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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

Descriptors for Electrolyte-Renormalized Oxidative Stability of Solvents in Lithium-Ion Batteries

Electrolyte stability against oxidation is an important factor limiting the development of high energy density batteries. The highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) level of solvent molecules has been traditionally used for understanding trends in their oxidative stability, but this assumes a noninteracting environment. However, solvent HOMO levels are renormalized because of molecules in their solvation shells. In this work, we first demonstrate an inexpensive and accurate method to determine the HOMO level of the solvent followed by simple descriptors for renormalization of the HOMO level due to different electrolyte components. The descriptors are based on Gutmann donor and acceptor numbers of the solvent and other components. The method uses fast generalized gradient approximation-level density functional theory calculations compared to previously used expensive, experimental data-dependent methods. This method can be used to screen for unexplored stable solvents among the large number of known organic compounds to design novel high-voltage stable electrolytes.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

Q-Law for Rapid Assessment of Low Thrust Cislunar Trajectories Via Automatic Differentiation

Q-Law is a Lyapunov-based control law used to determine optimal controls for a low thrust trajectory. One major issue with its use is the difficult derivatives re-quired for calculating optimal controls at a given time. In this paper, an implementation of Q-Law with automatic differentiation via a Python package called JAX is applied. With automatic differentiation, the difficult derivatives for Q-Law’s optimal controls are calculated with ease, and derivatives of final states with respect to Q-Law’s weights are found enabling gradient-based optimization of Q-Law for the first time. Different search and optimization methods for finding optimal weights are then compared using the LEO to GEO problem, and it was found that gradient-free methods like design of experiments and genetic algorithm produced the best results, but they took the longest time to get a solution, while the gradient-based method found a locally optimal result in a much faster time. Overall, the run time for a single propagation is manageable and well-suited for a mission designer to use as an initial guess generator for trajectory optimization, or for simple orbit transfer analysis.

Nathan Steffen↗

Gradient boosting machine for modeling the energy consumption of commercial buildings

Accurate savings estimations are important to promote energy efficiency projects and demonstrate their cost-effectiveness. The increasing presence of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) in commercial buildings has resulted in a rising availability of high frequency interval data. These data can be used for a variety of energy efficiency applications such as demand response, fault detection and diagnosis, and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) optimization. This large amount of data has also opened the door to the use of advanced statistical learning models, which hold promise for providing accurate building baseline energy consumption predictions, and thus accurate saving estimations. The gradient boosting machine is a powerful machine learning algorithm that is gaining considerable traction in a wide range of data driven applications, such as ecology, computer vision, and biology. In the present work an energy consumption baseline modeling method based on a gradient boosting machine was proposed. To assess the performance of this method, a recently published testing procedure was used on a large dataset of 410 commercial buildings. The model training periods were varied and several prediction accuracy metrics were used to evaluate the model's performance. The results show that using the gradient boosting machine model improved the R-squared prediction accuracy and the CV(RMSE) in more than 80 percent of the cases, when compared to an industry best practice model that is based on piecewise linear regression, and to a random forest algorithm.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Trapped-Ion Spin-Motion Coupling with Microwaves and a Near-Motional Oscillating Magnetic Field Gradient

Here, we introduce a new method of spin-motion coupling for trapped ions using microwaves and a magnetic field gradient oscillating close to the ions’ motional frequency. We demonstrate and characterize this coupling experimentally using a single ion in a surface-electrode trap that incorporates current-carrying electrodes to generate the microwave field and the oscillating magnetic field gradient. Using this technique, we perform resolved-sideband cooling of a single motional mode to its ground state.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Training material models using gradient descent algorithms

High temperature design requires accurate constitutive models to describe material inelastic deformation and failure behavior. Oftentimes, calibrating accurate models devolves into the problem of fitting the model parameters against experimental test data. Here, we present the pyopmat package, an open source framework for calibrating constitutive models against experiment data subjected to various loading conditions using machine learning techniques. The package calculates the exact gradient of the model response with respect to the parameters using a combination of automatic differentiation and the adjoint method. Given this exact gradient, we compare the performance of several gradient-based optimization techniques in fitting realistic constitutive models against data. Here, we demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of our package through example problems using both synthetic data, generated using known parameter sets, under monotonic and cyclic loading conditions and also with an example applying the techniques developed here to actual high temperature creep-fatigue test data.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

