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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 541 records · Page 30

Online Simulations and Forecasts of the Global Aerosol Distribution in the NASA GEOS-5 Model

We present an analysis of simulations of the global aerosol system in the NASA GEOS-5 transport, radiation, and chemistry model. The model includes representations of all major tropospheric aerosol species, including dust, sea salt, black carbon, particulate organic matter, and sulfates. The aerosols are run online for the period 2000 through 2005 in a simulation driven by assimilated meteorology from the NASA Goddard Data Assimilation System. Aerosol surface mass concentrations are compared with existing long-term surface measurement networks. Aerosol optical thickness is compared with ground-based AERONET sun photometry and space-based retrievals from MODIS, MISR, and OMI. Particular emphasis is placed here on consistent sampling of model and satellite aerosol optical thickness to account for diurnal variations in aerosol optical properties. Additionally, we illustrate the use of this system for providing chemical weather forecasts in support of various NASA and community field missions.

Colarco, Peter↗

Contrasting Carbon–Water–Energy Dynamics in Perennial and Annual Bioenergy Agroecosystems Using Eddy Covariance and Interpretable Machine Learning

Understanding how agroecosystems respond to environmental variability is fundamental to predicting productivity and sustainability under a changing climate. We analyzed 55 site-years of high-frequency eddy covariance observations from five agroecosystems—two perennial grasses (miscanthus and switchgrass), two annual rotation systems (maize–soybean and sorghum–soybean), and a restored native prairie—to examine ecosystem-scale carbon, water, and energy fluxes. Using an interpretable machine-learning framework with regression tree ensembles, Shapley Additive Explanations, and Accumulated Local Effects, we quantified how environmental and temporal factors regulate gross primary productivity (GPP), evapotranspiration (ET), water-use efficiency, and the Bowen ratio. Perennials exhibited stronger physiological buffering and maintained fluxes across a broader range of temperature and moisture conditions, reflecting deeper rooting and persistent canopy cover. Annuals, in contrast, showed greater short-term variability and stronger coupling to atmospheric demand, with GPP and ET declining rapidly under low humidity or soil moisture. Differences in temperature sensitivity of Bowen ratio further revealed that perennials sustained proportionally greater sensible heat flux under cool conditions, whereas annuals exhibited constrained energy exchange when evaporative demand was low. Together, these results demonstrate that crop life cycle and canopy structure are fundamental determinants of ecosystem-scale carbon–water–energy coupling. By integrating long-term flux observations with interpretable machine learning, this study identifies the environmental drivers that shape agroecosystem function and highlights how conversion from annual to perennial feedstocks can enhance climatic resilience and alter land–atmosphere energy feedbacks. These findings provide a data-driven basis for improving crop and Earth-system models and for guiding bioenergy landscape design under future climate scenarios.

Accumulated Local Effects↗

Surrogate Modeling of Nonlinear Dynamic Systems: A Comparative Study

Surrogate models play a vital role in overcoming the computational challenge in designing and analyzing nonlinear dynamic systems, especially in the presence of uncertainty. This paper presents a comparative study of different surrogate modeling techniques for nonlinear dynamic systems. Four surrogate modeling methods, namely, Gaussian process (GP) regression, a long short-term memory (LSTM) network, a convolutional neural network (CNN) with LSTM (CNN-LSTM), and a CNN with bidirectional LSTM (CNN-BLSTM), are studied and compared. All these model types can predict the future behavior of dynamic systems over long periods based on training data from relatively short periods. The multi-dimensional inputs of surrogate models are organized in a nonlinear autoregressive exogenous model (NARX) scheme to enable recursive prediction over long periods, where current predictions replace inputs from the previous time window. Three numerical examples, including one mathematical example and two nonlinear engineering analysis models, are used to compare the performance of the four surrogate modeling techniques. The results show that the GP-NARX surrogate model tends to have more stable performance than the other three deep learning (DL)-based methods for the three particular examples studied. The tuning effort of GP-NARX is also much lower than its deep learning-based counterparts.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Open Architecture Data System for NASA Langley Combined Loads Test System

The Combined Loads Test System (COLTS) is a new structures test complex that is being developed at NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) to test large curved panels and cylindrical shell structures. These structural components are representative of aircraft fuselage sections of subsonic and supersonic transport aircraft and cryogenic tank structures of reusable launch vehicles. Test structures are subjected to combined loading conditions that simulate realistic flight load conditions. The facility consists of two pressure-box test machines and one combined loads test machine. Each test machine possesses a unique set of requirements or research data acquisition and real-time data display. Given the complex nature of the mechanical and thermal loads to be applied to the various research test articles, each data system has been designed with connectivity attributes that support both data acquisition and data management functions. This paper addresses the research driven data acquisition requirements for each test machine and demonstrates how an open architecture data system design not only meets those needs but provides robust data sharing between data systems including the various control systems which apply spectra of mechanical and thermal loading profiles.

