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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 865 records · Page 48

Computational flow modeling of triply periodic minimal surfaces as feed channel spacers in ultra-high pressure reverse osmosis applications

Triply periodic minimal surfaces (TPMS) are a special class of mathematical surfaces characterized by a high surface area-to-volume ratio. They have generated considerable interest in fields such as acoustics, heat transfer, and membrane-based filtration processes. This study evaluates the performance of four different TPMS designs—Schoen Gyroid, Schoen Crossed Layers of Parallels (CLP), Schoen Transverse Crossed Layers of Parallels (tCLP), and Schwarz-Primitive—when used as feed channel spacers under ultra-high pressure reverse osmosis (UHPRO) conditions, at approximately 200 bar. Our experimentally validated computational fluid dynamics model reveal different flow patterns within the feed channels for each of the four TPMS designs, leading to varying hydrodynamic and permeation properties. Under the simulated UHPRO conditions, the Gyroid and tCLP designs yield up to a 23% increase in average permeate velocity and a 14% reduction in average membrane-surface concentration relative to a non-woven spacer of the same porosity. Furthermore, the enhanced performance comes with an increased feed channel pressure drop, although it only constitutes less than 4% of the operating pressure when extrapolated for a meter-long membrane module. Additionally, the study analyzes the effects of varying inlet velocity and spacer porosity on membrane performance. Overall, this research provides valuable insights into the potential use of TPMS spacers in UHPRO applications.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

RLGBS: Reinforcement Learning-Guided Beam Search for process optimization in a paper machine dryer section

Paper drying is responsible for over two-thirds of energy consumption in the U.S. pulp and paper industry, presenting significant potential for energy savings through optimization of process parameters. Current approaches often assume fixed operating conditions, neglecting dynamic ambient and process variations that limit achievable savings and real-world applicability. To this end, we develop a physics-based simulation environment for a paper machine dryer section and propose a reinforcement learning (RL) framework to minimize overall energy consumption by optimizing drying process parameters under diverse operating conditions. To mitigate overdrying and numerical instabilities caused by suboptimal local RL actions, we introduce Reinforcement Learning-Guided Beam Search (RLGBS), which explores multiple action sequences in parallel using beam search. Instead of making step-by-step decisions, RLGBS prioritizes solutions based on cumulative probability, reducing the impact of individual suboptimal actions. Experiments demonstrate that RLGBS achieves consistent energy savings under unseen operating conditions not encountered during training, outperforming conventional RL methods. While validated in drying optimization, this framework is broadly applicable to other RL-based industrial process control problems.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

IMEX HDG-DG: A coupled implicit hybridized discontinuous Galerkin and explicit discontinuous Galerkin approach for shallow water systems

We propose IMEX HDG-DG schemes for planar and spherical shallow water systems. Of interest is subcritical flow, where the speed of the gravity wave is faster than that of nonlinear advection. In order to simulate these flows efficiently, we split the governing system into a stiff part describing the gravity wave and a non-stiff part associated with nonlinear advection. The former is discretized implicitly with the HDG method while an explicit Runge-Kutta DG discretization is employed for the latter. The proposed IMEX HDG-DG framework: 1) facilitates high-order solutions both in time and space; 2) avoids overly small time-step sizes; 3) requires only one linear system solve per time stage; 4) relative to DG generates smaller and sparser linear systems while promoting further parallelism; and 5) suppresses the fast modes in the system with a large time-step size. Numerical results for various test cases demonstrate that our methods are beneficial for applications where non-stiff terms are accurately treated while stiff terms are less accurately handled.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Exploring the interplay of resilience and energy consumption for a task-based partial differential equations preconditioner

Here, we discuss algorithm-based resilience to silent data corruptions (SDCs) in a task-based domain-decomposition preconditioner for partial differential equations (PDEs). The algorithm exploits a reformulation of the PDE as a sampling problem, followed by a solution update through data manipulation that is resilient to SDCs. The implementation is based on a server-client model where all state information is held by the servers, while clients are designed solely as computational units. Scalability tests run up to ~51K cores show a parallel efficiency greater than 90%. We use a 2D elliptic PDE and a fault model based on random single and double bit-flip to demonstrate the resilience of the application to synthetically injected SDC. We discuss two fault scenarios: one based on the corruption of all data of a target task, and the other involving the corruption of a single data point. We show that for our application, given the test problem considered, a four-fold increase in the number of faults only yields a 2% change in the overhead to overcome their presence, from 7% to 9%. We then discuss potential savings in energy consumption via dynamic voltage/frequency scaling, and its interplay with fault-rates, and application overhead.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

