking critical aging modes such as loss-of-lithium-inventory (LLI), loss-of-active-material (LAM) in either electrode, and/or impedance rise. This manuscript describes a framework for identifying battery aging modes in-operando using fast-rate voltage charge/discharge responses. The framework uses a physically based Li-ion battery model to produce synthetic high-rate responses at aged states. The aging model is calibrated against experimental data from cells with different electrode loadings and cycled under a variety of fast-charging conditions (1 h, 15 min, 10 min, and 7 min charging). The synthetically generated high-rate responses at aged states are then used to train a deep-learning model to identify real cell state-of-health from fast charge/discharge battery voltage responses. The synthetically trained deep-learning model performance is validated by comparing to standard incremental capacity analysis and half-cell measurements. Finally, the framework demonstrates the benefits of using high-rate physics-based models to generate synthetic data for training deep-learning models.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

CAFE AU LAIT: Compute-Aware Federated Augmented Low-Rank AI Training

Federated finetuning is crucial for unlocking the knowledge embedded in pretrained Large Language Models (LLMs) when data are geographically distributed across clients. Unlike finetuning with data from a single institution, federated finetuning allows collaboration across multiple institutions, enabling the utilization of diverse and decentralized datasets while preserving data privacy. Given the high computing costs of LLM training and the emphasis on energy efficiency in Federated Learning (FL), Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) has emerged as a widely adopted algorithm due to its significantly reduced number of trainable parameters. However, this assumes that all data silos have the necessary computing resources to compute local updates of LLMs. Nevertheless, in practice, the computing resources across clients are highly heterogeneous: while some may have access to hundreds of GPUs, others might have limited or no GPU access. Recently, federated finetuning using synthetic data has been proposed, allowing clients to participate in a collaborative training run without training LLMs locally. However, our experimental results reveal a performance gap between models trained using synthetic data and those trained using local updates. Motivated by the observed heterogeneity in computing resources and the performance gap, we propose a novel two-stage algorithm that leverages the storage and computing capabilities of a strong server. In the first stage, under the coordination of the strong server, clients with limited computing resources collaborate to generate synthetic data, which is transferred to and stored on the strong server. In the second stage, the strong server uses this synthetic data on behalf of the resource-constrained clients to perform federated LoRA finetuning alongside clients with sufficient computing resources. This approach ensures that all clients can participate in the finetuning process. Experimental results demonstrate that incorporating local updates from even a small fraction of clients improves performance compared to using synthetic data for all clients. Furthermore, we incorporate the Gaussian mechanism in both stages to guarantee client-level differential privacy.

Wang, Jiayi [ORNL]↗

Enhancing molecular design efficiency: Uniting language models and generative networks with genetic algorithms

This study examines the effectiveness of generative models in drug discovery, material science, and polymer science, aiming to overcome constraints associated with traditional inverse design methods relying on heuristic rules. Generative models generate synthetic data resembling real data, enabling deep learning model training without extensive labeled datasets. They prove valuable in creating virtual libraries of molecules for material science and facilitating drug discovery by generating molecules with specific properties. While generative adversarial networks (GANs) are explored for these purposes, mode collapse restricts their efficacy, limiting novel structure variability. To address this, we introduce a masked language model (LM) inspired by natural language processing. Although LMs alone can have inherent limitations, we propose a hybrid architecture combining LMs and GANs to efficiently generate new molecules, demonstrating superior performance over standalone masked LMs, particularly for smaller population sizes. This hybrid LM-GAN architecture enhances efficiency in optimizing properties and generating novel samples.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Discovery of Activities via Statistical Clustering of Fixation Patterns