Lightfoot, Michael C.↗

BSDF Data generation for daylight applications: A call for international standardization

Standardized methods for generating angle-dependent, bidirectional, solar-optical properties for complex fenestration systems do not exist, which means that energy and daylight evaluations in building performance simulations often suffer from major inaccuracies. This position paper provides an overview of state-of-the-art data-driven methods for characterizing light scattering properties of fenestration materials and blind systems (e.g. fabrics, metal slats, patterned glazing), validation via laboratory, simulation and field tests, and salient issues in support of standardization of such methods via the International Standardization Organization (ISO). The ISO standard is intended to provide the fundamental underpinnings for recently mandated daylight standards that rely on bidirectional scattering distribution function data for climate-based daylight modelling and building performance simulations.

Geisler-Moroder, D.↗

Taylor-Expansion-Based Robust Power Flow in Unbalanced Distribution Systems: A Hybrid Data-Aided Method

Traditional power flow methods often adopt certain assumptions designed for passive balanced distribution systems, thus lacking practicality for unbalanced operation. moreover, their computation accuracy and efficiency are heavily subject to unknown errors and bad data in measurements or prediction data of distributed energy resources (ders). to address these issues, this paper proposes a hybrid data-aided robust power flow algorithm in unbalanced distribution systems, which combines taylor series expansion knowledge with a data-driven regression technique. the proposed method initiates a linearization power flow model to derive an explicitly analytical solution by modified taylor expansion. to mitigate the approximation loss that surges due to the der integration and bad data, we further develop a data-aided robust support vector regression approach to estimate the errors efficiently. comparative analysis in the 13-bus and 123-bus ieee unbalanced feeders shows that the proposed hybrid algorithm achieves superior computational efficiency, with guaranteed accuracy and robustness against outliers.

data-driven↗

Optimizing aircraft flows at airports using data driven predicted capabilities

A method for safe and efficient use of airport runway capacity includes receiving, at an air traffic control system at an airport, airport data related to movement areas of the airport, time data related to a time period, aircraft data related to a plurality of aircraft expected to operate into and out of the airport during the time period, and environmental data related to environmental conditions predicted for the airport during the time period. The method further includes computing a probability distribution for inter-aircraft spacing by applying the airport data, the time data, the aircraft data, and the environmental data to a trained Bayesian network, producing the probability distribution for the inter-aircraft spacing as an output observation of the trained Bayesian network, and, using the probability distribution and a confidence value, identifying an inter-aircraft spacing value for the plurality of aircraft expected to operate into and out of the airport during the time period.

Sweet, Douglas↗

Integrated Workforce Planning Model: A Proof of Concept

Recently, the Workforce and Diversity Management Office at KSC have launched a major initiative to develop and implement a competency/skill approach to Human Resource management. As the competency/skill dictionary is being elaborated, the need for a competency-based workforce-planning model is recognized. A proof of concept for such a model is presented using a multidimensional data model that can provide the data infrastructure necessary to drive intelligent decision support systems for workforce planing. The components of competency-driven workforce planning model are explained. The data model is presented and several schemes that would support the workforce-planning model are presented. Some directions and recommendations for future work are given.

