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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 847 records · Page 47
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2015

Practical uncertainty reduction and quantification in shock physics measurements

We report the development of a simple error analysis sampling method for identifying intersections and inflection points to reduce total uncertainty in experimental data. This technique was used to reduce uncertainties in sound speed measurements by 80% over conventional methods. Here, we focused on its impact on a previously published set of Mo sound speed data and possible implications for phase transition and geophysical studies. However, this technique's application can be extended to a wide range of experimental data.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2022

A WISER way for simulating the performance of gratings

Soft X-ray monochromators for synchrotron radiation sources have been continuously developed over the years, improving energy resolution and stability. Great effort has been made in improving the surface quality of the optics involved, reaching values permitting diffraction-limited images. Still, one problem has not been solved, nor fully understood, yet: groove placing errors. Nowadays, these are one of the major factors responsible for resolving the power reduction of diffraction-gratings-based X-ray monochromators. Despite decades of use of gratings, there is not yet a universally established method for predicting and simulating the effect of groove placing errors on monochromator performance. This is especially important in the new scenario of high-coherent X-ray sources, i.e. diffraction-limited storage rings and free-electron lasers. To address this problem, in this article an approach based on WISER (Wavefront propagatIon Simulation codE libRary) is presented. WISER is a physical optics simulation package, also available in the user-friendly Orange Synchrotron Radiation Suite – OASYS. Even though it was originally conceived to assess the focusing performance of X-ray mirrors in the presence of height defects, it perfectly simulates the performance of a periodic (or quasi-periodic) structure like a diffraction grating. In this article, the way to use WISER and its application to a specific case, e.g. the design of a monochromator for the upgrade of a beamline at the Advanced Light Source, are shown. A simple rule for estimating how well the grooves are placed on a grating, based on calculation of the Strehl ratio, is also presented.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
NASA NTRS1992

Simulation and model reduction for the AFW program

The simulation methodology used in the Active Flexible Wing wind-tunnel test program is described. An overview of the aeroservoelastic modeling used in building the required batch and hot-bench simulations is presented. Successful hot-bench implementation required that the full mathematical model be significantly reduced while assuring that accuracy be maintained for all combinations of 10 inputs and 56 outputs. The reduction was accomplished by using a method based on internally balanced realizations and focussing on the linear, aeroelastic portion of the full mathematical model. The error-bound properties of the internally balanced realization significantly contribute to its utility in the model reduction process. The reduction method and the results achieved are described.

Buttrill, Carey↗
DOE OSTI2018

Semiempirical Formulae for Mechanical Properties Controlled by Strength and Ductility of Power-Law Hardening Metallic Materials

Some subordinate mechanical properties, such as the strain hardening exponent (n) and the fracture true stress (σ{sub f}), are not available in general material property handbooks, although they are important in choosing materials. This paper investigated the relations between the subordinate mechanical properties to the basic ones for power-law hardening materials. Our semiempirical analysis shows that, in uniaxial tensile experiment, the strain hardening exponent is controlled by the ratio of the yield strength (σ{sub s}) and the ultimate tensile strength (σ{sub b}), and the value also equals to the maximum uniform strain. The absolute calculation errors of n on various metal materials are approximately within ± 0.03. Physically, n expresses the ability of the strength rising from the yield strength to the ultimate tensile strength during uniform deformation; it may also denote the maximum ability of uniform deformation before necking. The fracture strength is controlled directly by n, σ{sub b} and the reduction in area (ψ{sub K}) in our concise expression. The relative errors of the fracture strength between the calculations and the measurements on metal materials are approximately within 20%. Results also indicate that the fracture true stress represents the increased stress during uniform deformation plus the concentrated stress caused by necking.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2016

Investigation of industrial-scale carbon dioxide reduction using pulsed electron beams