The Design, Deployment, and Evaluation of the CORAL Pre-Exascale Systems

CORAL, the Collaboration of Oak Ridge, Argonne and Livermore, is fielding two similar IBM systems, Summit and Sierra, with NVIDIA GPUs that will replace the existing Titan and Sequoia systems. Summit and Sierra are currently ranked No. 1 and No. 3, respectively on the Top500 list. We discuss the design and key differences of the systems. Our evaluation of the systems highlights the following. Applications that fit in HBM see the most benefit and may prefer more GPUs; however, for some applications, the CPU-GPU bandwidth is more important than the number of GPUs. The node-local burst buffer scales linearly, and can achieve a 4X improvement over the parallel file system for large jobs; smaller jobs, however, may benefit from writing directly to the PFS. Finally, several CPU, network and memory bound analytics and GPU-bound deep learning codes achieve up to a 11X and 79X speedup/node, respectively over Titan.

Vazhkudai, Sudharshan↗

UMAMI: A Recipe for Generating Meaningful Metrics through Holistic I/O Performance Analysis

I/O efficiency is essential to productivity in scientific computing, especially as many scientific domains become more data-intensive. Many characterization tools have been used to elucidate specific aspects of parallel I/O performance, but analyzing components of complex I/O subsystems in isolation fails to provide insight into critical questions: how do the I/O components interact, what are reasonable expectations for application performance, and what are the underlying causes of I/O performance problems? To address these questions while capitalizing on existing component-level characterization tools, we propose an approach that combines on-demand, modular synthesis of I/O characterization data into a unified monitoring and metrics interface (UMAMI) to provide a normalized, holistic view of I/O behavior. We evaluate the feasibility of this approach by applying it to a month-long benchmarking study on two distinct largescale computing platforms. We present three case studies that highlight the importance of analyzing application I/O performance in context with both contemporaneous and historical component metrics, and we provide new insights into the factors affecting I/O performance. By demonstrating the generality of our approach, we lay the groundwork for a production-grade framework for holistic I/O analysis.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Performance Evaluation of Heterogeneous GPU Programming Frameworks for Hemodynamic Simulations

Preparing for the deployment of large scientific and engineering codes on upcoming exascale systems with GPU-dense nodes is made challenging by the unprecedented diversity of device architectures and heterogeneous programming models. In this work, we evaluate the process of porting a massively parallel, fluid dynamics code written in CUDA to SYCL, HIP, and Kokkos with a range of backends, using a combination of automated tools and manual tuning. We use a proxy application along with a custom performance model to inform the results and identify additional optimization strategies. At scale performance of the programming model implementations are evaluated on pre-production GPU node architectures for Frontier and Aurora, as well as on current NVIDIA device-based systems Summit and Polaris. Real-world workloads representing 3D blood flow calculations in complex vasculature are assessed. Our analysis highlights critical trade-offs between code performance, portability, and development time.

Martin, Aristotle↗

Status of the laser manipulations of H- beam at J-PARC

The laser manipulations of H- ion beam by single or double neutralization is a very promising technique and highly essential to utilized in accelerator processes such as stripping, pulse chopping, collimation, extraction, and beam diagnostics for the present and future high-intensity proton accelerators. At J-PARC, we are preparing for a POP (Proof-of-Principle) demonstration 400 MeV H- stripping by using only lasers. A prototype YAG laser system and a laser cavity system to reduce the laser power are being developed through 3 MeV H- neutralization studies. Fermilab utilizes H- neutralization at 0.75 MeV by establishing a laser Notcher system for a gap in the H- pulse needed for a clean beam extraction from the ring. To minimize the laser power and maximize the interaction efficiency are common issue at both laboratories. Under the US-Japan collaboration for high-intensity neutrino beam, we are closely working to establish recycling/reusing of seed laser pulses to reduce a size of the laser system. In parallel, we have also developed non-destructive beam diagnostic systems at lower H- energy of 3 MeV, which will be implemented to the 400 MeV as well as easily applicable to the Fermilab linac including PIP-II linac. Installation of the laser system at J-PARC linac for 400 MeV H- stripping is ongoing to start the POP experimental study in 2023.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