Guruvadoo, Eranna K.↗

OpenET: Filling a Critical Data Gap in Water Management for the Western United States

The lack of consistent, accurate information on evapotranspiration (ET) and consumptive use of water by irrigated agriculture is one of the most important data gaps for water managers in the western United States (U.S.) and other arid agricultural regions globally. The ability to easily access information on ET is central to improving water budgets across the West, advancing the use of data-driven irrigation management strategies, and expanding incentive-driven conservation programs. Recent advances in remote sensing of ET have led to the development of multiple approaches for field-scale ET mapping that have been used for local and regional water resource management applications by U.S. state and federal agencies. The OpenET project is a community-driven effort that is building upon these advances to develop an operational system for generating and distributing ET data at a field scale using an ensemble of six well-established satellite-based approaches for mapping ET. Key objectives of OpenET include: Increasing access to remotely sensed ET data through a web-based data explorer and data services; supporting the use of ET data for a range of water resource management applications; and development of use cases and training resources for agricultural producers and water resource managers. Here we describe the OpenET framework, including the models used in the ensemble, the satellite, meteorological, and ancillary data inputs to the system, and the OpenET data visualization and access tools. We also summarize an extensive intercomparison and accuracy assessment conducted using ground measurements of ET from 139 flux tower sites instrumented with open path eddy covariance systems. Results calculated for 24 cropland sites from Phase I of the intercomparison and accuracy assessment demonstrate strong agreement between the satellite-driven ET models and the flux tower ET data. For the six models that have been evaluated to date (ALEXI/DisALEXI, eeMETRIC, geeSEBAL, PT-JPL, SIMS, and SSEBop) and the ensemble mean, the weighted average mean absolute error (MAE) values across all sites range from 13.6 to 21.6 mm/month at a monthly timestep, and 0.74 to 1.07 mm/day at a daily timestep. At seasonal time scales, for all but one of the models the weighted mean total ET is within ±8% of both the ensemble mean and the weighted mean total ET calculated from the flux tower data. Overall, the ensemble mean performs as well as any individual model across nearly all accuracy statistics for croplands, though some individual models may perform better for specific sites and regions. We conclude with three brief use cases to illustrate current applications and benefits of increased access to ET data, and discuss key lessons learned from the development of OpenET.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Analytics-at-scale of Sensor Data for Digital Monitoring in Nuclear Plants (4th Annual Report)

Nuclear plant sites collect and store large volumes of data collected from various equipment and systems. These datasets typically include plant process parameters, maintenance records, technical logs, online monitoring data, and equipment failure data. The collection of such data affords an opportunity to leverage data-driven machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies to provide diagnostic and prognostic capabilities within the nuclear power industry to reduce operating and maintenance costs. In this way, nuclear energy can become more economically competitive with other energy sources, and premature closures can be avoided. From a maintenance standpoint, savings can be achieved by leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies to develop data-driven algorithms to better diagnose and predict potential faults within the system. Improved model accuracy can lead to reductions in unnecessary maintenance and more efficient planning of future maintenance, thus lowering the costs associated with parts, labor, and unnecessary planned, forced, or extended outages. From an operations perspective, cost savings can be generated by shifting from route-based monitoring to wireless technologies for online monitoring, and by transitioning from onsite- to cloud-based computing and storage services. Wireless monitoring would reduce the operator manhours required for taking routine measurements, while cloud computing services would generate cost savings by reducing the amount of hardware needing to be purchased and maintained—all while scaling to both computational and storage demands. This report summarizes this project’s effort to shift from costly, labor-intensive preventative maintenance to cheaper predictive maintenance.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Hybrid Model Based Approaches for Systems Health Management and Prognostics

To facilitate and solve the prediction problem, awareness of the current health state of the system is key, since it is necessary to perform condition-based predictions. To accurately predict the future state of any system, it is required to possess knowledge of its current health state and future operational conditions. Latest achievements of data-driven algorithms in regression of complex nonlinear functions and classification tasks have generated a growing interest in artificial intelligence for industrial applications. Complex multi-physics models as well as digital twins, once purely built on physics and corresponding simplified lumped parameter iterations, can now benefit from machine learning algorithms to mitigate the lack of understanding of some complex behavior. Given models of the current and future system behavior, a general approach of model-based prognostics can solve the prediction problem and further decision making. In principle, data driven approaches can replace expensive experimental test-setups as well as reduce the number of simulations needed to explore, e.g., the parametric space of a multi-parameter model. Nonetheless, the limitations of pure data-driven methods came to light rather quickly, at least for some industries. In many industrial applications, data acquisition is costly, and the volume of data that can be collected does not satisfy the requirements for an effective model training and cross-validation. Therefore, some recent works in the area of machine learning is focusing on blending physics with data-driven algorithms, thus mitigating the drawbacks of the two approaches and emphasizing respective advantages. Partial physical knowledge of the problem can aid the learning process by “guiding” the algorithm towards efficient solutions that satisfy the physics driving the system behavior. The result is a hybrid modeling approach combining physical knowledge as well data driven methods to develop a unified hybrid approach. A hybrid framework for fusing information from physics-based performance models along with deep learning algorithms for prognostics of complex safety critical systems is presented. In this framework, physics-based performance models infer unobservable model parameters related to the system's components health solving a calibration problem in the deep learning approach.