Human behavior often consists of a series of distinct activities, each characterized by a unique pattern of interaction with the visual environment. This is true even in a restricted domain, such as a pilot flying an airplane; in this case, activities with distinct visual signatures might be things like communicating, navigating, monitoring, etc. We propose a novel analysis method for gaze-tracking data, to perform blind discovery of these hypothetical activities. We compare, not individual fixations, but groups of fixations aggregated over a fixed time interval (Tau). We assume that the environment has been divided into a finite set of discrete areas-of-interest (AOIs). For a given time interval, we compute the proportion of time spent fixating each AOI, resulting in an N-dimensional vector, where N is the number of AOIs. These proportions can be converted to integer counts by multiplying by Tau divided by the average fixation duration, a parameter that we fix at 283 milliseconds. We compare different intervals by computing the chi-squared statistic. The p-value associated with the statistic is the likelihood of observing the data under the hypothesis that the data in the two intervals were generated by a single process with a single set of probabilities governing the fixation of each AOI. We cluster the intervals, first by merging adjacent intervals that are sufficiently similar, optionally shifting the boundary between non-merged intervals to maximize the difference. Then we compare and cluster non-adjacent intervals. The method is evaluated using synthetic data generated by a hand-crafted set of activities. While the method generally finds more activities than put into the simulation, we have obtained agreement as high as 80 percent between the inferred activity labels and ground truth.

Eye Movements↗

Sample Analysis at Mars Instrument Simulator

The Sample Analysis at Mars Instrument Simulator (SAMSIM) is a numerical model dedicated to plan and validate operations of the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument on the surface of Mars. The SAM instrument suite, currently operating on the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), is an analytical laboratory designed to investigate the chemical and isotopic composition of the atmosphere and volatiles extracted from solid samples. SAMSIM was developed using Matlab and Simulink libraries of MathWorks Inc. to provide MSL mission planners with accurate predictions of the instrument electrical, thermal, mechanical, and fluid responses to scripted commands. This tool is a first example of a multi-purpose, full-scale numerical modeling of a flight instrument with the purpose of supplementing or even eliminating entirely the need for a hardware engineer model during instrument development and operation. SAMSIM simulates the complex interactions that occur between the instrument Command and Data Handling unit (C&DH) and all subsystems during the execution of experiment sequences. A typical SAM experiment takes many hours to complete and involves hundreds of components. During the simulation, the electrical, mechanical, thermal, and gas dynamics states of each hardware component are accurately modeled and propagated within the simulation environment at faster than real time. This allows the simulation, in just a few minutes, of experiment sequences that takes many hours to execute on the real instrument. The SAMSIM model is divided into five distinct but interacting modules: software, mechanical, thermal, gas flow, and electrical modules. The software module simulates the instrument C&DH by executing a customized version of the instrument flight software in a Matlab environment. The inputs and outputs to this synthetic C&DH are mapped to virtual sensors and command lines that mimic in their structure and connectivity the layout of the instrument harnesses. This module executes, and thus validates, complex command scripts prior to their up-linking to the SAM instrument. As an output, this module generates synthetic data and message logs at a rate that is similar to the actual instrument.

