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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 649 records · Page 36

Merefa Community Microgrid: Conceptual Design and Sequence of Operations [Slides]

A conceptual design is described for a community microgrid in Ukraine. Microgrid resources include solar photovoltaics, battery energy storage, and conventional natural gas fueled reciprocating engine generators. The conceptual architecture was informed by the microgrid developer, NREL subject matter experts, and the application of REopt, an NREL-developed software tool created for identification of least-cost combination of resources for achieving cost savings, resilience, and renewable energy goals. The report includes conceptual architecture, estimates of key summary financial metrics, and sequence of operations.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

Acceptance criteria for in situ surveillance of MSR materials based on thermally-loaded mechanical test articles

This report describes practices and acceptance test procedures for designing, running, and maintaining a material surveillance program in a future operating molten salt reactor. The programs described here rely on test data from passively actuated mechanical test articles inserted into critical regions of the reactor and periodically removed for out-of-reactor testing. The report defines definite acceptance procedures, based on the results of these tests, to determine whether a component can continue to operate accounting for the accumulation of environmentally-assisted mechanical damage in the component materials to date, and extrapolated out through the next inspection period. Additionally, the report describes work on a software tool implementing many of the surveillance methods and procedures described here and progress on simplified methods for inferring damage accumulation in the test articles, based on out-of-reactor thermal cycling, that do not rely on sophisticated numerical analysis.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Peregrine Software Development: Report on the Code Conversion From Python to C++

This work package seeks to convert the Peregrine software tool from its original Python implementation to a production version based on the C++ language. Peregrine is a powerful research platform with a multitude of advanced data analytics and data visualization functionalities. Developed by scientists to explore multimodal and multidimensional data related to the production of components using powder bed additive manufacturing processes, the tool implements state-of-the-art algorithms to assist machine users in making build or part quality determinations. Given that Peregrine is data-intensive, the goal of this conversion is to enhance the tool’s flexibility and interactivity and reduce the number of code dependencies to facilitate its deployment as part of the ongoing technology transfer campaign. This brief document provides an overview of Peregrine’s functionalities and capabilities, along with a detailed description of the core functionalities that have been implemented to date in the new C++ version. This document serves as a development update at the end of the first year of the ongoing conversion and will be regularly updated as progress continues.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Prefeasibility Assessment for Solar PV and Storage for Critical Community Facilities in Chernihiv, Ukraine [Slides]

A prefeasibility analysis is performed for integrating solar photovoltaics and battery energy storage at four critical facilities in Chernihiv, Ukraine. The facilities were identified by Chernihiv city officials and include Hospital No. 2, the Maternity Hospital, Secondary School No. 11, and Preschool No. 4. The analyses were performed using NREL's REopt decision-support software tool. The analysis identifies potential capacities for PV and battery energy storage to provide both economic and resilience benefits. The conceptual architecture and estimates of key summary financial and performance metrics are presented.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

EMRALD Technology Advancements for Commercial Grade Dedication Readiness

Event Modeling Risk Assessment using Linked Diagrams (EMRALD) is a software tool developed at Idaho National Laboratory for researching the capabilities of dynamic probabilistic risk assessment. It provides a simple interface to represent complex interactions often seen when developing dynamic models. EMRALD can also interface with other applications by modifying inputs as well as running and using their results within EMRALD for dynamic and integrated assessment. To enable wider industry use cases, collaborative work between Idaho National Laboratory and FPoliSolutions was performed through the technology commercialization fund TCF-20-21448. This report covers the additional features and capabilities developed under this work.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Power Electronics Manufacturing Improvements for Heavy-Duty Fuel Cell Vehicles