USING THE LEVENBERG-MARQUARDT METHOD FOR SOLUTIONS OF INVERSE TRANSPORT PROBLEMS IN ONE- AND TWO-DIMENSIONAL GEOMETRIES

Determining the components of a radioactive source/shield system using the system's radiation signature, a type of inverse transport problem, is one of great importance in homeland security, material safeguards, and waste management. Here, the Levenberg-Marquardt (or simply 'Marquardt') method, a standard gradient-based optimization technique, is applied to the inverse transport problems of interface location identification, shield material identification, source composition identification, and material mass density identification (both separately and combined) in multilayered radioactive source/shield systems. One-dimensional spherical problems using leakage measurements of neutron-induced gamma-ray lines and two-dimensional cylindrical problems using flux measurements of uncollided passive gamma-ray lines are considered. Gradients are calculated using an adjoint-based differentiation technique that is more efficient than difference formulas. The Marquardt method is iterative and directly estimates unknown interface locations, source isotope weight fractions, and material mass densities, while the unknown shield material is identified by estimating its macroscopic gamma-ray cross sections. Numerical test cases illustrate the utility of the Marquardt method using both simulated data that are perfectly consistent with the optimization process and realistic data simulated by Monte Carlo.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗

A general approach to seismic inversion with automatic differentiation

Imaging Earth structure or seismic sources from seismic data involves minimizing a target misfit function, and is commonly solved through gradient-based optimization. The adjoint-state method has been developed to compute the gradient efficiently; however, its implementation can be time-consuming and difficult. We develop a general seismic inversion framework to calculate gradients using reverse-mode automatic differentiation. The central idea is that adjoint-state methods and reverse-mode automatic differentiation are mathematically equivalent. Here, the mapping between numerical PDE simulation and deep learning allows us to build a seismic inverse modeling library, ADSeismic, based on deep learning frameworks, which supports high performance reverse-mode automatic differentiation on CPUs and GPUs. We demonstrate the performance of ADSeismic on inverse problems related to velocity model estimation, rupture imaging, earthquake location, and source time function retrieval. ADSeismic has the potential to solve a wide variety of inverse modeling applications within a unified framework.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

The Spectrophotometric Method of Determining the Transmission of Solar Energy in Salt Gradient Solar Ponds

In order to predict the thermal efficiency of a solar pond it is necessary to know total average solar energy reaching the storage layer. One method for determining this energy for water containing dissolved colored species is based upon spectral transmission measurements using a laboratory spectrophotometer. This method is examined and some of the theoretical ground work needed to discuss the measurement of transmission of light water. Results of in situ irradiance measurements from oceanography research are presented and the difficulties inherent in extrapolating laboratory data obtained with ten centimeter cells to real three dimensional pond situations is discussed. Particular emphasis is put on the need to account for molecular and particulate scattering in measurements done on low absorbing solutions. Despite these considerations it is expected that attenuation calculations based upon careful measurements using a dual beam spectrophotometer technique combined with known attenuation coefficients will be useful in solar pond modeling and monitoring for color buildup. Preliminary results using the CSM method are presented.

Giulianelli, J.↗

Bi-fidelity Gradient-Based Approach for Nonlinear Well Logging Inverse Problems

Solving a non-linear inverse problem is challenging in computational science and engineering. Sampling based methods require a large number of model valuations; gradientbased methods require fewer model evaluations but only find the local minima. Multifidelity optimization combines the low fidelity model and the high-fidelity model to achieve both high accuracy and high efficiency. In this paper, we present a bi-fidelity approach to solve non-linear inverse problems. In the bi-fidelity inversion method, the low-fidelity model is used to acquire a good initial guess, and the high-fidelity model is used to locate the global minimum. Combined with a multi-start optimization scheme, the proposed approach significantly increases the possibility of finding the global minimum for nonlinear inverse problems with many local minima. The method is tested with two toy problems and then applied to an electromagnetic well logging inverse problem, which is difficult to solve using traditional gradient-based methods. The bi-fidelity method provides promising inversion results and can be easily applied to traditional gradient-based methods.

