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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 613 records · Page 34
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2019

A probabilistic assessment of PWR SNF cladding pinching failure considering potential transportation accident conditions

This report presents a probabilistic assessment of pressurized water reactor (PWR) spent nuclear fuel (SNF) rod cladding pinching failure triggered by a transportation accident, after 300 years of dry storage. Three thousand pinching scenarios, which were previously evaluated assuming a baseline 9-m cask drop and a horizontal impact on an unyielding surface, are reassessed assuming more realistic train transportation accidents. Each scenario was defined using Latin Hypercube Sampling (LHS) of SNF rod conditions and loading parameters, and it is simulated with a nonlinear finite element (FE) model. Cladding failure is evaluated under consideration of hydride-related embrittlement effects. The reassessment indicates that cladding pinching failure is not significantly affected by the assumptions on transportation accidents, but is rather controlled by other parameters, mainly the pellet-cladding gap width. The reevaluated, conditional failure probability ranges from 1.62 E-7 to 6.47 E-7, for 5,000 km of transportation by train.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2019

Failure recovery for bulk synchronous applications with MPI stages

When an MPI program experiences a failure, the most common recovery approach is to restart all processes from a previous checkpoint and to re-queue the entire job. A disadvantage of this method is that, although the failure occurred within the main application loop, live processes must start again from the beginning of the program, along with new replacement processes—this incurs unnecessary overhead for live processes. To avoid such overheads and concomitant delays, we introduce the concept of “MPI Stages.” MPI Stages saves internal MPI state in a separate checkpoint in conjunction with application state. Upon failure, both MPI and application state are recovered, respectively, from their last synchronous checkpoints and continue without restarting the overall MPI job. Live processes roll back only a few iterations within the main loop instead of rolling back to the beginning of the program, while a replacement of failed process restarts and reintegrates, thereby achieving faster failure recovery. As a result, this approach integrates well with large-scale, bulk synchronous applications and checkpoint/restart.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2025

Rapid characterization and failure analysis of 6276 rooftop-harvested photovoltaic connectors

Photovoltaic (PV) connectors, which link modules in series and connect PV strings in parallel, have increasingly been recognized as a primary contributor to PV system failures and a source of numerous fire incidents. However, publicly available data on the rates and types of connector failures are scarce, primarily due to the proprietary nature of the information and the need for comprehensive analysis. This study represents the first large-scale investigation of harvested PV connectors, drawing from a dataset of 6276 connectors from residential rooftop solar systems across the United States. The outcome of this work is twofold: 1) we have established a rapid characterization method for large populations of harvested connectors, incorporating visual inspection, resistance measurements, and X-ray imaging; and 2) the analysis made possible by our rapid-processing method has revealed, for a population of connector models provided by a single rooftop installer, failure statistics and insights for various connector makes and models, installation practices, operating currents, and internal component displacements. This research identifies common failure modes that could be considered in future connector designs standards, and operations and maintenance practices, to ultimately improve the reliability of this vital component of PV infrastructure.

MC4↗
DOE OSTI2017

Cascading Failures in Interdependent Networks with Multiple Supply-Demand Links and Functionality Thresholds

Various social, financial, biological and technological systems can be modeled by interdependent networks. It has been assumed that in order to remain functional, nodes in one network must receive the support from nodes belonging to different networks. So far these models have been limited to the case in which the failure propagates across networks only if the nodes lose all their supply nodes. In this paper we develop a more realistic model for two interdependent networks in which each node has its own supply threshold, i.e., they need the support of a minimum number of supply nodes to remain functional. In addition, we analyze different conditions of internal node failure due to disconnection from nodes within its own network. We show that several local internal failure conditions lead to similar nontrivial results. When there are no internal failures the model is equivalent to a bipartite system, which can be useful to model a financial market. We explore the rich behaviors of these models that include discontinuous and continuous phase transitions. Using the generating functions formalism, we analytically solve all the models in the limit of infinitely large networks and find an excellent agreement with the stochastic simulations.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2015