Multidisciplinary Approaches to Radiation Balanced Lasers (MARBLe): 1st Annual Progress Report

The initial main modifications of the existing μPD crystal-growth system at LANL have been completed. This now gives us the new capability to develop the growth of crystalline RBL materials by both the μPD and the Bridgman method. Quantitative mass spectrometry of the growth atmosphere was conducted to identify possible sources of gaseous trace species (primarily hydrogen) that could cause the undesired reduction of Yb 3+ to Yb 2+ during the crystal growth. Hydrogen was found to be at sufficiently low levels to not be a respective concern. Studies on the thermal decomposition of YbF 3 to form Yb 2+ are currently underway in collaboration with MARBLe team member Prof. Pauzauskie. First samples of Yb 3+ -doped YLiF 4 (YLF:Yb) and undoped LiLuF 4 (LLF) were grown, and MARBLe team member Prof. Sheik-Bahae has performed measurements of laser-induced heating (YLF:Yb) and background absorption coefficient (LLF). We discovered that one or several of the YF 3 , LiF, and YbF 3 precursors contains organic impurities that chemically reduce to black residue during the high-temperature growth in oxygen-free argon atmosphere. A process for removal of these residues prior to growth is being considered. Comparing the results from incongruently melting YLF with those of congruently melting LLF indicate that a congruently melting material is preferred for Bridgman growth. Crystal-growth experiments with LLF are currently underway. The results of these studies on Yb 3+ doped materials will be directly applicable to the future growth of Er 3+ and Tm 3+ doped as well as Yb 3+ , Nd 3+ co-doped RBL crystals. There was no activity on the parallel effort of developing rareearth- doped chalcogenide glasses. The primary reason was a lack of manpower due to a delayed hiring of a student. In September 2017, we have hired a Postdoctoral Researcher who will be able to contribute to the growth (at LANL) and optical characterization (at UNM) of RBL materials.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

FY 2016 Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) Theory and Simulation Performance Target

Annual target: Predicting the magnitude and scaling of the divertor heat load width in magnetically confined burning plasmas is a high priority for the fusion program and ITER. One of the key unresolved physics issues is what sets the heat flux width at the entrance to the divertor region. Perform massively parallel simulations using 3D edge kinetic and fluid codes to determine the parameter dependence of the heat load width at the divertor entrance and compute the divertor plate heat flux applicable to moderate particle recycling conditions. Comparisons will be made with data from DIII-D, NSTX-U, and C-Mod.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Predicting Selective Laser Printing Print Quality of Polymer Powders through Melt Flow Index

Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) uses a precisely controlled laser to fuse polymer powder to build complex 3D shapes. While SLS covers a wide application space, the processing knowledge of polymer powder is limited, restricting the number of commercial powders available. This study serves to expand the processing knowledge of polypropylene and polyethylene in parallel with a “mature” SLS feedstock, nylon, through melt flow index (MFI) characterization. Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) was used to explore the sintering window of the polymers. Polyethylene and polypropylene exhibited a relatively narrow sintering window between 4 – 5 °C, whereas the sintering window of nylon was much wider, between 23 – 24 °C. This suggests that the print quality between polyethylene and polypropylene would be similar; however, X-ray computed tomography revealed a higher volume of print defects, voids, and de lamination in polyethylene than in polypropylene. MFI analysis provided additional insight into the difference in print quality, as the MFI of polyethylene was 7.16 g/10 min, 9.95 g/10 min for polypropylene, and 17.23 g/10 min for nylon. MFI is inversely correlated to melt viscosity, and a low melt viscosity is desired for proper coalescing between the layers and particles. These results suggest that MFI is a promising tool, in conjunction with traditional thermal analysis, for screening candidate powder feedstocks for SLS and optimization of print parameters for novel powders.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Development of Integrated Education, Training and Research Program with Interdisciplinary Applications