42 ENGINEERING↗

FY2018 Discovery Through Situational Awareness: Anomalies, Oscillations, and Classification

This technical report is a summary of work performed under the DOE GMLC program under the task titled “Discovery through Situational Awareness”. The focus of this work was to apply big data, statistical techniques to PMU data to do the following: 1) baseline PMU data and find anomalies with a focus on phase angle pairs, 2) identify the frequencies of dominant modal oscillations between different parts of a power system, and 3) identify and classify frequency events in PMU data. This work was performed on PMU data from the Western Interconnect. Many of these algorithms will be applied to wide area phase angle pair data on the Eastern Interconnect in a tool called ESAMS (Eastern Interconnect Situational Awareness Monitoring System). ESAMS was built by EPG (Electric Power Group) and PNNL and is currently being installed on the Eastern Interconnect. The results discussed in this report were made from 14 PMUs from data ranging from Oct 2016 to May 2018. The PMU data were measured 60 times each second. Fourteen phase angle pairs were included, with reactive and active power being calculated at 14 sites. All results have been de-identified for this report. The methodologies applied in the ESAMS tool are described in Section 2. A baseline of PMU data is created using the last 120 days of data. This baseline describes typical behavior as understood from the data. The baseline is then applied to the next day’s data and anomalies from that baseline are identified. Plots are created to help describe what is anomalous during that specific moment in time. These algorithms are currently being installed on the Eastern Interconnect. FY19 work will include discussing the results and findings from the ESAMS tool. A new method of identifying the frequencies of dominant modal oscillations between different parts of a power system is described in Section 3. A list of 199 frequency events provided by Bonneville Power Administration were used to create algorithms to detect frequency events and to create classification rules that can be used to identify future frequency events. Section 4 discusses the results the performance of 7 different event detection, clustering-based methods. Accuracy percentages ranged from 93.59% to 99.16%, with most methods being very fast. GBM (Gradient Boosting Machine) performed well and quickly. These 7 different methods were also tested to determine how well each built classification rules on training data and then applied those rules to identify future frequency events. Accuracy percentages ranged from 89.09% to 99.9%, with all methods performing quickly. GLM (General Linear Model) was viewed as the top performer when considering accuracy and processing time. Because the list of events consisted of 80% of them as active power events and only 20% as faults, all methods struggled to identify events as faults. Small faults were especially difficult to identify. A separate algorithm was created to help with this. Additional work will be done in FY19 on event detection using more data and more events and refinements to the methods.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

A Priori Subgrid Scale Modeling for a Droplet Laden Temporal Mixing Layer

Subgrid analysis of a transitional temporal mixing layer with evaporating droplets has been performed using a direct numerical simulation (DNS) database. The DNS is for a Reynolds number (based on initial vorticity thickness) of 600, with droplet mass loading of 0.2. The gas phase is computed using a Eulerian formulation, with Lagrangian droplet tracking. Since Large Eddy Simulation (LES) of this flow requires the computation of unfiltered gas-phase variables at droplet locations from filtered gas-phase variables at the grid points, it is proposed to model these by assuming the gas-phase variables to be given by the filtered variables plus a correction based on the filtered standard deviation, which can be computed from the sub-grid scale (SGS) standard deviation. This model predicts unfiltered variables at droplet locations better than simply interpolating the filtered variables. Three methods are investigated for modeling the SGS standard deviation: Smagorinsky, gradient and scale-similarity. When properly calibrated, the gradient and scale-similarity methods give results in excellent agreement with the DNS.

Okongo, Nora↗

Electron backscatter diffraction analysis of a CZT growth tip from a vertical gradient freeze furnace

Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) was used to characterize the growth-tip region of a 4.2-cm diameter CdZnTe (CZT) boule grown using low-pressure Bridgman method in a vertical gradient freeze furnace. The boule was sectioned and polished and a section taken along the boule longitudinal centerline with an approximate surface area of 1-cm 2 was used for optical and scanning electron microscopy. A collage was assembled using EBSD/SEM images to show morphological features, e.g., twin structure, grain structure, and overall crystal growth direction. Severely twinned regions originating from the tip and side walls were observed. The overall growth orientation was close to (1 1 0) and (1 1 2) directions. In some regions, the (0 0 1) poles of the CZT matrix aligned with the growth direction, while twins aligned such that (1 1 1) and (1 1 2) poles aligned with the growth direction. Finally, in some other areas, (1 1 2) or (0 1 1) poles of the CZT matrix aligned with the growth direction. New relationships between the CZT matrix and large Te polycrystalline particles were revealed: {1 1 2 - } CZT ΙΙ{1 1 - 0 0} Te and {0 0 1} CZT II{0 1 - 1 - 1} Te .