Unifying role of dissipative action in the dynamic failure of solids

A fourth-power law underlying the steady shock-wave structure and solid viscosity of condensed material has been observed for a wide range of metals and non-metals. The fourth-power law relates the steady-wave Hugoniot pressure to the fourth power of the strain rate during passage of the material through the structured shock wave. Preceding the fourth-power law was the observation in a shock transition that the product of the shock dissipation energy and the shock transition time is a constant independent of the shock pressure amplitude. Invariance of this energy-time product implies the fourth-power law. This property of the shock transition in solids was initially identified as a shock invariant. More recently, it has been referred to as the dissipative action, although no relationship to the accepted definitions of action in mechanics has been demonstrated. This same invariant property has application to a wider range of transient failure phenomena in solids. Invariance of this dissipation action has application to spall fracture, failure through adiabatic shear, shock compaction of granular media, and perhaps others. Through models of the failure processes, a clearer picture of the physics underlying the observed invariance is emerging. These insights in turn are leading to a better understanding of the shock deformation processes underlying the fourth-power law. Experimental result and material models encompassing the dynamic failure of solids are explored for the purpose of demonstrating commonalities leading to invariance of the dissipation action. Calculations are extended to aluminum and uranium metals with the intent of predicting micro-scale dynamics and spatial structure in the steady shock wave.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2017

Cascading Failures as Continuous Phase-Space Transitions

In network systems, a local perturbation can amplify as it propagates, potentially leading to a large-scale cascading failure. We derive a continuous model to advance our understanding of cascading failures in power-grid networks. The model accounts for both the failure of transmission lines and the desynchronization of power generators and incorporates the transient dynamics between successive steps of the cascade. In this framework, we show that a cascade event is a phase-space transition from an equilibrium state with high energy to an equilibrium state with lower energy, which can be suitably described in a closed form using a global Hamiltonian-like function. From this function, we show that a perturbed system cannot always reach the equilibrium state predicted by quasi-steady-state cascade models, which would correspond to a reduced number of failures, and may instead undergo a larger cascade. We also show that, in the presence of two or more perturbations, the outcome depends strongly on the order and timing of the individual perturbations. These results offer new insights into the current understanding of cascading dynamics, with potential implications for control interventions.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2018

Evaluating Energy Impacts and Costs from PV Component Failures

The PV Reliability PerformanceModel (PV-RPM) tool is used to simulate the cost and energy impacts of component faults and failures for a hypothetical PV system. This model, originally developed by Sandia National Laboratories, is a new feature in the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's System Advisor Model (SAM), which performs stochastic analysissampling of probability distributions for faults, failures, and repairs. One PV system was created for this analysis to be representative of a portfolio of maintenance data maintained by Sandia National Laboratories. Fault,failure, and repair distributions from this system are varied from current baseline conditions to simulate different reliability and repair scenarios and resulting energy and cost impacts. Results highlight ways to express the uncertainty around PV system performance when considering the probabilistic behavior of components inthe system, and ways the PV-RPM model can be used to explore different failure and repair scenarios.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Failure Probability Constrained AC Optimal Power Flow

Despite cascading failures being the central cause of blackouts in power transmission systems, existing operational and planning decisions are made largely by ignoring their underlying cascade potential. This paper posits a reliability-aware AC Optimal Power Flow formulation that seeks to design a dispatch point which has a low operator-specified likelihood of triggering a cascade starting from any single component outage. By exploiting a recently developed analytical model of the probability of component failure, our Failure Probability-constrained ACOPF (FP-ACOPF) utilizes the system's expected first failure time as a smoothly tunable and interpretable signature of cascade risk. Here, we use techniques from bilevel optimization and numerical linear algebra to efficiently formulate and solve the FP-ACOPF using off-the-shelf solvers. Extensive simulations on the IEEE 118-bus case show that, when compared to the unconstrained and N-1 security-constrained ACOPF, our probability-constrained dispatch points can significantly lower the probabilities of long severe cascades and of large demand losses, while incurring only minor increases in total generation costs.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2026