Plasma models have been formulated including realistic spatial profiles of both flow and radio frequency induced ponderomotive force. With these inclusions the picture of stability of various plasma and fluid instabilities, as expected, changed drastically with ground-breaking consequences. The inhomogeneous parallel flow and the radio frequency waves can actually shown to stabilize turbulence. This is different from the prevalent notion that both parallel flow shear and radio frequency waves are responsible for the excitation (destabilization) of plasma turbulence. This has several ground-breaking consequences:- (1) the stabilization by parallel flow clearly goes against the conventional notion of the origin of ionospheric oscillation which invokes parallel flow destabilization as the origin, (2) the stabilization by parallel flow opens us a new avenue for improved mode formation in fusion devices - which mostly rely on the perpendicular flow shear stabilization for improved mode formation but the perpendicular flow is damped in a tokamak - so the improved mode formed by the parallel flow can sustain longer and has more prospect for ignition, (3) the complete stabilization of the ITG mode (and consequent suppression of transport) not only explain many unknown phenomena in the space physics but it also raises a prospect for transport barrier formation by the RF waves but not by the RF induced flow (as most works suggest) which is never observed in a tokamak of that magnitude to create a barrier. These are indeed ground-breaking consequences.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Scintillator based fiber optic plate for neutron imaging applications and the like

A chalcopyrite, colquiriite, neutron absorber loaded glass, or plastic scintillator based fiber optic plate for use in a neutron imaging system, including: a plurality of optical fiber segments disposed side-by-side adjacent to one another in a parallel array; and a binder material disposed between and coupling the plurality of optical fiber segments together. A diffuse reflective material is optically coupled to the plurality of first ends of the plurality of optical fiber segments. An optical detector device is optically coupled to the plurality of second ends of the plurality of optical fiber segments opposite the diffuse reflective material. Optionally, the fiber optic plate further includes a diffuse reflective material disposed one or more of on an exterior surface of each of the plurality of optical fiber segments and between the plurality of optical fiber segments.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Automated Work Packages: Radio Frequency Identification, Bluetooth Beacons, and Video Applications in the Nuclear Power Industry

The need to move conventional paper-based work packages into an electronic state motivated the development of a large span of electronic work package forms that ranged from simple Portable Document Format (PDF) files to adaptive and intelligent electronic forms. In parallel to this development, the Department of Energy Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program (LWRS) initiated the automated work package as a pilot project to evaluate implementing state of the art automation techniques into the work package process to improve the economic and safety of the work process. Through a multiple year’s effort, the automated work package project have developed a vision of the future work package that relies on automation in all critical and human factor challenging tasks. The vision identified gaps in the work process, the means to automate them, and evaluated the implementation, feasibility and benefits of these means. This was conducted through continues engagement with the nuclear power industry. The aim of this report is to study the potential of three automation technologies, which have been advancing in various industries, in the current work process of nuclear power plants. The study is to determine the feasibility and benefits of incorporating the technologies and determine potential gaps, if any, that need to be addressed to facilitate deployment of the studied technologies. The three automation technologies identified for this effort are ultra-high frequency (UHF) radio frequency identification (RFID), Bluetooth low energy (BLE) beacons, and video monitoring and recording. As part of this effort, the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) collaborated with Xcel Energy Inc. to evaluate these technologies. During the research and development scope of the effort, INL engaged Xcel Energy Inc. periodically and exchanged valuable insight on the means to implement these technologies in a nuclear power plant. Multiple pilot prototypes were developed and tested in a user study conducted at Xcel Energy Inc. in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The outcome of this effort resulted in significant findings that included the detailed means to custom fit the technologies to fit the nuclear power industry need, and identifying and evaluating several applications of high economic or safety potential. The limitations and obstacles that could impact deployment of the technologies were also identified, and the means of how to address these limitations and obstacles were studied.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Revisiting Huffman Coding: Toward Extreme Performance on Modern GPU Architectures