Carbon dioxide is the most important greenhouse gas contributing to global warming. To help mitigate increasing CO{sub 2} concentrations, we investigate a method of carbon dioxide reduction using high-power electron beams, which can be used on an industrial scale. A series of experiments are conducted in which the reduction of CO{sub 2} is measured for different gas compositions and power deposition rates. An electron beam deposition model is applied to compute reduction rates of CO{sub 2} and energy cost for breaking a CO{sub 2} molecule in flue gas and pure carbon dioxide at atmospheric pressure. For flue gas consisting of 82% N{sub 2}, 6% O{sub 2}, and 12% CO{sub 2}, the calculated energy cost is 85 eV per molecule. In order to dissociate 50% of the CO{sub 2} molecules, beam energy density deposition on the order of 20 J/cm{sup 3} is required. Electron beam irradiation of 12.6 liter gas volume containing 90% CO{sub 2} and 10% CH{sub 4} at beam energy density deposition of 4.2 J/cm{sup 3}, accumulated over 43 shots in a 20 min interval, reduced the CO{sub 2} concentration to 78%. Analogous experiments with a gas mixture containing 11.5% CO{sub 2}, 11.5% CH{sub 4}, and balance of Ar, reduced the CO{sub 2} concentration to below 11% with energy deposition 0.71 J/cm{sup 3}, accumulated over 10 shots in a 5 min interval. The experimental data and the theoretical predictions of CO{sub 2} reduction using pulsed electron beams are in agreement within the experimental error. Other techniques to enhance the removal of CO{sub 2} with pulsed electron beams are also explored, yielding new possible avenues of research.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2019

Model reduction for fractured porous media: a machine learning approach for identifying main flow pathways

Discrete fracture networks (DFN) are often used to model flow and transport in fractured porous media. The accurate resolution of flow and transport behavior on a large DFN involving thousands of fractures is computationally expensive. This makes uncertainty quantification studies of quantities of interest such as travel time through the network computationally intractable, since hundreds to thousands of runs of the DFN model are required to get bounds on the uncertainty of the predictions. Prior works on the subject demonstrated that the complexity of a DFN could be reduced by considering a sub-network of it (often termed a “backbone” sub-network), one whose flow and transport properties were then shown to be similar to that of the full network. The technique is tantamount to partitioning the complete set of fractures of a network into two disjoint sets, one of which is the backbone sub-network while the other its complement. It is in this context that we present a system-reduction technique for DFNs using supervised machine learning via a Random Forest Classifier that selects a backbone sub-network from the full set of fractures. The in-sample errors (in terms of precision and recall scores) of the trained classifier are found to be very accurate indicators of the out-of-sample errors, thus exhibiting that the classifier generalizes well to test data. Moreover, this system-reduction technique yields sub-networks as small as 12% of the full DFN that still recover transport characteristics of the full network such as the peak dosage and tailing behavior for late times. Most importantly, the sub-networks remain connected, and their size can be controlled by a single dimensionless parameter. Furthermore, measures of KL-divergence and KS-statistic for the breakthrough curves of the sub-networks with respect to the full network show physically realistic trends in that the measures decrease monotonically as the size of the sub-networks increase. In conclusion, the computational efficiency gained by this technique depends on the size of the sub-network, but large reductions in computational time can be expected for small sub-networks, yielding as much as 90% computational savings for sub-networks that are as small as 10-12% of the full network.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2020

An error-in-constitutive equations strategy for topology optimization for frequency-domain dynamics

This paper presents a topology optimization formulation for frequency-domain dynamics to reduce solution dependence upon initial guess and considered loading conditions. Due to resonance phenomena in undamped steady-state dynamics, objectives measuring dynamic response possess many local minima that may represent poor solutions to a design problem, an issue exacerbated for design with respect to multiple frequencies. In this work, we propose an extension of the modified error-in-constitutive-equations (MECE) method, used previously in material identification inverse problems, as a new approach for frequency-domain dynamics topology optimization to mitigate these issues. The main idea of the proposed framework is to incorporate an additional penalty-like term in the objective function that measures the discrepancy in the constitutive relations between stresses and strains and between inertial forces and displacements. Then, the design problem is cast within a PDE-constrained optimization formulation in which we seek displacements, stresses, inertial forces, and a density-field solution that minimize our new objective subject to conservation of linear momentum plus some additional constraints. We show that this approach yields superior designs to conventional gradient-based optimization approaches that solely use a functional of displacements as the objective, while strictly enforcing the constitutive equations. The MECE strategy integrates into a density-based topology optimization scheme for void–solid or two-phase material structural design. We highlight the merits of our approach in a variety of scenarios for direct frequency response design, considering multiple frequency load cases and structural objectives.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2022

Physics-guided machine learning for improved accuracy of the National Solar Radiation Database