Hoop Tensile Failure Stress of 500 µm-Diameter Ceramic Spheres

The tensile failure stress of a brittle-material sphere is important to the survival of the sphere itself but is particularly relevant to systems that employ such spheres for applications in which the sphere exterior is subjected to tension during system fabrication or operation. That maximum hoop or tangential stress can be measured by diametrally compressing a C-sphere specimen directly machined from such spheres. This combination of specimen geometry and test method was conceived at Oak Ridge National Laboratory around 20 years ago. Although the C-sphere geometry has been tested with larger spheres, the ease and efficacy of its testing are unknown for submillimeter sphere diameters. To consider this, C-sphere specimens were machined from yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) spheres of ∼500 µm diameter. The maximum (hoop or tangential) tensile stress was determined as a function of compressive failure force and specimen dimensions using finite element analysis. Companion effective area and volume as a function of Weibull modulus were computed. Hoop tensile failure stresses were then measured and fractography conducted to examine flaw type and location and to estimate the mirror constant of this YSZ grade. This novel study demonstrates that hoop tensile failure stress can be determined with sub-millimeter brittle-material spheres.

Delia, Daniel [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000209023239)↗
DOE OSTI2022

Mechanics-Driven Anode Material Failure in Battery Safety and Capacity Deterioration Issues: A Review

Abstract High-capacity anodes, such as Si, have attracted tremendous research interest over the last two decades because of the requirement for the high energy density of next-generation lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). The mechanical integrity and stability of such materials during cycling are critical because their volume considerably changes. The volume changes/deformation result in mechanical stresses, which lead to mechanical failures, including cracks, fragmentation, and debonding. These phenomena accelerate capacity fading during electrochemical cycling and thus limit the application of high-capacity anodes. Experimental studies have been performed to characterize the deformation and failure behavior of these high-capacity materials directly, providing fundamental insights into the degradation processes. Modeling works have focused on elucidating the underlying mechanisms and providing design tools for next-generation battery design. This review presents an overview of the fundamental understanding and theoretical analysis of the electrochemical degradation and safety issues of LIBs where mechanics dominates. We first introduce the stress generation and failure behavior of high-capacity anodes from the experimental and computational aspects, respectively. Then, we summarize and discuss the strategies of stress mitigation and failure suppression. Finally, we conclude the significant points and outlook critical bottlenecks in further developing and spreading high-capacity materials of LIBs.

Mechanics↗
DOE OSTI2016

Minimizing treatment planning errors in proton therapy using failure mode and effects analysis

Purpose: Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) is a widely used tool to evaluate safety or reliability in conventional photon radiation therapy. However, reports about FMEA application in proton therapy are scarce. The purpose of this study is to apply FMEA in safety improvement of proton treatment planning at their center. Methods: The authors performed an FMEA analysis of their proton therapy treatment planning process using uniform scanning proton beams. The authors identified possible failure modes in various planning processes, including image fusion, contouring, beam arrangement, dose calculation, plan export, documents, billing, and so on. For each error, the authors estimated the frequency of occurrence, the likelihood of being undetected, and the severity of the error if it went undetected and calculated the risk priority number (RPN). The FMEA results were used to design their quality management program. In addition, the authors created a database to track the identified dosimetric errors. Periodically, the authors reevaluated the risk of errors by reviewing the internal error database and improved their quality assurance program as needed. Results: In total, the authors identified over 36 possible treatment planning related failure modes and estimated the associated occurrence, detectability, and severity to calculate the overall risk priority number. Based on the FMEA, the authors implemented various safety improvement procedures into their practice, such as education, peer review, and automatic check tools. The ongoing error tracking database provided realistic data on the frequency of occurrence with which to reevaluate the RPNs for various failure modes. Conclusions: The FMEA technique provides a systematic method for identifying and evaluating potential errors in proton treatment planning before they result in an error in patient dose delivery. The application of FMEA framework and the implementation of an ongoing error tracking system at their clinic have proven to be useful in error reduction in proton treatment planning, thus improving the effectiveness and safety of proton therapy.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2016

SU-F-T-245: The Investigation of Failure Mode and Effects Analysis and PDCA for the Radiotherapy Risk Reduction