The Marel Power Solutions project, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy under Award DE-SC0023801, focused on advancing manufacturing techniques for power electronics in heavy-duty fuel cell vehicles. The research aimed to enhance system efficiency, reduce costs, and support broader adoption of hydrogen fuel cell technology. Key areas of investigation included power topology, thermal modeling, system architecture, and accessibility through software tools. Key Accomplishments: 1. Power Topology: - Developed an interleaved boost converter with optimized phase count, leveraging Marel’s proprietary Power Stacks. - Achieved reduced parasitic inductance and resistance, enabling high efficiency in DC-DC converters. 2. Thermal Modeling: - Integrated innovative cooling systems into compact Silicon Carbide (SiC) modules. - Simulations demonstrated the ability to dissipate significant heat (up to 7.5 kW), ensuring device reliability under heavy loads. 3. System Architecture: - Utilized simulation tools to analyze the impact of various fuel cell and vehicle parameters on efficiency. - Highlighted the role of smaller, modular improvements, such as enhanced DC-DC converters, in achieving system-wide gains. 4. Accessibility: - Evaluated and implemented MATLAB/Simulink code generation tools for real-world hardware applications. - Demonstrated the potential for rapid prototyping of custom power systems with reduced development costs. Impact and Benefits: - Efficiency and Cost Reduction: Marel’s cooling technology enhances SiC die performance, reducing the number of dies required and overall system size. - Scalability and Flexibility: The innovations support tailored solutions for diverse applications, from mass transit to mining vehicles. - Sustainability: The research promotes the integration of electrification technologies, helping meet rising energy demands sustainably. Conclusion: The project’s outcomes advance the state of power electronics for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, enabling more efficient, compact, and cost-effective solutions. These developments lay a foundation for future innovation, contributing to the broader adoption of clean energy technologies in transportation and other industries.

08 HYDROGEN↗

Modernizing Fermilab's Accelerator Control Hardware

Modernizing the Fermilab accelerator control system is essential to future operations of the laboratory's accelerator complex. The existing control system has evolved over four decades and uses hardware that is no longer available.The Accelerator Controls Operations Research Network (ACORN) Project will modernize the control system and replace end-of-life power supplies to enable future accelerator complex operations with megawatt particle beams. The ACORN project is planning to replace Fermilab s obsolete CAMAC crate-and-card controls hardware with modern MicroTCA hardware. There are over 2,000 CAMAC cards and over 250 CAMAC crates serving various functions in Fermilab s control system. We will review the existing CAMAC hardware and provide updates on the status of the ACORN project, which includes the conceptual design of the MicroTCA replacement hardware and software tools for supporting the installation of hundreds of MicroTCA crates.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

A Review on Protection Challenges on Transmission Lines Connected to Inverter Based Resources

The increased penetration of inverter-based resources (IBRs) connected to transmission grids is challenging how traditional electric power systems operate. Such systems were originally designed based on the dominant presence of synchronous generators. Some main challenges include the increased concerns about system stability due to the reduced system inertia caused by IBRs and the reduced protection reliability caused by the non-deterministic fault current response of IBRs. The protection relays’ algorithms have been designed and validated based on well-known fault current characteristics of synchronous generations, while the short-circuit responses of IBRs heavily depend on their vendor-specific control schemes, which are mainly set to protect inverter semiconductor switches and DC components. The magnitude of short current that IBRs contribute is typically between 1.1–1.5 times the rated current that may behave unstably and incoherently with the voltages. The control scheme of the IBRs also controls the active (P) and reactive (Q) support during system voltage sag and swell conditions. These characteristics challenge not only protective relay schemes but also existing short-circuit software tools to correctly model IBRs for fault studies and protection coordination analyses. Utilities, university researchers, research institutes, and relay manufacturers have performed studies to investigate different aspects of high IBR penetration. Almost all studies support 1) creating international and national standards to regulate the IBRs, 2) revising engineering tools to address shortcomings, and 3) adjusting the protective relay settings to resolve protection problems. This paper summarizes the studies and research conducted in recent years to quantify the impact of IBR penetration on transmission line protection and to identify potential solutions to improve the dependability and reliability of grid protection systems.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

Multi-Physics Topology Optimization for Dual Flow Heat Exchangers

Current heat exchanger (HX) designs are subjected to strict constraints pertaining to their manufacturability through conventional lengthy and expensive processes consisting of subtractive, forming and brazing processes. Therefore, existing HXs are typically restricted to the classical and rather simple geometries, such as plate-fin or shell-tube geometries, with lower efficiency and larger size. To increase HX efficiencies, novel designs are needed. Recent advances in topology optimization (TO) and additive manufacturing (AM) offer significant flexibility in design and fabrication of complex geometries, with potentially superior thermo-mechanical performance and high-power density. On the other hand, there is no commercially available software tool that addresses the combined coupling of structural, fluid dynamics, and thermal with multiple materials (hot and cold streams, solid, and void space) in TO of HXs. The goal of this project is to develop a multi-physics multi-phase TO approach to enhance the performance of HXs. The optimized design will be additively manufactured and tested in a physical environment to quantify its performance.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Heterogeneous Computing