The National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB) provides high-resolution spatiotemporal solar irradiance data for the entire globe. The NSRDB uses a two-step Physical Solar Model (PSM) to compute the effects of clouds and other atmospheric variables on the solar radiation reaching the surface of the Earth. Physical and optical cloud properties are fundamental inputs to the PSM and are derived from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites. This paper describes recent improvements to the NSRDB driven by physics-guided machine learning methods for cloud property retrieval. The impacts of these new methods on the NSRDB irradiance data are validated using an extensive set of ground measurement sites, showing significant improvement for all sites. We report on average, the mean absolute percentage error for global horizontal irradiance and direct normal irradiance show reductions of 2.16 and 3.95 percentage points respectively for all daylight conditions, 5.92 and 17.39 percentage points respectively for cloudy conditions, and 9.00 and 22.59 percentage points respectively for gap-filled cloudy conditions. These new methods will help improve the quality and accuracy of the irradiance and cloud data in the NSRDB.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Assimilation of a Coordinated Fleet of Uncrewed Aircraft System Observations in Complex Terrain: EnKF System Design and Preliminary Assessment

Abstract Uncrewed aircraft system (UAS) observations collected during the 2018 Lower Atmospheric Process Studies at Elevation—a Remotely Piloted Aircraft Team Experiment (LAPSE-RATE) field campaign were assimilated into a high-resolution configuration of the Weather Research and Forecasting Model using an ensemble Kalman filter. The benefit of UAS observations was assessed for a terrain-driven (drainage and upvalley) flow event that occurred within Colorado’s San Luis Valley (SLV) using independent observations. The analysis and prediction of the strength, depth, and horizontal extent of drainage flow from the Saguache Canyon and the subsequent transition to upvalley and up-canyon flow were improved relative to that obtained both without data assimilation (benchmark) and when only surface observations were assimilated. Assimilation of UAS observations greatly improved the analyses of vertical variations in temperature, relative humidity, and winds at multiple locations in the northern portion of the SLV, with reductions in both bias and the root-mean-square error of roughly 40% for each variable relative to the benchmark run. Despite these noted improvements, some biases remain that were tied to measurement error and/or the impact of the boundary layer parameterization on vertically spreading the observations, both of which require further exploration. The results presented here highlight how observations obtained with a fleet of profiling UAS improve limited-area, high-resolution analyses and short-term forecasts in complex terrain.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS1974

Multispectral combination and display of ERTS-1 data

Standard NASA color composites combine the most relevant 3 bands from the 4 MSS bands available. An alternate approach is to extract the principal components of the data by a linear transformation of the 4 bands. This approach leads to a low dimensionality representation of ERTS-1 data with the least degradation, in the mean square sense, of the radiometric accuracy. The technique has been applied with success to ERTS-1 MSS data for several geographic areas in California. For all examples considered the mean square representation error is less than one percent. By combining this dimensionality reduction which our previous results on image enhancement for visual display, color composites are obtained which contain and display most of the information provided by the ERTS-1 sensors.

Algazi, V. R.↗
NASA NTRS1982

High-resolution photographs in the rocket ultraviolet of the Orion Nebula

High-resolution photographs of the Orion Nebula have been obtained in UV bands centered near 1400, 1820, 2240 and 2620 by a 31-cm telescope mounted on an Astrobee sounding rocket. Reduction of the data by image processing, photometric calibration and error analysis steps was used to derive a matrix of values of specific intensity in absolute units. Data indicate that the Orion Nebula is primarily a reflection nebula in the UV, so that morphology is determined by the distribution of dust with respect to the illuminating stars. Ultraviolet color gradients for each color relative to the 1820-A image indicate reddening towards the outer parts of the nebula, as well as fairly symmetric dust scattering in the Theta 1 and Theta 2 Ori region. The color gradients also imply a monotonic change in scattering phase function asymmetry between 2620 and 1400 A. Total nebular flux in each bandpass is observed to be about 2.5 times the stellar flux from the Trapezium, indicating a high scattering efficiency.

Bohlin, R. C.↗
NASA NTRS1989

Statistical retrieval of precipitation cell-top altitude using passive 118-GHz observations

A nonlinear statistical-retrieval operator for precipitation cell-top altitude using high-spatial-resolution passive 118-GHz O2 brightness spectra is demonstrated. The retrieval operator consists of a Karhunen-Loeve transformation followed by a rank reduction, a linearization, and a linear minimum mean-square-error estimator. Information from the 118-GHz data on the ambient atmospheric-temperature profile and the precipitation cell size is also incorporated into the linear stage of the retrieval operator. The rms retrieval error is 1.5 km for cumulus-stage cells with tops ranging from 1.5 to 16 km. The sensitivity of nadiral 118-GHz spectra to the cell-top altitude is predominantly due to the scattering and absorption of radiation originating from low, warm atmospheric levels by colder liquid and frozen precipitation This effect causes cold perturbations in the brightness spectrum, which typically become stronger with increasing cell-top altitude.

