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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 631 records · Page 35

All sources NASA NTRS DOE OSTI

NASA NTRS2017

Advanced Software V&V for Civil Aviation and Autonomy

With the advances in high-computing platform (e.g., advanced graphical processing units or multi-core processors), computationally-intensive software techniques such as the ones used in artificial intelligence or formal methods have provided us with an opportunity to further increase safety in the aviation industry. Some of these techniques have facilitated building safety at design time, like in aircraft engines or software verification and validation, and others can introduce safety benefits during operations as long as we adapt our processes. In this talk, I will present how NASA is taking advantage of these new software techniques to build in safety at design time through advanced software verification and validation, which can be applied earlier and earlier in the design life cycle and thus help also reduce the cost of aviation assurance. I will then show how run-time techniques (such as runtime assurance or data analytics) offer us a chance to catch even more complex problems, even in the face of changing and unpredictable environments. These new techniques will be extremely useful as our aviation systems become more complex and more autonomous.

software assurance↗

NASA NTRS1991

Graphics Software For VT Terminals

VTGRAPH graphics software tool for DEC/VT computer terminal or terminals compatible with it, widely used by government and industry. Callable in FORTRAN or C language, library program enabling user to cope with many computer environments in which VT terminals used for window management and graphic systems. Provides PLOT10-like package plus color or shade capability for VT240, VT241, and VT300 terminals. User can easily design more-friendly user-interface programs and design PLOT10 programs on VT terminals with different computer systems. Requires ReGis graphics set terminal and FORTRAN compiler.

Wang, Caroline↗

NASA NTRS1986

Interactive algebraic grid-generation technique

An algebraic grid generation technique and use of an associated interactive computer program are described. The technique, called the two boundary technique, is based on Hermite cubic interpolation between two fixed, nonintersecting boundaries. The boundaries are referred to as the bottom and top, and they are defined by two ordered sets of points. Left and right side boundaries which intersect the bottom and top boundaries may also be specified by two ordered sets of points. when side boundaries are specified, linear blending functions are used to conform interior interpolation to the side boundaries. Spacing between physical grid coordinates is determined as a function of boundary data and uniformly space computational coordinates. Control functions relating computational coordinates to parametric intermediate variables that affect the distance between grid points are embedded in the interpolation formulas. A versatile control function technique with smooth-cubic-spline functions is presented. The technique works best in an interactive graphics environment where computational displays and user responses are quickly exchanged. An interactive computer program based on the technique and called TBGG (two boundary grid generation) is also described.

Smith, R. E.↗

NASA NTRS1995

The transition of GTDS to the Unix workstation environment

Future Flight Dynamics systems should take advantage of the possibilities provided by current and future generations of low-cost, high performance workstation computing environments with Graphical User Interface. The port of the existing mainframe Flight Dynamics systems to the workstation environment offers an economic approach for combining the tremendous engineering heritage that has been encapsulated in these systems with the advantages of the new computing environments. This paper will describe the successful transition of the Draper Laboratory R&D version of GTDS (Goddard Trajectory Determination System) from the IBM Mainframe to the Unix workstation environment. The approach will be a mix of historical timeline notes, descriptions of the technical problems overcome, and descriptions of associated SQA (software quality assurance) issues.

Carter, D.↗

DOE OSTI2024

Establish the basis for Breadth-First Search on Frontier System: XBFS on AMD GPUs

Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) offer significant potential for accelerating various computational tasks, including Breadth-First Search (BFS). Numerous efforts have been made to deploy BFS on GPUs effectively. To address the dynamic nature of BFS, XBFS, the state-of-the-art work, employs an adaptive strategy that leverages different optimized frontier queue generation designs, accommodating the varying characteristics of levels in BFS. While XBFS demonstrates excellent performance on NVIDIA Quadro P6000 GPUs, it faces challenges when deployed on AMD GPUs. In this work, we present our efforts to implement XBFS’s adaptive approach on Frontier, the most powerful supercomputer system, by porting XBFS to AMD MI250X GPUs. Through targeted optimizations tailored to the unique features of AMD GPUs, our implementation achieves an average performance of 43 Giga-Traversed Edges Per Second (GTEPS) per Graphics Compute Dies (GCD). Based on these results, we observe potential for surpassing the performance of the official Frontier results from the Graph500 benchmark released in June 2024.