To leverage the increasing heterogeneity in modern computing resources, Geant4 incorporates advanced software tools and a task-based framework (G4Tasking) that enables efficient parallelism at event, sub-event, and track levels. Ongoing R&D efforts focus on integrating GPUs into high-energy physics (HEP) simulations, including optical photon simulation with Opticks/NVIDIA OptiX, offloading electromagnetic particle transport using G4HepEM/AdePT and Celeritas, and employing advanced surface-based geometry models such as VecGeom2.0 and ORANGE. As Geant4 continues evolving toward high-performance computing (HPC) and heterogeneous architectures, it remains a key tool for large-scale simulations in HEP and beyond.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

A review on protection challenges of Transmission Lines connected to Inverter Based Resources

The increased penetration of inverter-based resources (IBRs) connected to transmission grids is challenging how traditional electric power systems operate. Such systems were originally designed based on the dominant presence of synchronous generators. Some main challenges include the increased concerns about system stability due to the reduced system inertia caused by IBRs and the reduced protection reliability caused by the non-deterministic fault current response of IBRs. The protection relays’ algorithms have been designed and validated based on well-known fault current characteristics of synchronous generations, while the short-circuit responses of IBRs heavily depend on their vendor-specific control schemes, which are mainly set to protect inverter semiconductor switches and DC components. The magnitude of short current that IBRs contribute is typically between 1.1–1.5 times the rated current that may behave unstably and incoherently with the voltages. The control scheme of the IBRs also controls the active (P) and reactive (Q) support during system voltage sag and swell conditions. These characteristics challenge not only protective relay schemes but also existing short-circuit software tools to correctly model IBRs for fault studies and protection coordination analyses.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

Building Datasets and Training Methods for ML Based Magnet Quench Detection

Detecting quenches in superconducting (SC) magnets during training is a challenging process that involves capturing physical events that occur at different frequencies and appear as various signal features. These events may be correlated across instrumentation type, thermal cycle, and ramp. These events together build a more complete picture of continuous processes occurring in the magnet, and may allow us to flag potential precursors for quench detection. We present our work on building an automatic machine learning (ML) based quench detection system. We build upon our existing work on unsupervised auto-encoders for acoustic sensors and quench antenna (QA) by first establishing a supervised ML training pipeline. We show the results of an event tagging, analysis, and simulation framework on our QA and acoustic data which are used concurrently to build a training dataset for a supervised implementation. We then show how this supervised training can be used as a prior in a semi-supervised framework and compare this to the unsupervised neural network auto-encoder performance.This allows us to have a more concrete understanding of the performance of our algorithms relative to physical events occurring in the magnet, and also provides a baseline software tool to generically evaluate our quench prediction autoencoders under completely unsupervised, supervised, and semi-supervised training conditions.

Khan, Maira [Fermilab]↗

Report on the "Symposium on Advancements in Simulating Neutron Scattering Instruments and Experiments"

An international group of researchers gathered for the “Symposium on Advancements in Simulating Neutron Scattering Instruments and Experiments” at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) on October 29- 30, 2024. The symposium highlighted state-of-the-art advancements in neutron scattering instrument simulations and the development of digital twins for scattering instruments. This document summarizes the recurring themes from the 19 talks and discussions. A key focus was on the role of neutronics simulations in the design, analysis, and performance optimization of neutron instruments. Presentations featured the most widely used software packages, such as McStas, McVine, Vitess, and MCNP. Another major theme addressed the analysis and interpretation of experimental neutron data, where materials models and simulations play a critical role. Talks on relevant software tools, including NCrystal, OCLimax, and Paradyse, were delivered by their respective developers. During the symposium, both talks and breakout sessions explored strategies to enhance the interplay between neutronics simulations and materials models. A key question emerged: How can we develop a RealTime Explainable Digital Twin of a neutron scattering experiment? Discussions include the idea that the Digital Twin concept has implications for instrument control and testing. Through this symposium, we gained valuable insights into the challenges and requirements for developing a Real-Time Explainable Digital Twin of a neutron scattering experiment. The discussions and presentations paved the way for future innovations in this rapidly advancing field.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Near Term Reliability and Resilience: Revisiting Resilience Metrics for the Electric Grid

