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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 883 records · Page 49

Development of a Data Platform for High-Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR) Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP) Thermal-Fluid Experiments

Since the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) initiated the Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP) in 2009, a total of 30 NEUP projects focused on High-Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR) thermal-fluid experiments were funded up to fiscal year (FY) 2021. This represents a total DOE investment of approximately $23M over the 12-year period, covering thermal fluid phenomena important to both pebble bed and prismatic HTGR designs. The NEUP projects have produced a large amount of high-quality experimental and computational data that were published in final project reports, journal articles, dissertations, and conference proceedings, but in most cases the actual data sets and supporting information such as facility and instrumentation descriptions were not publicly disseminated to the HTGR community. To the authors’ best knowledge, a data platform that organizes and summarizes these NEUP-funded projects for HTGR research does not currently exist. To improve access to this HTGR validation data and optimize the return on the significant investment made by DOE, the Advanced Reactor Technologies (ART) Gas-Cooled Reactor (GCR) program started a survey of completed and ongoing HTGR NEUP projects with the aim of developing a public-access data platform that can be used to retrieve computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and system code validation data and guide future NEUP investments. This paper summarizes the status of the current ART-GCR database, provides an overview of the NEUP-funded HTGR-related research projects from FY2009 to FY2021 and identify validation knowledge gaps still existing in HTGR thermal-fluid research.

42 ENGINEERING↗

HEP Software Foundation Community White Paper Working Group - Data Analysis and Interpretation

At the heart of experimental high energy physics (HEP) is the development of facilities and instrumentation that provide sensitivity to new phenomena. Our understanding of nature at its most fundamental level is advanced through the analysis and interpretation of data from sophisticated detectors in HEP experiments. The goal of data analysis systems is to realize the maximum possible scientific potential of the data within the constraints of computing and human resources in the least time. To achieve this goal, future analysis systems should empower physicists to access the data with a high level of interactivity, reproducibility and throughput capability. As part of the HEP Software Foundation Community White Paper process, a working group on Data Analysis and Interpretation was formed to assess the challenges and opportunities in HEP data analysis and develop a roadmap for activities in this area over the next decade. In this report, the key findings and recommendations of the Data Analysis and Interpretation Working Group are presented.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

OLCF’s Advanced Computing Ecosystem (ACE): FY24 Efforts for the DOE Integrated Research Infrastructure (IRI) Program

This report highlights significant strides made by Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) in advancing computational research and infrastructure. Through the Advanced Computing Ecosystem (ACE) strategic initiative, OLCF has been successfully integrated with Doe’s Integrated Research Infrastructure (IRI) program, establishing itself as a critical framework for enhancing scientific computing capabilities across various domains. This report outlines the activities, accomplishments, and future directions of ACE, emphasizing its role in developing cutting-edge technologies, supporting science pilots, and fostering collaborations that drive scientific innovation.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Quantum Computing for Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering

Neutrino-nucleus cross section uncertainties are expected to be a dominant systematic in future accelerator neutrino experiments. The cross sections are determined by the linear response of the nucleus to the weak interactions of the neutrino, and are dominated by energy and distance scales of the order of the separation between nucleons in the nucleus. These response functions are potentially an important early physics application of quantum computers. Here we present an analysis of the resources required and their expected scaling for scattering cross section calculations. The current estimates of Trotter steps needed to achieve an energy resolution of 10 MeV and the number of CNOT gates for analyzing Ar40 highlights the need for significant improvements in algorithms. We also examine simple small-scale neutrino-nucleus models on modern quantum hardware. In this paper, we use variational methods to obtain the ground state of a three nucleon system (the triton) and then implement the relevant time evolution. To tame the errors in present-day NISQ devices, we explore the use of different error-mitigation techniques to increase the fidelity of the calculations.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Computational Modeling of a 3D Printed Recuperator and Subsequent Experimental Loop for Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Cycles