Yang, Haoshen↗

NASA NTRS1996

Program Helps Specify Paths For Numerically Controlled Tools

ESDAPT computer program provides graphical programming environment for developing APT (Automatically Programmed Tool) programs for controlling numerically controlled machine tools. Establishes graphical user interface providing user with APT syntax-sensitive text-editing subprogram and windows for displaying geometry and tool paths. APT geometry statements also created by use of menus and screen picks. Written in C language, yacc, lex, and XView for use on Sun4-series computers running SunOS.

Premack, Timothy↗

NASA NTRS1983

Development of real-time ATC simulation facility

The Flight Transportation Laboratory has developed a real time interactive Air Traffic Control simulation facility designed to provide a versatile and easy to use tool for research and experimentation involving air traffic control. The facility uses a VAX-11/750 as the central computer. The SANDERS GRAPHICS-7 display system is used to simulate air traffic control displays. Pseudo-pilot displays are provided on Texas Instruments TI940 video terminals. Finally, a custom designed audio system driven by a Z-80 and interfaced with the VAX provides voice communication between the air traffic controllers and the pseudo-pilots. The audio system provides computer controlled voice disguising and thus allows each aircraft to have its own audio characteristics and provides an added realism to the experiment. The facility can accommodate multiple controller stations and pseudo-pilot stations. Each station is manned by a single operator who has a large repertoire of commands with which to control his/her display and the simulated aircraft under his/her jurisdiction. An additional console and a distinct set of commands allow full controllability of the simulation environment by the experimenter in real time.

Pararas, J.↗

NASA NTRS1984

More than you may want to know about maximum likelihood estimation

A discussion is undertaken concerning the maximum likelihood estimator and the aircraft equations of motion it employs, with attention to the application of the concepts of minimization and estimation to a simple computed aircraft example. Graphic representations are given for the cost functions to help illustrate the minimization process. The basic concepts are then generalized, and estimations obtained from flight data are evaluated. The example considered shows the advantage of low measurement noise, multiple estimates at a given condition, the Cramer-Rao bounds, and the quality of the match between measured and computed data.

Iliff, K. W.↗

NASA NTRS1984

A combined direct/inverse three-dimensional transonic wing design method for vector computers

A three-dimensional transonic-wing design algorithm for vector computers is developed, and the results of sample computations are presented graphically. The method incorporates the direct/inverse scheme of Carlson (1975), a Cartesian grid system with boundary conditions applied at a mean plane, and a potential-flow solver based on the conservative form of the full potential equation and using the ZEBRA II vectorizable solution algorithm of South et al. (1980). The accuracy and consistency of the method with regard to direct and inverse analysis and trailing-edge closure are verified in the test computations.

Weed, R. A.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Feasibility Study of Distributed Decision-Making on the Edge for Urban Air Mobility

The Concept of Operations for Urban Air Mobility (UAM) put forward by FAA, NASA, and several industry stakeholders acknowledges the diversity and complexity in UAM operations and, thereby, envisions a federated architecture for UAM management. In this architecture, the decision-making is distributed to a set of service providers who collectively manage the shared airspace usage by different stakeholders. This notionally brings autonomy closer to the UAM businesses and encourages to explore the feasibility of decision making on the very edge, which is the topic of the presented research. This paper reports research conducted on the hypothesis based on which the residual compute capability onboard smart unmanned aerial systems (UASs) is utilized to build situational awareness and resolve conflicts by passive and active coordination among multiple UASs, thereby implementing a layer of distributed autonomy in UAM. Key features of the edge-computing approach involve inter-UAS information exchange, independent assessment of own flight and environmental conditions, and estimation of other UASs’ flight preferences, incorporating machine learning techniques in the last two. Parallel computing on portable graphics processing unit (GPU) enables the machine learning workflow on the edge. A custom-built 3D simulator is used to evaluate the efficacy of the distributed decision-making on the edge. Each edge node, representing a smart UAS, connects to the simulator from a remote location and independently controls the behavior of the corresponding virtual asset in the simulator, analogous to participants in an online multi-player game. The presented edge-computing-based distributed decision-making framework is envisioned to pave the way for collective mobility of autonomous air vehicles in the future shared airspace, while allowing the inclusion of the business preferences of the UAS operators within allowed regulatory limits.