Gasiewski, A. J.↗
NASA NTRS2002

Optical Testing of Diamond Machined, Aspheric Mirrors for Groundbased, Near-IR Astronomy

The Infrared Multi-Object Spectrometer (IRMOS) is a facility-class instrument for the Kitt Peak National Observatory 4 and 2.1 meter telescopes. IRMOS is a near-IR (0.8-2.5 micron) spectrometer and operates at approximately 80 K. The 6061-T651 aluminum bench and mirrors constitute an athermal design. The instrument produces simultaneous spectra at low- to mid-resolving power (R=lambda/delta lambda= 300-3000) of approximately 100 objects in its 2.8 x 2.0 arcmin field. We describe ambient and cryogenic optical testing of the IRMOS mirrors across a broad range in spatial frequency (figure error, mid-frequency error, and microroughness). The mirrors include three rotationally symmetric, off-axis conic sections, one off-axis biconic, and several flat fold mirrors. The symmetric mirrors include convex and concave prolate and oblate ellipsoids. They range in aperture from 94x86 mm to 286x269 mm and in f-number from 0.9 to 2.4. The biconic mirror is concave and has a 94x76 mm aperture, R(sub x)=377 mm, k(sub x)=0.0778, R(sub y)=407 mm, and k(sub y)=0.1265 and is decentered by -2 mm in X and 227 mm in Y. All of the mirrors have an aspect ratio of approximately 6:1. The surface error fabrication tolerances are less than 10 nm RMS microroughness, 'best effort' for mid-frequency error, and less than 63.3 nm RMS figure error. Ambient temperature (approximately 293 K) testing is performed for each of the three surface error regimes, and figure testing is also performed at approximately 80 K. Operation of the ADE Phaseshift MicroXAM white light interferometer (micro-roughness) and the Bauer Model 200 profilometer (mid-frequency error) is described. Both the sag and conic values of the aspheric mirrors make these tests challenging. Figure testing is performed using a Zygo GPI interferometer, custom computer generated holograms (CGH), and optomechanical alignment fiducials. Cryogenic CGH null testing is discussed in detail. We discuss complications such as the change in prescription with temperature and thermal gradients. Correction for the effect of the dewar window is also covered. We discuss the error budget for the optical test and alignment procedure. Data reduction is accomplished using commercial optical design and data analysis software packages. Results from CGH testing at cryogenic temperatures are encouraging thus far.

Chambers, V. John↗
NASA NTRS2012

Simulation of Oxygen Disintegration and Mixing With Hydrogen or Helium at Supercritical Pressure

The simulation of high-pressure turbulent flows, where the pressure, p, is larger than the critical value, p(sub c), for the species under consideration, is relevant to a wide array of propulsion systems, e.g. gas turbine, diesel, and liquid rocket engines. Most turbulence models, however, have been developed for atmospheric-p turbulent flows. The difference between atmospheric-p and supercritical-p turbulence is that, in the former situation, the coupling between dynamics and thermodynamics is moderate to negligible, but for the latter it is very significant, and can dominate the flow characteristics. The reason for this stems from the mathematical form of the equation of state (EOS), which is the perfect-gas EOS in the former case, and the real-gas EOS in the latter case. For flows at supercritical pressure, p, the large eddy simulation (LES) equations consist of the differential conservation equations coupled with a real-gas EOS. The equations use transport properties that depend on the thermodynamic variables. Compared to previous LES models, the differential equations contain not only the subgrid scale (SGS) fluxes, but also new SGS terms, each denoted as a correction. These additional terms, typically assumed null for atmospheric pressure flows, stem from filtering the differential governing equations, and represent differences between a filtered term and the same term computed as a function of the filtered flow field. In particular, the energy equation contains a heat-flux correction (q-correction) that is the difference between the filtered divergence of the heat flux and the divergence of the heat flux computed as a function of the filtered flow field. In a previous study, there was only partial success in modeling the q-correction term, but in this innovation, success has been achieved by using a different modeling approach. This analysis, based on a temporal mixing layer Direct Numerical Simulation database, shows that the focus in modeling the q-correction should be on reconstructing the primitive variable gradients rather than their coefficients, and proposes the approximate deconvolution model (ADM) as an effective means of flow field reconstruction for LES heat flux calculation. Further, results for a study conducted for temporal mixing layers initially containing oxygen in the lower stream, and hydrogen or helium in the upper stream, show that, for any LES, including SGS-flux models (constant-coefficient Gradient or Scale-Similarity models, dynamic-coefficient Smagorinsky/Yoshizawa or mixed Smagorinsky/Yoshizawa/Gradient models), the inclusion of the q-correction in the LES leads to the theoretical maximum reduction of the SGS heat-flux difference. The remaining error in modeling this new subgrid term is thus irreducible.