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), in collaboration with mechanical-thermal energy storage (mTES) provider EarthEn, a US Department of Energy (DOE) Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program (LEEP) recipient at ORNL’s Innovation Crossroads 2023, is utilizing a state-of-the-art patented 3D printing technique to design an additively manufactured (AM) supercritical CO2 (sCO2) recuperator (REC) for EarthEn’s charge/discharge cycle. The AM REC will be printed at ORNL’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility using Inconel Alloy 718 and tested on a closed-loop, ∼100 kW scale experimental facility that is under construction. The testing will compare the printed design against a commercial-off-the-shelf Printed Circuit Heat Exchanger (PCHE) REC. The design of the sCO2 facility is guided by a Modelica-based system model which is primarily dependent on the open-source TRANSFORM library developed at ORNL and uses the open-source CoolProp library for thermophysical properties of sCO2 via the External Media library. It is envisioned that an iterative process will be followed between the physical loop and the system model wherein the initial experimental data will be used to tune the model, which in turn will be used to guide future loop operation. Simultaneously, the AM REC is being designed using computer-aided design models, and it is also being analyzed for hydraulic and thermomechanical response using commercial computational fluid dynamics software, Simcenter STAR-CCM+, on highperformance computing resources.1

See, Nate [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000178581202)↗

Speculation and replication in temperature accelerated dynamics

Accelerated Molecular Dynamics (AMD) is a class of MD-based algorithms for the long-time scale simulation of atomistic systems that are characterized by rare-event transitions. Temperature-Accelerated Dynamics (TAD), a traditional AMD approach, hastens state-to-state transitions by performing MD at an elevated temperature. Recently, Speculatively-Parallel TAD (SpecTAD) was introduced, allowing the TAD procedure to exploit parallel computing systems by concurrently executing in a dynamically generated list of speculative future states. Although speculation can be very powerful, it is not always the most efficient use of parallel resources. In this paper, we compare the performance of speculative parallelism with a replica-based technique, similar to the Parallel Replica Dynamics method. A hybrid SpecTAD approach is also presented, in which each speculation process is further accelerated by a local set of replicas. Finally and overall, this work motivates the use of hybrid parallelism whenever possible, as some combination of speculation and replication is typically most efficient.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Multi-Model Future Typical Meteorological (fTMY) Weather Files for nearly every US County

Exploring climate-induced impacts on building energy consumption can provide valuable insights for sustainable energy planning and environmental management in the face of a changing climate. By utilizing future weather data statistically downscaled from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) General Circulation Models (GCMs) from 2020-2100, this paper presents a broadening industry-consensus approach for generating future Typical Meteorological Year (fTMY) weather files through a combination of statistical downscaling and high-performance computing that generalizes across decades, multiple locations for a region, and varying climate models. Furthermore, these fTMY files have been generated for 3,128 US counties for capturing potential weather on a 20-year basis.

Building↗

Estimating the implied cost of carbon in future scenarios using a CGE model: The Case of Colorado

We develop a state-level computable general equilibrium (CGE) model that reflects the roles of coal, natural gas, wind, solar, and hydroelectricity in supplying electricity, using Colorado as a case study. Also, we focus on the economic impact of implementing Colorado's existing Renewable Portfolio Standard, updated in 2013. This requires that 25% of state generation come from qualifying renewable sources by 2020. We evaluate the policy under a variety of assumptions regarding wind integration costs and assumptions on the persistence of federal subsidies for wind. Specifically, we estimate the implied price of carbon as the carbon price at which a state-level policy would pass a state-level cost-benefit analysis, taking account of estimated greenhouse gas emission reductions and ancillary benefits from corresponding reductions in criteria pollutants. Our findings suggest that without the Production Tax Credit (federal aid), the state policy of mandating renewable power generation (RPS) is costly to state actors, with an implied cost of carbon of about $17 per ton of CO 2 with a 3% discount rate. Federal aid makes the decision between natural gas and wind nearly cost neutral for Colorado.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

Computing Free Energies with Fluctuation Relations on Quantum Computers

One of the most promising applications for quantum computers is the dynamic simulation of quantum materials. Current hardware, however, sets stringent limitations on how long such simulations can run before decoherence begins to corrupt results. The Jarzynski equality, a fluctuation theorem that allows for the computation of equilibrium free energy differences from an ensemble of short, non-equilibrium dynamics simulations, can make use of such short-time simulations on quantum computers. Here, we present a quantum algorithm based on the Jarzynski equality for computing free energies of quantum materials. We demonstrate our algorithm using the transverse field Ising model on both a quantum simulator and real quantum hardware. As the free energy is a central thermodynamic property that allows one to compute virtually any equilibrium property of a physical system, the ability to perform this algorithm for larger quantum systems in the future has implications for a wide range of applications including the construction of phase diagrams, prediction of transport properties and reaction constants, and computer-aided drug design.