Benna, Mehdi↗

Process Anomaly Detection for Sparsely Labeled Events in Nuclear Power Plants

An essential aspect of online monitoring, subtle anomaly detection increases the detection lead time for equipment failure and enables a nuclear power plant (NPP) to mitigate unexpected partial or full outages, resulting in significant cost saving to the plant. Once an anomaly is detected by plant staff, its cause and severity are investigated. Because the vast majority of anomalies require some level of investigation, including some that require time-consuming examination, before they are passed over to the engineering organization for further analysis, plants are often equipped with tools to assist the staff in performing anomaly detection. Those tools operate as a black box and are often based on statistical methods that establish sensor correlations using preconfigured mathematical models and flag correlation deviations as anomalies. Due to the number of anomalies detected at a given NPP on a daily basis, a significant number of flagged anomalies usually await examination for days or weeks. A primary cause of this backlog is that the methods used by the tools generate many false positives. Though this is usually attributed to oversensitive model settings due to very narrow normal operation bands, it can also be associated with the model development being inadequate for the process being monitored, or with missing model inputs that could have explained misclassified positives. The performance of anomaly detection tools impacts their plant acceptance and utilization, especially when the effort to address false positives generated by the tool depletes the value or cost saved by using that tool. Thus, means to advance anomaly detection performance have been investigated by the Department of Energy’s Light Water Reactor Sustainability program. Previous and ongoing efforts have targeted unsupervised machine-learning (ML) methods, which do not require the labeling of any data fed into the ML model. By contrast, in supervised anomaly detection methods, every data point is labeled as either a normal or abnormal process condition, and the model is trained to replicate the classification process. Supervised methods usually outperform unsupervised methods, due to the added value in differentiating normal from anomalous states of the monitored process. An NPP’s corrective action program requires it to track and document, via a dedicated report, the resolution of any issues that occur within the plant. Once created, each report is reviewed by a plant screening committee, and several classifications and decisions are made. Recently, a collaborating NPP developed an artificial intelligence and ML-based classifier to categorize a condition report (CR) into classes that can serve to label the data as normal or anomalous. Applying CRs as labels represents a semi-supervised use case. Semi-supervised ML assumes that labels exist for some data points (i.e., labeled anomalies, in this case) but not for the rest. In this effort, semi-supervised ML methods were used to fuse data from CRs with anomaly detection methods in order to test the hypothesis that partially labeled anomalies would improve the accuracy of the anomaly detection methods. Specifically, two methods were used. The first is the deep Semi-supervised Anomaly Detection (deep SAD) method, which can handle labels ranging from fully unsupervised to fully supervised cases. The second is a newly designed ML method developed specifically for this effort and referred to as the high-order feature (HOF)-based method. To evaluate these two methods in controlled environments, synthetic data generators were developed and used. The first datasets used a spring-mass-damper (SMD) system simulator commonly found in mechanical engineering references. This was used to create two use cases: a one- and a three-mass system. Anomalies were introduced by changing the spring and damper coefficients while the system was actuated by random forces. The second datasets used the commercial Dymola-Modelica software to build a simplified nuclear reactor model. Anomalies were added in the form of corrupted sensor readings and/or control commands. The deep SAD method was tested using the SMD system, while the HOF method was tested using both datasets. Application of the deep SAD semi-supervised ML method demonstrated that labels can generate increased confidence in detecting true anomalies. This helped increase the number of true positives and decrease the number of false negatives—something that would aid in addressing the backlog of possible anomalies. Application of the HOF method demonstrated that labels can aid in down selecting from a candidate set of features to a more optimal subset in order to better differentiate between normal and anomalous conditions.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Activity coefficient acquisition with thermodynamics–informed active learning for phase diagram construction

This work explores the use of thermodynamics-informed Gaussian processes (GPs) and active learning (AL) to model activity coefficients and construct phase diagrams. Relying on synthetic data generated from an excess Gibbs energy model, GPs were found to accurately describe the activity coefficients of several binary mixtures across large composition and temperature ranges. Moreover, GPs could estimate their own uncertainty and identify composition/temperature regions where activity coefficient data provide the most information to the models. This was leveraged to build AL algorithms targeted at modeling phase equilibria. In many cases, a single active-learning-acquired data point was sufficient to describe the phase diagrams studied. Lastly, the ability of AL to greatly reduce the amount of data needed to obtain accurate models was further verified on experimental case studies, namely individual ion activity coefficients, the solid–liquid and vapor–liquid equilibrium of deep eutectic solvents, and phase equilibria in ternary mixtures.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

Revisiting the Kinematics of the Cylinder Test

The cylinder expansion experiment is a well-established performance test for condensed explosives that is utilized routinely to determine pressure-energy-volume relationships for detonation products. The modern cylinder test employs optical interferometric techniques to measure velocity, as opposed to older realizations where streak cameras were commonplace. Despite their widespread use, questions sometimes remain as to what kind of data the velocity diagnostics in a cylinder test provide along with how to interpret such measurements and relate them to physical quantities of interest. Here in this study, equations are derived that fully describe the kinematics of the cylinder wall during expansion. These equations are then applied to experimental as well as synthetic data generated via a hydrodynamic simulation in order to verify the mathematical framework developed.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Predicting critical heat flux with uncertainty quantification and domain generalization using conditional variational autoencoders and deep neural networks

Deep generative models (DGMs) can generate synthetic data samples that closely resemble the original dataset, addressing data scarcity. In this work, we developed a conditional variational autoencoder (CVAE) to augment critical heat flux (CHF) data used for the 2006 Groeneveld lookup table. To compare with traditional methods, a fine-tuned deep neural network (DNN) regression model was evaluated on the same dataset. Both models achieved small mean absolute relative errors, with the CVAE showing more favorable results. Uncertainty quantification (UQ) was performed using repeated CVAE sampling and DNN ensembling. The DNN ensemble improved performance over the baseline, while the CVAE maintained consistent results with less variability and higher confidence. Both models achieved small errors inside and outside the training domain, with slightly larger errors outside. Altogether, the CVAE performed better than the DNN in predicting CHF and exhibited better uncertainty behavior.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Training material models using gradient descent algorithms