Hybrid Modeling↗

Analytics-at-scale of Sensor Data for Digital Monitoring in Nuclear Plants: 2nd Annual Report

For economic reasons, the nuclear industry is witnessing premature closure of nuclear power plants, despite excellent safety records. Operations and Maintenance (O&M) activities are some of the largest costs in operating legacy light-water plants. By reducing O&M costs, nuclear energy can become more economically competitive with other energy sources. This can be achieved by leveraging machine-learning and artificial intelligence technologies to develop data-driven algorithms to better diagnose potential faults within the system. Improved accuracy of the models can lead to a reduction in unnecessary maintenance, thus reducing costs associated with parts, labor, and unnecessary planned, forced, or extended outages. To address these challenges, the goal of this project is to perform research and development in the area of digital monitoring, i.e., the application of advanced sensor technologies (particularly wireless sensor technologies) and data science based analytic capabilities, to advance online monitoring and predictive maintenance in nuclear plants and improve plant performance (efficiency gain and economic competitiveness). This report summarizes the fiscal year 2020 research progress encompassing (1) different wireless vibration sensor and data indicators used to assess the health of a plant asset; (2) development of diagnostic models for fault detection; and (3) development of prognostic models for estimating the health of the system up to 7 days ahead.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Establishing nationwide power system vulnerability index across US counties using interpretable machine learning

Power outages have become increasingly frequent, intense, and prolonged in the US due to climate change, aging electrical grids, and rising energy demand. However, largely due to the absence of granular spatiotemporal outage data, we lack data-driven evidence and analytics-based metrics to quantify power system vulnerability. This limitation has hindered the ability to effectively evaluate and address vulnerability to power outages in US communities. Here, in this work, we collected ∼179 million power outage records at 15-min intervals across 3022 US contiguous counties (96.15 % of the area) from 2014 to 2023. We developed a power system vulnerability assessment framework based on three dimensions (intensity, frequency, and duration) and applied interpretable machine learning models (XGBoost and SHAP) to compute Power System Vulnerability Index (PSVI) at the county level. Our analysis reveals a consistent increase in power system vulnerability across the US counties over the past decade. We identified 318 counties across 45 states as hotspots for high power system vulnerability, particularly in the West Coast (California and Washington), the East Coast (Florida and the Northeast area), the Great Lakes megalopolis (Chicago-Detroit metropolitan areas), and the Gulf of Mexico (Texas). Our heterogeneity analysis indicates that urban counties and those located along regional transmission boundaries tend to exhibit significantly higher vulnerability. Our results highlight the significance of the proposed PSVI for evaluating the vulnerability of communities to power outages. The findings underscore the widespread and pervasive impact of power outages across the country and offer crucial insights to support infrastructure operators, policymakers, and emergency managers in formulating policies and programs aimed at enhancing the resilience of the US power infrastructure.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Preliminary Results from an Assimilation of Saharan Dust Using TOMS Radiances and the GOCART Model

At NASA Goddard we are developing a global aerosol data assimilation system that combines advances in remote sensing and modeling of atmospheric aerosols. The goal is to provide high resolution, 3-D aerosol distributions to the research community. Our first step is to develop a simple assimilation system for Saharan mineral aerosol. The Goddard Chemistry and Aerosol Radiation model (GOCART) provides accurate 3-D mineral aerosol size distributions. Surface mobilization, wet and dry deposition, convective and long-range transport are all driven by assimilated fields from the Goddard Earth Observing System Data Assimilation System, GEOS-DAS. Our version of GOCART transports sizes from .08-10 microns and only simulates Saharan dust. We draw the assimilation to two observables in this study: the TOMS aerosol index (Al) which is directly related to the ratio of the 340 and 380 radiances and the 380 radiance alone. The forward model that simulates the observables requires the aerosol optical thickness, the single scattering albedo and the height of the aerosol layer from the GOCART fields. The forward model also requires a refractive index for the dust. We test three index values to see which best fits the TOMS observables. These are 1) for Saharan dust reported by Patterson, 2) for a mixture of Saharan dust and a highly reflective material (sea salt or sulfate) and 3) for pure illite. The assimilation works best assuming either pure illite or the dust mixture. Our assimilation cycle first determines values of the aerosol index (Al) and the radiance at 380 nm based on the GOCART aerosol fields. Differences between the observed and GOCART model calculated Al and 380 nm radiance are first analyzed horizontally using the Physical-space Statistical Analysis System (PSAS). A quasi-Newton iteration is then performed to produce analyzed 3D aerosol fields according to parameterized background and observation error covariances. We only assimilate observations into the the GOCART model over regions of Africa and the Atlantic where mineral aerosols are dominant and carbonaceous aerosols are minimal.