Purpose: To optimize the clinical processes of radiotherapy and to reduce the radiotherapy risks by implementing the powerful risk management tools of failure mode and effects analysis(FMEA) and PDCA(plan-do-check-act). Methods: A multidiciplinary QA(Quality Assurance) team from our department consisting of oncologists, physicists, dosimetrists, therapists and administrator was established and an entire workflow QA process management using FMEA and PDCA tools was implemented for the whole treatment process. After the primary process tree was created, the failure modes and Risk priority numbers(RPNs) were determined by each member, and then the RPNs were averaged after team discussion. Results: 3 of 9 failure modes with RPN above 100 in the practice were identified in the first PDCA cycle, which were further analyzed to investigate the RPNs: including of patient registration error, prescription error and treating wrong patient. New process controls reduced the occurrence, or detectability scores from the top 3 failure modes. Two important corrective actions reduced the highest RPNs from 300 to 50, and the error rate of radiotherapy decreased remarkably. Conclusion: FMEA and PDCA are helpful in identifying potential problems in the radiotherapy process, which was proven to improve the safety, quality and efficiency of radiation therapy in our department. The implementation of the FMEA approach may improve the understanding of the overall process of radiotherapy while may identify potential flaws in the whole process. Further more, repeating the PDCA cycle can bring us closer to the goal: higher safety and accuracy radiotherapy.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2016

WE-H-BRC-01: Failure Mode and Effects Analysis of Skin Electronic Brachytherapy Using Esteya Unit

Purpose: A failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) of skin lesions treatment process using Esteya™ device (Elekta Brachyterapy, Veenendaal, The Netherlands) was performed, with the aim of increasing the quality of the treatment and reducing the likelihood of unwanted events. Methods: A multidisciplinary team with experience in the treatment process met to establish the process map, which outlines the flow of various stages for such patients undergoing skin treatment. Potential failure modes (FM) were identified and the value of severity (S), frequency of occurrence (O), and lack of detectability (D) of the proposed FM were scored individually, each on a scale of 1 to 10 following TG-100 guidelines of the AAPM. These failure modes were ranked according to our risk priority number (RPN) and S scores. The efficiency of existing quality management tools was analyzed through a reassessment of the O and D made by consensus. Results: 149 FM were identified, 43 of which had RPN ≥ 100 and 30 had S ≥ 7. After introduction of the tools of quality management, only 3 FM had RPN ≥ 100 and 22 FM had RPN ≥ 50. These 22 FM were thoroughly analyzed and new tools for quality management were proposed. The most common cause of highest RPN FM was associated with the heavy patient workload and the continuous and accurate applicator-patient skin contact during the treatment. To overcome this second item, a regular quality control and setup review by a second individual before each treatment session was proposed. Conclusion: FMEA revealed some of the FM potentials that were not predicted during the initial implementation of the quality management tools. This exercise was useful in identifying the need of periodic update of the FMEA process as new potential failures can be identified.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2017

HotSpots: Failure Cascades on Heterogeneous Critical Infrastructure Networks

Critical Infrastructure Systems such as transportation, water and power grid systems are vital to our national security, economy, and public safety. Recent events, like the 2012 hurricane Sandy, show how the interdependencies among different CI networks lead to catastrophic failures among the whole system. Hence, analyzing these CI networks, and modeling failure cascades on them becomes a very important problem. However, traditional models either do not take multiple CIs or the dynamics of the system into account, or model it simplistically. In this paper, we study this problem using a heterogeneous network viewpoint. We first construct heterogeneous CI networks with multiple components using national-level datasets. Then we study novel failure maximization problems on these networks, to compute critical nodes in such systems. We then provide HotSpots, a scalable and effective algorithm for these problems, based on careful transformations. Finally, we conduct extensive experiments on real CIS data from multiple US states, and show that our method HotSpots outperforms non-trivial baselines, gives meaningful results and that our approach gives immediate benefits in providing situational-awareness during large-scale failures.