High temperature design requires accurate constitutive models to describe material inelastic deformation and failure behavior. Oftentimes, calibrating accurate models devolves into the problem of fitting the model parameters against experimental test data. Here, we present the pyopmat package, an open source framework for calibrating constitutive models against experiment data subjected to various loading conditions using machine learning techniques. The package calculates the exact gradient of the model response with respect to the parameters using a combination of automatic differentiation and the adjoint method. Given this exact gradient, we compare the performance of several gradient-based optimization techniques in fitting realistic constitutive models against data. Here, we demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of our package through example problems using both synthetic data, generated using known parameter sets, under monotonic and cyclic loading conditions and also with an example applying the techniques developed here to actual high temperature creep-fatigue test data.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Knowledge-guided graph machine learning for spatially distributed prediction of daily discharge and nitrogen export dynamics

Spatially distributed prediction of streamflow and nitrogen export dynamics is essential for precision management of agricultural watersheds. While temporal deep learning models such as Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) have shown strong performance at basin scales, their ability to generalize spatially is limited by insufficient representation of spatial dependencies and flow paths, particularly under data-scarce conditions. To address this gap, we propose HydroGraphNet, a knowledge-guided graph machine learning framework that integrates process-based knowledge and explicit spatial learning into temporal modeling. This framework incorporates directed graph topology to encode watershed connectivity and upstream inflows, with mass balance constraints to improve physical consistency. To enhance generalization in sparsely monitored regions, HydroGraphNet is pretrained on synthetic data generated by the SWAT+ (Soil and Water Assessment Tool Plus) model. We evaluated HydroGraphNet in the Upper Sangamon River Basin (44 HUC-12 subwatersheds, 2001–2020) against two LSTM baselines: a lumped basin-level model and a distributed variant. When benchmarked on SWAT+ simulations in pretraining, HydroGraphNet improved test NSEs by 8.9% (discharge) and 13.7% (NO₃–N load) in temporal extrapolation, and by 27.1% and 34.7% in spatial extrapolation, relative to the Lumped LSTM baseline. After fine-tuning with USGS monitoring data, the model achieved mean test NSE (KGE) scores of 0.768 (0.861) for discharge and 0.626 (0.664) for NO₃–N load, substantially outperforming baselines. Attribution analysis further highlighted the importance of upstream inflow representation and graph-based spatial learning in capturing cross-subwatershed dependencies. The model also reproduced seasonal hydrological and biogeochemical patterns consistent with known processes, demonstrating its robustness and process fidelity for spatially distributed prediction. Altogether, HydroGraphNet advances the integration of physical knowledge and spatially explicit learning in hydrological modeling, offering a generalizable framework for distributed modeling to support spatially targeted water quality management in data-scarce watersheds.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Evaluation of Methods for Causal Discovery in Hydrometeorological Systems

Understanding causal relations is of utmost importance in hydrology and climate research for systems identification, prediction, and understanding systems behavior in a changing climate. Traditionally, researchers in hydrometeorology attempted to study causal questions by conducting controlled experiments using numerical models. This approach, however, in most cases of interest provides uncertain results because the models are approximate representation of the natural system. An alternative approach that has recently drawn significant attention in several fields is to infer causal relations from purely observational data. It possesses several traits to its utility particularly in hydrometeorology due to the rapid accumulation of in situ and remotely sensed data records. The first objective of this study is to present a brief description of four causal discovery methods (Granger causality, Transfer Entropy, graph-based algorithms, and Convergent Cross Mapping) with special emphasis on the assumptions on which they are built. Second, using synthetic data generated from a hydrological model, we assess their performance in retrieving causal information taking into account sensitivity to sample size and presence of noise. Last, we use causal analysis to examine and formulate hypotheses on causal drivers of evapotranspiration in a shrubland region during summer and winter seasons. An interpretation of the hypotheses based on canopy seasonal dynamics and evapotranspiration processes is presented. It is hoped that the results presented here can be useful in guiding researchers studying hydrometeorological systems as to which causal method is most appropriate to the characteristics of the system under study.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

A three-point velocity estimation method for two-dimensional coarse-grained imaging data