Bassman, Lindsay↗

Radiological Safety Analysis Computer (RSAC 7.2) Presentation

This presentation will be for the graduate seminar class for the University of New Mexico. We will discuss the Radiological Safety Analysis Computer (RSAC) version 7.2, a critical tool in radiological consequence analysis within the nuclear safety domain. We will begin with an introduction to radiological consequence analysis and the importance of dose modeling in nuclear safety, referencing key regulatory frameworks such as DOE-STD-3009 and 10 CFR 20. The presentation will provide an overview of RSAC, including its history, primary functions, and the inputs and outputs involved in its calculations. A detailed examination of RSAC's atmospheric dispersion model, based on the Gaussian plume methodology, will be presented, highlighting how meteorological factors influence the results. We will discuss the regulatory alignment of RSAC with DOE and NRC guidelines, emphasizing the assumptions required for compliance and the balance between conservative and realistic inputs. The presentation will also address the limitations and assumptions inherent in RSAC, comparing it with other consequence analysis codes like MACCS, HotSpot, and RASCAL. An example RSAC run will be demonstrated, showcasing a hypothetical accident scenario and interpreting the resulting dose calculations. Finally, we will introduce new ideas to enhance the current RSAC framework. This future work aims to provide multi-industry adaptability and integration with new dispersion models, addressing the evolving needs of DOE and NRC. The presentation will conclude with a discussion on RSAC's ongoing role in nuclear safety and the opportunities for future innovation.

computer program↗

Collaborative Research: A Model of Partially Ionized Plasma Flows with Kinetic Treatment of Neutral Atoms and Nonthermal Ions

Interactions of flows of partially ionized, magnetized plasma are frequently accompanied by the presence of both thermal and non-thermal (pickup) ion components. Such interactions cannot be modeled using traditional MHD equations and require more advanced approaches to treat them. If a nonthermal component of ions is formed due to charge exchange and collisions between the thermal (core) ions and neutrals, it experiences the action of magnetic field, its distribution function is isotropized, and it soon acquires the velocity of the ambient plasma without being thermodynamically equilibrated. This situation, e. g., takes place in the outer heliosphere –- the part of interstellar space beyond the solar system whose properties are determined by the solar wind interaction with the local interstellar medium. This is also possible in laboratory, at million degrees and above, when plasma is conducting electricity far too well, which makes Ohmic heating ineffective. To attain the target temperatures one needs additional heating eventually playing a dominant role. Among such sources is a so-called neutral particle beam heating. This is a wide-spread technique (Joint European Torus and International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor experiments) based on the injection of powerful beams of neutral atoms into ohmically preheated plasma. In this project we have investigated the energy and density separation between the thermal and nonthermal components in the solar wind and interstellar plasmas. A new model has been developed in which we solve the ideal MHD equations for mixture of all ions and the kinetic Boltzmann equation to describe the transport of neutral atoms. As a separate capability, we can treat the flow of neutral atoms in a multi-component fashion, where neutral atoms born in each thermodynamically distinct region are governed by the Euler gas dynamic equations. We also describe the behavior of pickup ions either kinetically, using the Fokker--Planck equation, or as a separate fluid. Our numerical simulations have demonstrated that pickup ions play a major role in the interaction of the solar wind and (partially ionized) interstellar medium plasmas. Our teams have investigated the stability of the surface (the heliopause) that separates the solar wind from the local interstellar medium, the transport of galactic cosmic rays, the properties of the heliotail flow, and modifications to the bow wave in front of the heliopause due to charge exchange between the neutral H atoms born in the solar wind and interstellar ions. Modeling results have been validated against observational data, such as obtained by the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), and made it possible to shed light on the structure of energetic neutral atom maps created by this spacecraft.. We have also demonstrated that charge-exchange modulated heliosphere is a source of anisotropy of the multi-TeV cosmic ray flux observed in a number of Earth-bound air shower experiments. Newly developed codes are implemented within a Multi-Scale Fluid-Kinetic Simulation Suite (MS-FLUKSS), a publicly available code being developed by our team for over 12 years. MS-FLUKSS scales well up to 160,000 computing cores and has been ported on major supercomputers in the country. Efficient parallelization and data choreography in the continuum simulation modules are provided by Chombo, an adaptive mesh refinement framework managed by Phillip Colella's team at LBNL. We have implemented in-house, hybrid (MPI+OpenMP) parallelization of the kinetic modules that solve the Boltzmann equation with a Monte Carlo method. Currently, the kinetic modules are being rewritten to take advantage of the modern CPU-GPU supercomputer architecture. The scope of the project allowed us to enhance plasma research and education in such broad, multidisciplinary field as physics of partially ionized plasma and its application to space physics and fusion science. Besides the impact on the modeling of complex physical systems, our approach to computational resource management for complex codes utilizing multiple algorithm technologies appears to be a major advance on current approaches. The development of sophisticated resource management will be essential for all future modeling efforts that incorporate a diversity of scales and physical processes. Our effort provided leadership in promoting computational science and plasma physics within the UAH and FIT campuses and, through the training of a broad spectrum of scientists and engineers, fostering new technologies across the country.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Collaborative Research: A Model of Partially Ionized Plasma Flows with Kinetic Treatment of Neutral Atoms and Nonthermal Ions