Edge computing↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Feasibility Study of Distributed Decision-Making on the Edge for Urban Air Mobility

Edge computing↗

NASA NTRS2011

Planetary Education and Outreach Using the NOAA Science on a Sphere

Science On a Sphere (SOS) is a large visualization system, developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAH), that uses computers running Redhat Linux and four video projectors to display animated data onto the outside of a sphere. Said another way, SOS is a stationary globe that can show dynamic, animated images in spherical form. Visualization of cylindrical data maps show planets, their atmosphere, oceans, and land, in very realistic form. The SOS system uses 4 video projectors to display images onto the sphere. Each projector is driven by a separate computer, and a fifth computer is used to control the operation of the display computers. Each computer is a relatively powerful PC with a high-end graphics card. The video projectors have native XGA resolution. The projectors are placed at the corners of a 30' x 30' square with a 68" carbon fiber sphere suspended in the center of the square. The equator of the sphere is typically located 86" off the floor. SOS uses common image formats such as JPEG, or TIFF in a very specific, but simple form; the images are plotted on an equatorial cylindrical equidistant projection, or as it is commonly known, a latitude/longitude grid, where the image is twice as wide as it is high (rectangular). 2048x] 024 is the minimum usable spatial resolution without some noticeable pixelation. Labels and text can be applied within the image, or using a timestamp-like feature within the SOS system software. There are two basic modes of operation for SOS: displaying a single image or an animated sequence of frames. The frame or frames can be setup to rotate or tilt, as in a planetary rotation. Sequences of images that animate through time produce a movie visualization, with or without an overlain soundtrack. After the images are processed, SOS will display the images in sequence and play them like a movie across the entire sphere surface. Movies can be of any arbitrary length, limited mainly by disk space and can be animated at frame rates up to 30 frames per second. Transitions, special effects, and other computer graphics techniques can be added to a sequence through the use of off-the-shelf software, like Final Cut Pro. However, one drawback is that the Sphere cannot be used in the same manner as a flat movie screen; images cannot be pushed to a "side", a highlighted area must be viewable to all sides of the room simultaneously, and some transitions do not work as well as others. We discuss these issues and workarounds in our poster.

Simon-Miller, A. A.↗

NASA NTRS1990

Wood Products Analysis

Structural Reliability Consultants' computer program creates graphic plots showing the statistical parameters of glue laminated timbers, or 'glulam.' The company president, Dr. Joseph Murphy, read in NASA Tech Briefs about work related to analysis of Space Shuttle surface tile strength performed for Johnson Space Center by Rockwell International Corporation. Analysis led to a theory of 'consistent tolerance bounds' for statistical distributions, applicable in industrial testing where statistical analysis can influence product development and use. Dr. Murphy then obtained the Tech Support Package that covers the subject in greater detail. The TSP became the basis for Dr. Murphy's computer program PC-DATA, which he is marketing commercially.

Source record↗

DOE OSTI2025

AMR-Wind: A Performance-Portable, High-Fidelity Flow Solver for Wind Farm Simulations

We present AMR-Wind, a verified and validated high-fidelity computational-fluid-dynamics code for wind farm flows. AMR-Wind is a block-structured, adaptive-mesh, incompressible-flow solver that enables predictive simulations of the atmospheric boundary layer and wind plants. It is a highly scalable code designed for parallel high-performance computing with a specific focus on performance portability for current and future computing architectures, including graphical processing units (GPUs). In this paper, we detail the governing equations, the numerical methods, and the turbine models. Establishing a foundation for the correctness of the code, we present the results of formal verification and validation. The verification studies, which include a novel actuator line test case, indicate that AMR-Wind is spatially and temporally second-order accurate. The validation studies demonstrate that the key physics capabilities implemented in the code, including actuator disk models, actuator line models, turbulence models, and large eddy simulation (LES) models for atmospheric boundary layers, perform well in comparison to reference data from established computational tools and theory. We conclude with a demonstration simulation of a 12-turbine wind farm operating in a turbulent atmospheric boundary layer, detailing computational performance and realistic wake interactions.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

NASA NTRS1993

Graphics-Printing Program For The HP Paintjet Printer

IMPRINT utility computer program developed to print graphics specified in raster files by use of Hewlett-Packard Paintjet(TM) color printer. Reads bit-mapped images from files on UNIX-based graphics workstation and prints out three different types of images: wire-frame images, solid-color images, and gray-scale images. Wire-frame images are in continuous tone or, in case of low resolution, in random gray scale. In case of color images, IMPRINT also prints by use of default palette of solid colors. Written in C language.