Time delay and velocity estimation methods have been widely studied subjects in the context of signal processing, with applications in many different fields of physics. The velocity of waves or coherent fluctuation structures is commonly estimated as the distance between two measurement points divided by the time lag that maximizes the cross correlation function between the measured signals, but this is demonstrated to result in erroneous estimates for two spatial dimensions. We present an improved method to accurately estimate both components of the velocity vector, relying on three non-aligned measurement points. We introduce a stochastic process describing the fluctuations as a superposition of uncorrelated pulses moving in two dimensions. Using this model, we show that the three-point velocity estimation method, using time delays calculated through cross correlations, yields the exact velocity components when all pulses have the same velocity. The two- and three-point methods are tested on synthetic data generated from realizations of such processes for which the underlying velocity components are known. The results reveal the superiority of the three-point technique. Finally, we demonstrate the applicability of the velocity estimation on gas puff imaging data of strongly intermittent plasma fluctuations due to the radial motion of coherent, blob-like structures at the boundary of the Alcator C-Mod tokamak.

Materials Science↗

Anomaly Detection for Online Monitoring of Thermocouple Sensors in the Advanced Test Reactor

This study explores data-driven anomaly detection methods to analyze sensor fail- ures in the Advanced Gas Reactor (AGR) nuclear fuel irradiation experiments. Specifically, we examine failures of thermocouples (TCs), which are critical for mon- itoring and controlling in-reactor temperatures during operation. Failures were pri- marily observed during abrupt power transitions and manifested as sensor drop-outs, drifts, or unexplained behavior. We applied three time-series analysis techniques— rolling mean smoothing, matrix profile, and vector auto-regression (VAR)—to de- tect anomalies in TC data prior to failure events. The rolling mean method effec- tively highlighted deviations aligned with reported failures, while the matrix profile provided partial early warning but sometimes flagged normal fluctuations during power-down periods. VAR shows potential in capturing multivariate dependencies but requires further calibration. A rare case of TC drift was also documented, which did not result in failure, underscoring the challenge of building predictive models with sparse positive examples. Our findings demonstrate that traditional statistical tools can aid anomaly detection but have limited predictive power without richer training data. We propose future directions including synthetic data generation, real- time surrogate modeling, and multi-modal feature integration. This work provides a foundation for applying robust anomaly detection frameworks to mission-critical sensor systems in experimental settings.

11 - NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Single Gaussian process method for arbitrary tokamak regimes with a statistical analysis

Abstract Gaussian process regression is a Bayesian method for inferring profiles based on input data. The technique is increasing in popularity in the fusion community due to its many advantages over traditional fitting techniques including intrinsic uncertainty quantification and robustness to over-fitting. This work investigates the use of a new method, the change-point method, for handling the varying length scales found in different tokamak regimes. The use of the Student’s t-distribution for the Bayesian likelihood probability is also investigated and shown to be advantageous in providing good fits in profiles with many outliers. To compare different methods, synthetic data generated from analytic profiles is used to create a database enabling a quantitative statistical comparison of which methods perform the best. Using a full Bayesian approach with the change-point method, Matérn kernel for the prior probability, and Student’s t-distribution for the likelihood is shown to give the best results.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Towards Improved Decision Making for the Smarter Grid: Geomagnetic Disturbance Implicit Modeling Uncertainty Quantification

Geomagnetic disturbances can greatly disrupt the power grid operation. This is caused by low-frequency changes in the earth’s magnetic field, which upon interaction with the deep earth conductivity induces a changing electric field at the earth’s surface. This in turn induces quasi-direct currents which have the potential to cause protective devices to operate, widespread damage to high-voltage transformers, or voltage collapse due to induced reactive power losses. While these impacts have been known since the 1940s, only recently have standards for GMD response been implemented. Because these standards are heavily based on models, it is important to understand when it is appropriate to make certain modeling assumptions. In this work, implicit modeling uncertainty is quantified for the purpose of enhanced decision making for disturbance impact mitigation. Considering electromagnetic models, modeling assumptions of non-uniform grounding, imbalanced operation, transformer saturation, and geomagnetically induced currents, voltage estimation values are analyzed. Statistical characteristics of modeling uncertainty are obtained by analysis of synthetically generated data. Results statistically characterize geomagnetic disturbances modeling uncertainty, providing an important tool for impact mitigation.

grid analysis↗