This report presents the metrics employed in the Near-Term Reliability and Resilience (NTRR) project to study the inter-dependencies between electric and natural gas infrastructures, particularly under challenging conditions. These metrics were developed and applied to evaluate the reliability and resilience of the electric grid and natural gas systems in near-term scenarios (within the next 10 years) involving extreme weather events and major supply disruptions. The report defines the metrics, explains how they are calculated, and describes the process by which they are used to evaluate reliability and resilience across simulated scenarios. It also demonstrates how the resilience metrics integrate with other project activities and summarizes the software tools deployed to calculate and visualize the results.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Quantum Computing Strategy 2026

Quantum computing (QC) is a rapidly maturing technology with the potential for revolutionary impacts on stockpile stewardship science and national security. Recent developments in fault-tolerant architectures have compressed vendor roadmaps, and predictions of a production-ready quantum computer by the mid-2030s are becoming increasingly credible. This strategy provides a roadmap for integrating QC into the Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) program by investing in four strategic focus areas: 1. Develop Capabilities in Mission-Relevant Quantum Applications: ASC will prioritize developing quantum-ready applications in mission areas that have shown significant promise for quantum advantage, including simulations of materials in extreme environments, nuclear dynamics, solving linear and nonlinear partial differential equations, and uncertainty quantification. These applications directly support stockpile stewardship science and modernization objectives. 2. Conduct R&D in Algorithms, Software, and Hardware: Sustained research into quantum algorithms, robust software tools, and quantum hardware is essential. ASC will develop efficient quantum algorithms; invest in quantum compilers, debuggers, and performance tools; and explore specialized quantum hardware tailored to NNSA’s unique requirements. 3. Engage with Vendors and Partners: Early and active collaboration with commercial quantum hardware vendors and academic partners is critical. Through testbeds, co-design agreements, and quantum demonstration facilities, ASC will influence hardware design, gain early access to emerging technologies, and ensure that quantum platforms evolve to meet mission needs. 4. Build Knowledge, Experience, and Workforce: Expanding and upskilling the quantum-trained workforce is essential to long-term success. This includes hiring, internal training, university outreach, and postdoctoral support to ensure ASC maintains the expertise required to operate, program, and integrate quantum systems as they become available. While quantum computing will never replace classical computing, it has the potential to solve certain problems with speed and accuracy that would be unachievable using any conceivable classical high-performance computing (HPC) system. By investing strategically in QC, ASC will help propel the emergent QC industry, maintain U.S. technological leadership, ensure mission readiness, and position itself to rapidly adopt quantum technologies as they mature.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

H420 Imager Calibration Procedure: Field of View Scan

Gamma-ray imagers with coded apertures have a finite field of view (FOV) within which an image of a source can be generated. A “FOV scan” is a facet of imager calibration procedure that involves collecting specialized data for a range of source locations filling the FOV in order to understand and correct for differences in imager performance. Systematic distortions reveal relative displacements between internal imager components, which can be accounted for in data analysis. The success of this scan requires a stable imager position during the full measurement duration (~hours). This document summarizes the hardware and software tools required to conduct a FOV calibration scan of an H3D H420 Coded Aperture Gamma-Ray Imager.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Robust Dark Energy Constraints with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Survey (Final Technical Report)

This project developed and applied advanced theoretical, computational, and data-analysis methodologies to extract robust and precise cosmological constraints from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). The work focused on maximizing the scientific return of DESI through optimized survey strategy, novel higher-order clustering statistics, improved modeling of small-scale structure, and rigorous mitigation of observational systematics. Over the award period, the project made substantial contributions to DESI science planning, produced new methods for bispectrum and three-point correlation function analyses, advanced constraints on primordial non-Gaussianity, and delivered widely used software tools. The project also played a major role in training graduate students and a postdoctoral researcher who contributed directly to DESI key projects. The results have significantly enhanced the cosmological reach of DESI and provide a strong foundation for future surveys such as DESI-II and Stage-V experiments.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Optimal Co-Design of Integrated Thermal-Electrical Networks and Control Systems for Grid-interactive Efficient District (GED) Energy Systems

This project advances a unified, open-source framework for the optimal co-design of thermal, electrical, and control systems in grid-interactive efficient districts (GEDs). As communities integrate growing levels of distributed energy resources, traditional approaches that model thermal and electrical networks independently lead to reduced efficiency, limited flexibility, and missed opportunities for coordinated operation. To address these challenges, the research team developed a comprehensive suite of physics-based models, control algorithms, and software tools that enable holistic simulation, optimization, and demonstration of district-scale energy systems.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