Weaver, C. J.↗

Modeling atmospheric data and identifying dynamics Temporal data-driven modeling of air pollutants

Atmospheric modelling has recently experienced a surge with the advent of deep learning. Most of these models, however, predict concentrations of pollutants following a data-driven approach in which the physical laws that govern their behaviors and relationships remain hidden. Furthermore, with the aid of real-world air quality data collected hourly in different stations throughout Madrid, we present a case study using a series of data-driven techniques with the following goals: (1) Find systems of ordinary differential equations that model the concentration of pollutants and their changes over time; (2) assess the performance and limitations of our model using stability analysis; (3) reconstruct the time series of chemical pollutants not measured in certain stations using delay coordinate embedding results.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Bayesian learning for rapid prediction of lithium-ion battery-cycling protocols

Advancing lithium-ion battery technology requires the optimization of cycling protocols. A new data-driven methodology is demonstrated for rapid, accurate prediction of the cycle life obtained by new cycling protocols using a single test lasting only 3 cycles, enabling rapid exploration of cycling protocol design spaces with orders of magnitude reduction in testing time. We achieve this by combining lifetime early prediction with a hierarchical Bayesian model (HBM) to rapidly predict performance distributions without the need for extensive repetitive testing. The methodology is applied to a comprehensive dataset of lithium-iron-phosphate/graphite comprising 29 different fast-charging protocols. HBM alone provides high protocol-lifetime prediction performance, with 6.5% of overall test average percent error, after cycling only one battery to failure. Here, by combining HBM with a battery lifetime prediction model, we achieve a test error of 8.8% using a single 3-cycle test. In addition, the generalizability of the HBM approach is demonstrated for lithium-manganese-cobalt-oxide/graphite cells.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

Understanding latent timescales in neural ordinary differential equation models of advection-dominated dynamical systems

The neural ordinary differential equation (ODE) framework has shown considerable promise in recent years in developing highly accelerated surrogate models for complex physical systems characterized by partial differential equations (PDEs). For PDE-based systems, state-of-the-art neural ODE strategies leverage a two-step procedure to achieve this acceleration: a nonlinear dimensionality reduction step provided by an autoencoder, and a time integration step provided by a neural-network based model for the resultant latent space dynamics (the neural ODE). This work explores the applicability of such autoencoder-based neural ODE strategies for PDEs in which advection terms play a critical role. More specifically, alongside predictive demonstrations, physical insight into the sources of model acceleration (i.e., how the neural ODE achieves its acceleration) is the scope of the current study. Such investigations are performed by quantifying the effects of both autoencoder and neural ODE components on latent system time-scales using eigenvalue analysis of dynamical system Jacobians. To this end, the sensitivity of various critical training parameters – de-coupled versus end-to-end training, latent space dimensionality, and the role of training trajectory length, for example – to both model accuracy and the discovered latent system timescales is quantified. Furthermore, this work specifically uncovers the key role played by the training trajectory length (the number of rollout steps in the loss function during training) on the latent system timescales: larger trajectory lengths correlate with an increase in limiting neural ODE time-scales, and optimal neural ODEs are found to recover the largest time-scales of the full-order (ground-truth) system. Demonstrations are performed across fundamentally different unsteady fluid dynamics configurations influenced by advection: (1) the Kuramoto–Sivashinsky equations (2) Hydrogen-Air channel detonations (the compressible reacting Navier–Stokes equations with detailed chemistry), and (3) 2D Atmospheric flow.

Advection-dominated dynamical systems↗