Interactions of flows of partially ionized, magnetized plasma are frequently accompanied by the presence of both thermal and non-thermal (pickup) ion components. Such interactions cannot be modeled using traditional MHD equations and require more advanced approaches to treat them. If a nonthermal component of ions is formed due to charge exchange and collisions between the thermal (core) ions and neutrals, it experiences the action of magnetic field, its distribution function is isotropized, and it soon acquires the velocity of the ambient plasma without being thermodynamically equilibrated. This situation, e. g., takes place in the outer heliosphere - the part of interstellar space beyond the solar system whose properties are determined by the solar wind interaction with the local interstellar medium. This is also possible in laboratory, at million degrees and above, when plasma is conducting electricity far too well, which makes Ohmic heating ineffective. To attain the target temperatures one needs additional heating eventually playing a dominant role. Among such sources is a so-called neutral particle beam heating. This is a wide-spread technique (Joint European Torus and International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor experiments) based on the injection of powerful beams of neutral atoms into ohmically preheated plasma. In this project we have investigated the energy and density separation between the thermal and nonthermal components in the solar wind and interstellar plasmas. A new model has been developed in which we solve the ideal MHD equations for mixture of all ions and the kinetic Boltzmann equation to describe the transport of neutral atoms. As a separate capability, we can treat the flow of neutral atoms in a multi-component fashion, where neutral atoms born in each thermodynamically distinct regions are governed by the Euler gas dynamic equations. We also describe the behavior of pickup ions either kinetically, using the Fokker–Planck equation, or as a separate fluid. Our numerical simulations have demonstrated that pickup ions play a major role in the interaction of the solar wind and (partially ionized) interstellar medium plasmas. Our teams have investigated the stability of the surface (the heliopause) that separates the solar wind from the local interstellar medium, the transport of galactic cosmic rays, the properties of the heliotail flow, and modifications to the bow wave in front of the heliopause due to charge exchange between the neutral H atoms born in the solar wind and interstellar ions. Modeling results have been validated against observational data, such as obtained by the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), and made it possible to shed light on the structure of energetic neutral atom maps created by this spacecraft.. We have also demonstrated that charge-exchange modulated heliosphere is a source of anisotropy of the multi-TeV cosmic ray flux observed in a number of Earth-bound air shower experiments. Newly developed codes are implemented within a Multi-Scale Fluid-Kinetic Simulation Suite (MS-FLUKSS), a publicly available code being developed by our team for over 12 years. MS-FLUKSS scales well up to 160,000 computing cores and has been ported on major supercomputers in the country. Efficient parallelization and data choreography in the continuum simulation modules are provided by Chombo, an adaptive mesh refinement framework managed by Phillip Colella’s team at LBNL. We have implemented in-house, hybrid (MPI+OpenMP) parallelization of the kinetic modules that solve the Boltzmann equation with a Monte Carlo method. Currently, the kinetic modules are being rewritten to take advantage of the modern CPU-GPU supercomputer architecture. The scope of the project allowed us to enhance plasma research and education in such broad, multidis- ciplinary field as physics of partially ionized plasma and its application to space physics and fusion science. Besides the impact on the modeling of complex physical systems, our approach to computational resource management for complex codes utilizing multiple algorithm technologies appears to be a major advance on current approaches. The development of sophisticated resource management will be essential for all future modeling efforts that incorporate a diversity of scales and physical processes. Our effort provided leadership in promoting computational science and plasma physics within the UAH and FIT campuses and, through the training of a broad spectrum of scientists and engineers, foster new technologies across the country.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Hybrid Manufacturing of Conformal Cooling Channels for Tooling

Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) techniques for hybrid manufacturing have led to new application areas in the manufacturing industry. In the tooling industry, cooling channels are used to enable specific heating and cooling cycles to improve the performance of the process. These internal cooling channels have been designed with limited manufacturing processes in mind, so, until recently, they were often straight in shape for cross-drilling operations and manufactured from a cast billet. To show a novel application of this common technology, a tool with integrated conformal cooling channels was manufactured using hybrid manufacturing (blown-powder DED and CNC machining) techniques. The computer-aided manufacturing strategy used, and the lessons learned are presented and discussed to enable future work in this industrial application space.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

PandAna: A Python Analysis Framework for Scalable High Performance Computing in High Energy Physics

Modern experiments in high energy physics analyze millions of events recorded in particle detectors to select the events of interest and make measurements of physics parameters. These data can often be stored as tabular data in files with detector information and reconstructed quantities. Current techniques for event selection in these files lack the scalability needed for high performance computing environments. We describe our work to develop a high energy physics analysis framework suitable for high performance computing. This new framework utilizes modern tools for reading files and implicit data parallelism. Framework users analyze tabular data using standard, easy-to-use data analysis techniques in Python while the framework handles the file manipulations and parallelism without the user needing advanced experience in parallel programming. In future versions, we hope to provide a framework that can be utilized on a personal computer or a high performance computing cluster with little change to the user code.

Groh, Micah↗

In silico design of microporous polymers for chemical separations and storage

Polymers of intrinsic microporosity (PIMs) are a family of materials with potential to be effective and scalable solutions for challenging adsorbent and membrane applications. The broad range of repeat unit chemistry, microporous structural features, and polymer processing makes exploration of the expansive PIM design space inefficient via chemical and materials intuition alone. Computational techniques such as molecular simulations and machine learning can provide a leap in capabilities to address this polymer design challenge and will be central to the future development of PIMs. In this work, we highlight recent microporous material studies that arrived at key results by employing computational techniques and provide our perspective on the prospects for in silico design and development of PIMs.

adsorption↗

Science & Technology Review: September 2016

This is the September issue of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Science & Technology Review, which communicates, to a broad audience, the Laboratory’s scientific and technological accomplishments in fulfilling its primary missions. This month, there are features on "Laboratory Investments Drive Computational Advances" and "Laying the Groundwork for Extreme-Scale Computing." Research highlights include "Nuclear Data Moves into the 21st Century", "Peering into the Future of Lick Observatory", and "Facility Drives Hydrogen Vehicle Innovations."

08 HYDROGEN↗

Toward Exascale: Overview of Large Eddy Simulations and Direct Numerical Simulations of Nuclear Reactor Flows with the Spectral Element Method in Nek5000

At the beginning of the last decade, Petascale supercomputers (i.e., computers capable of more than 1 petaFLOP) emerged. Now, at the dawn of exascale supercomputing, we provide a review of recent landmark simulations of portions of reactor components with turbulence-resolving techniques that this computational power has made possible. In fact, these simulations have provided invaluable insight into flow dynamics, which is difficult or often impossible to obtain with experiments alone. We focus on simulations performed with the spectral element method, as this method has emerged as a powerful tool to deliver massively parallel calculations at high fidelity by using large eddy simulation or direct numerical simulation. We also limit this paper to constant-property incompressible flow of a Newtonian fluid in the absence of other body or external forces, although the method is by no means limited to this class of flows. We briefly review the fundamentals of the method and the reasons it is compelling for the simulation of nuclear engineering flows. We review in detail a series of Petascale simulations, including the simulations of helical coil steam generators, fuel assemblies, and pebble beds. Even with Petascale computing, however, limitations for nuclear modeling and simulation tools remain. In particular, the size and scope of turbulence-resolving simulations are still limited by computing power and resolution requirements, which scale with the Reynolds number. In the final part of this paper, we discuss the future of the field, including recent advancements in emerging architectures such as GPUbased supercomputers, which are expected to power the next generation of high-performance computers.

computational fluid dynamics↗