Today's high-performance computing (HPC) applications are producing vast volumes of data, which are challenging to store and transfer efficiently during the execution, such that data compression is becoming a critical technique to mitigate the storage burden and data movement cost. Huffman coding is arguably the most efficient Entropy coding algorithm in information theory, such that it could be found as a fundamental step in many modern compression algorithms such as DEFLATE. On the other hand, today's HPC applications are more and more relying on the accelerators such as GPU on supercomputers, while Huffman encoding suffers from low throughput on GPUs, resulting in a significant bottleneck in the entire data processing. In this paper, we propose and implement an efficient Huffman encoding approach based on modern GPU architectures, which addresses two key challenges: (1) how to parallelize the entire Huffman encoding algorithm, including codebook construction, and (2) how to fully utilize the high memory-bandwidth feature of modern GPU architectures. The detailed contribution is fourfold. (1) We develop an efficient parallel codebook construction on GPUs that scales effectively with the number of input symbols. (2) We propose a novel reduction based encoding scheme that can efficiently merge the codewords on GPUs. (3) We optimize the overall GPU performance by leveraging the state-of-the-art CUDA APIs such as Cooperative Groups. (4) We evaluate our Huffman encoder thoroughly using six real-world application datasets on two advanced GPUs and compare with our implemented multi-threaded Huffman encoder. Experiments show that our solution can improve the encoding throughput by up to 5.0x and 6.8x on NVIDIA RTX 5000 and V100, respectively, over the state-of-the-art GPU Huffman encoder, and by up to 3.3x over the multi-thread encoder on two 28-core Xeon Platinum 8280 CPUs.

Tian, Jiannan↗

Revisiting Huffman Coding: Toward Extreme Performance on Modern GPU Architectures

Today's high-performance computing (HPC) applications are producing vast volumes of data, which are challenging to store and transfer efficiently during the execution, such that data compression is becoming a critical technique to mitigate the storage burden and data movement cost. Huffman coding is arguably the most efficient Entropy coding algorithm in information theory, such that it could be found as a fundamental step in many modern compression algorithms such as DEFLATE. On the other hand, today's HPC applications are more and more relying on the accelerators such as GPU on supercomputers, while Huffman encoding suffers from low throughput on GPUs, resulting in a significant bottleneck in the entire data processing. In this paper, we propose and implement an efficient Huffman encoding approach based on modern GPU architectures, which addresses two key challenges: (1) how to parallelize the entire Huffman encoding algorithm, including codebook construction, and (2) how to fully utilize the high memory-bandwidth feature of modern GPU architectures. The detailed contribution is fourfold. (1) We develop an efficient parallel codebook construction on GPUs that scales effectively with the number of input symbols. (2) We propose a novel reduction based encoding scheme that can efficiently merge the codewords on GPUs. (3) We optimize the overall GPU performance by leveraging the state-of-the-art CUDA APIs such as Cooperative Groups. (4) We evaluate our Huffman encoder thoroughly using six real-world application datasets on two advanced GPUs and compare with our implemented multithreaded Huffman encoder. Experiments show that our solution can improve the encoding throughput by up to 5.0× and 6.8× on NVIDIA RTX 5000 and V100, respectively, over the state-of-the-art GPU Huffman encoder, and by up to 3.3× over the multithread encoder on two 28-core Xeon Platinum 8280 CPUs.

Tian, Jiannan↗

Patterning of graphene oxide with optoelectronic tweezers

Optoelectronic tweezers (OET) offer a means for parallel trapping and dynamic manipulation of micro-scale particles using low-intensity light. Such capabilities can facilitate the formation of bulk materials with a precisely tailored microstructure. Here, we report the use of OET to vertically align, trap, and reposition sheets of graphene oxide (GO) in liquids, paving the way for textured and patterned graphene macroassemblies that could offer superior performance for applications in energy storage, catalysis, and electronic devices. Trapping can be achieved with low-power light from inexpensive digital projectors and diode lasers, making it simple for users to create and apply patterns while avoiding undesirable photothermal heating effects. To give users a quantitative idea of trap stiffness, we also present a theoretical framework for predicting the maximum achievable speed of a GO platelet in an OET trap.

Lim, Matthew B. (ORCID:0000000161299876)↗

Parallel Tensor Decompositions for Massive Heterogeneous, Incomplete Data (Final Report: LDRD Project 199986).

We extended the fundamental capabilities of tensor decomposition to a broader range of problems - handling new data types and larger problems. This has implications for data analysis across a range of applications in sensor monitoring, cybersecurity, treaty verification, signal processing, etc. Identifies latent structure within data, enabling anomaly detection, process monitoring, scientific discovery.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