Bellan, Josette↗
NASA NTRS2018

Polarization Ray Tracing and Polarization Aberration Compensation in Reflective Astronomical Telescopes

Assessing and optimizing polarization performance in the context of ray-based optical design can be challenging. We describe an approach to this problem that decouples polarization effects from optical system geometry for reflective systems. Each surface's polarization properties are parameterized in terms of their impact on retardance and diattenuation in the small angle-of-incidence limit, separating polarization assessment from the task of coating design. A low-resolution ray trace of the system is adequate to determine ray geometry at each interface, which can then be interpolated to rapidly evaluate net Jones Matrix pupil functions. Coating behavior can be easily varied using the ellipsometric parameters to investigate impacts and compensation. Desired values of these parameters can then be specified as constraints in coating design. Investigation with candidate telescope optical designs for LUVOIR show baseline root-mean-square wavefront errors in the nm range for the on-diagonal Jones matrix component, and throughputs of tens of parts per million. Promising possibilities for compensation using a purpose-designed coating on the secondary mirror are discussed, which reduce the on-diagonal wavefront error by a factor 20, with accompanying but more modest reductions in coupling into off-diagonal terms.

Sabatke, Derek↗
NASA NTRS1995

Endurance Testing and Fabrication of Advanced 15-cm and 30-cm Carbon-Carbon Composite Grids

Two sets of carbon-carbon grids in a three-grid SAND configuration were endurance tested for 700 hours. Pre- and post test inspections employing electron microscope scans, x-ray fluorescence, grid mass loss measurements, and measurements of grid aperture diameters and thicknesses revealed an extraordinary low degree of erosion. No reduction in grid thicknesses was detectable within the margin of error of the measurements.

Carbon-Carbon↗
DOE OSTI2022

Correcting thermal-emission-induced detector saturation in infrared spectroscopy

We found that temperature-dependent infrared spectroscopy measurements (i.e., reflectance or transmittance) using a Fourier-transform spectrometer can have substantial errors, especially for elevated sample temperatures and collection using an objective lens. These errors can arise as a result of partial detector saturation due to thermal emission from the measured sample reaching the detector, resulting in nonphysical apparent reduction of reflectance or transmittance with increasing sample temperature. Here, we demonstrate that these temperature-dependent errors can be corrected by implementing several levels of optical attenuation that enable convergence testing of the measured reflectance or transmittance as the thermal-emission signal is reduced, or by applying correction factors that can be inferred by looking at the spectral regions where the sample is not expected to have a substantial temperature dependence.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2025

Data-driven reduced-order models for port-Hamiltonian systems with operator inference

Hamiltonian operator inference has been developed in Sharma et al. (2022) to learn structure-preserving reduced-order models (ROMs) for Hamiltonian systems. The method constructs a low-dimensional model using only data and knowledge of the functional form of the Hamiltonian. The resulting ROMs preserve the intrinsic structure of the system, ensuring that the mechanical and physical properties of the system are maintained. In this work, we extend this approach to port-Hamiltonian systems, which generalize Hamiltonian systems by including energy dissipation, external input, and output. Based on snapshots of the system’s state and output, together with the information about the functional form of the Hamiltonian, reduced operators are inferred through optimization and are then used to construct data-driven ROMs. To further alleviate the complexity of evaluating nonlinear terms in the ROMs, a hyper-reduction method via discrete empirical interpolation is applied. Accordingly, we derive error estimates for the ROM approximations of the state and output. Lastly, we demonstrate the structure preservation, as well as the accuracy of the proposed port-Hamiltonian operator inference framework, through numerical experiments on a linear mass–spring-damper problem and a nonlinear Toda lattice problem.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