Chen, Liangzhe↗
DOE OSTI2021

Artificial Reasoning System for Symptom-Based Conditional Failure Probability Estimation Using Bayesian Network

Advances in nuclear power technologies require enhanced capabilities for operator advice and autonomous control. One of the first tasks in the development of such capabilities is the formulation of symptom-based conditional failure probabilities for structures, systems, and components (SSCs) of interest, for which the primary goal is to aid plant personnel in deducing the probabilistic performance status of the monitored SSCs and in detecting impending faults/failure. The task of conditional failure probability estimation is a bidirectional inference problem and shall be logically tackled by the Bayesian network (BN) approach. As a knowledge-based artificial intelligence tool and a probabilistic graphical model, BN offers the capability of reasoning under uncertainty and graphical representation emulating the physical behavior of the target SSC. This paper provides a systematic overview of the BN technique and the software tools for handling implementation of BN models, along with the associated knowledge representation and reasoning paradigm. Both operational data and expert judgement can be readily incorporated into the knowledge base of a BN model. The challenges with data availability are highlighted, and the general approach to target SSC identification is presented. Our focus is upon failure-prone and risk-important balance of plant assets, especially cases having strong operator involvement. An exemplary case study on the failure of a motor-driven centrifugal pump is also conducted to demonstrate the usefulness and technical feasibility of the proposed artificial reasoning system using an expert system shell.

Zhao, Xingang↗
DOE OSTI2020

Low-temperature failure mechanism of [001] niobium micropillars under uniaxial tension

The plasticity of body-centered cubic (bcc) metals is dependent of temperature as well as sample dimension at the micrometer scale, but the effects of cryogenic temperature on the plasticity and the related failure process in micron-sized bcc metals have not been studied under uniaxial tension. In this work, we utilized in situ cryogenic micro-tensile tests, transmission electron microscopy, and dislocation dynamic simulations to examine the plasticity and failure processes of [001]-oriented bcc niobium micropillars. Our study reveals that a strong suppression of cross-slip at low temperatures prevents dislocation multiplication and leads to a dislocation starvation state, at which no mobile dislocation exists due to the rapid annihilation of dislocations at free surfaces. New dislocations are then nucleated until stress concentration at a slip step creates a micro-crack, the propagation of which leads to catastrophic failure. As a result, this unique failure process results from the combined effects of sample dimension and temperature.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2013

Decrease the Number of Glovebox Glove Breaches and Failures

Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is committed to the protection of the workers, public, and environment while performing work and uses gloveboxes as engineered controls to protect workers from exposure to hazardous materials while performing plutonium operations. Glovebox gloves are a weak link in the engineered controls and are a major cause of radiation contamination events which can result in potential worker exposure and localized contamination making operational areas off-limits and putting programmatic work on hold. Each day of lost opportunity at Technical Area (TA) 55, Plutonium Facility (PF) 4 is estimated at $1.36 million. Between July 2011 and June 2013, TA-55-PF-4 had 65 glovebox glove breaches and failures with an average of 2.7 per month. The glovebox work follows the five step safety process promoted at LANL with a decision diamond interjected for whether or not a glove breach or failure event occurred in the course of performing glovebox work. In the event that no glove breach or failure is detected, there is an additional decision for whether or not contamination is detected. In the event that contamination is detected, the possibility for a glove breach or failure event is revisited.

61 RADIATION PROTECTION AND DOSIMETRY↗
DOE OSTI2014

LIHEM Failure Model Development

Previously, a factor of safety criterion for the IHEs (LX-17 and PBX 9502) was defined using the ultimate strength of the material based on uniaxial compression and tension data at various temperatures and strain rates and an experimentally derived failure surface. The probability of failure was subsequently calculated using this factor of safety, uncertainty data, and assumptions. This year, the methodology was extended to incorporate the effect of cyclic loading into the Livermore Insensitive High Explosives Mechanical (LIHEM) model. As mentioned in the previous section, we performed cyclic experiments on three-point-bend specimens in order to find cycles-to-failure as a function of failure load at various temperatures, frequencies, and amplitudes.

42 ENGINEERING↗