Atkins, Victor R.↗

NASA NTRS2007

Interactions with Virtual People: Do Avatars Dream of Digital Sheep?

This paper explores another form of artificial entity, ones without physical embodiment. We refer to virtual characters as the name for a type of interactive object that have become familiar in computer games and within virtual reality applications. We refer to these as avatars: three-dimensional graphical objects that are in more-or-less human form which can interact with humans. Sometimes such avatars will be representations of real-humans who are interacting together within a shared networked virtual environment, other times the representations will be of entirely computer generated characters. Unlike other authors, who reserve the term agent for entirely computer generated characters and avatars for virtual embodiments of real people; the same term here is used for both. This is because avatars and agents are on a continuum. The question is where does their behaviour originate? At the extremes the behaviour is either completely computer generated or comes only from tracking of a real person. However, not every aspect of a real person can be tracked every eyebrow move, every blink, every breath rather real tracking data would be supplemented by inferred behaviours which are programmed based on the available information as to what the real human is doing and her/his underlying emotional and psychological state. Hence there is always some programmed behaviour it is only a matter of how much. In any case the same underlying problem remains how can the human character be portrayed in such a manner that its actions are believable and have an impact on the real people with whom it interacts? This paper has three main parts. In the first part we will review some evidence that suggests that humans react with appropriate affect in their interactions with virtual human characters, or with other humans who are represented as avatars. This is so in spite of the fact that the representational fidelity is relatively low. Our evidence will be from the realm of psychotherapy, where virtual social situations are created that do test whether people react appropriately within these situations. We will also consider some experiments on face-to-face virtual communications between people in the same shared virtual environments. The second part will try to give some clues about why this might happen, taking into account modern theories of perception from neuroscience. The third part will include some speculations about the future developments of the relationship between people and virtual people. We will suggest that a more likely scenario than the world becoming populated by physically embodied virtual people (robots, androids) is that in the relatively near future we will interact more and more in our everyday lives with virtual people- bank managers, shop assistants, instructors, and so on. What is happening in the movies with computer graphic generated individuals and entire crowds may move into the space of everyday life.

Slater, Mel↗

DOE OSTI2025

Geometric GNNs for charged particle tracking at GlueX

Nuclear physics experiments are aimed at uncovering the fundamental building blocks of matter. The experiments involve high-energy collisions that produce complex events with many particle trajectories. Tracking charged particles resulting from collisions in the presence of a strong magnetic field is critical to enable the reconstruction of particle trajectories and precise determination of interactions. It is traditionally achieved through combinatorial approaches that scale worse than linearly as the number of hits grows. Since particle hit data naturally form a point cloud and can be structured as graphs, graph neural networks (GNNs) emerge as an intuitive and effective choice for this task. In this study, we evaluate the GNN model for track finding on the data from the GlueX experiment at Jefferson Lab. We use simulation data to train the model and test on both simulation and real GlueX measurements. We demonstrate that GNN-based track finding outperforms the currently used traditional method at GlueX in terms of segment-based efficiency at a fixed purity while providing faster inferences. We show that the GNN model can achieve significant speedup by processing multiple events in batches, which exploits the parallel computation capability of graphical processing units (GPUs). Finally, we compare the GNN implementation on GPU and field-programmable gate array and describe the trade-off.

batched GNN pipeline↗

DOE OSTI2024

Likelihood-based interactive local docking into cryo-EM maps in ChimeraX

The interpretation of cryo-EM maps often includes the docking of known or predicted structures of the components, which is particularly useful when the map resolution is worse than 4 Å. Although it can be effective to search the entire map to find the best placement of a component, the process can be slow when the maps are large. However, frequently there is a well-founded hypothesis about where particular components are located. In such cases, a local search using a map subvolume will be much faster because the search volume is smaller, and more sensitive because optimizing the search volume for the rotation-search step enhances the signal to noise. A Fourier-space likelihood-based local search approach, based on the previously published em_placement software, has been implemented in the new emplace_local program. Tests confirm that the local search approach enhances the speed and sensitivity of the computations. An interactive graphical interface in the ChimeraX molecular-graphics program provides a convenient way to set up and evaluate docking calculations, particularly in defining the part of the map into which the components should be placed.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