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Prediction of the SYM-H Index Using a Bayesian Deep Learning Method With Uncertainty Quantification

We propose a novel deep learning framework, named SYMHnet, which employs a graph neural network and a bidirectional long short-term memory network to cooperatively learn patterns from solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field parameters for short-term forecasts of the SYM-H index based on 1- and 5-min resolution data. SYMHnet takes, as input, the time series of the parameters' values provided by NASA's Space Science Data Coordinated Archive and predicts, as output, the SYM-H index value at time point t + w hours for a given time point t where w is 1 or 2. By incorporating Bayesian inference into the learning framework, SYMHnet can quantify both aleatoric (data) uncertainty and epistemic (model) uncertainty when predicting future SYM-H indices. Experimental results show that SYMHnet works well at quiet time and storm time, for both 1- and 5-min resolution data. The results also show that SYMHnet generally performs better than related machine learning methods. For example, SYMHnet achieves a forecast skill score (FSS) of 0.343 compared to the FSS of 0.074 of a recent gradient boosting machine (GBM) method when predicting SYM-H indices (1 hr in advance) in a large storm (SYM-H = -393 nT) using 5-min resolution data. When predicting the SYM-H indices (2 hr in advance) in the large storm, SYMHnet achieves an FSS of 0.553 compared to the FSS of 0.087 of the GBM method. In addition, SYMHnet can provide results for both data and model uncertainty quantification, whereas the related methods cannot.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Nonlinear dimension reduction for surrogate modeling using gradient information

We introduce a method for the nonlinear dimension reduction of a high-dimensional function $u:{\mathbb{R}}^d\rightarrow{\mathbb{R}}$, $d\gg 1$. Our objective is to identify a nonlinear feature map $g:{\mathbb{R}}^d\rightarrow{\mathbb{R}}^m$, with a prescribed intermediate dimension $m\ll d$, so that $u$ can be well approximated by $f\circ g$ for some profile function $f:{\mathbb{R}}^m\rightarrow{\mathbb{R}}$. We propose to build the feature map by aligning the Jacobian $\nabla g$ with the gradient $\nabla u$, and we theoretically analyze the properties of the resulting $g$. Once $g$ is built, we construct $f$ by solving a gradient-enhanced least squares problem. Our practical algorithm uses a sample $\{{\textbf{x}}^{(i)},u({\textbf{x}}^{(i)}),\nabla u({\textbf{x}}^{(i)})\}_{i=1}^N$ and builds both $g$ and $f$ on adaptive downward-closed polynomial spaces, using cross validation to avoid overfitting. We numerically evaluate the performance of our algorithm across different benchmarks, and explore the impact of the intermediate dimension $m$. We show that building a nonlinear feature map $g$ can permit more accurate approximation of $u$ than a linear $g$, for the same input data set.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Converting 2D Nanofiber Membranes to 3D Hierarchical Assemblies with Structural and Compositional Gradients Regulates Cell Behavior

Abstract New methods are described for converting 2D electrospun nanofiber membranes to 3D hierarchical assemblies with structural and compositional gradients. Pore‐size gradients are generated by tuning the expansion of 2D membranes in different layers with incorporation of various amounts of a surfactant during the gas‐foaming process. The gradient in fiber organizations is formed by expanding 2D nanofiber membranes composed of multiple regions collected by varying rotating speeds of mandrel. A compositional gradient on 3D assemblies consisting of radially aligned nanofibers is prepared by dripping, diffusion, and crosslinking. Bone mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) on the 3D nanofiber assemblies with smaller pore size show significantly higher expression of hypoxia‐related markers and enhanced chondrogenic differentiation compared to BMSCs cultured on the assemblies with larger pore size. The basic fibroblast growth factor gradient can accelerate fibroblast migration from the surrounding area to the center in an in vitro wound healing model. Taken together, 3D nanofiber assemblies with gradients in pore sizes, fiber organizations, and contents of signaling molecules can be used to engineer tissue constructs for tissue repair and build biomimetic disease models for studying disease biology and screening drugs, in particular, for interface tissue engineering and modeling.

Chen, Shixuan↗

Stochastic projective splitting

Here, we present a new, stochastic variant of the projective splitting (PS) family of algorithms for inclusion problems involving the sum of any finite number of maximal monotone operators. This new variant uses a stochastic oracle to evaluate one of the operators, which is assumed to be Lipschitz continuous, and (deterministic) resolvents to process the remaining operators. Our proposal is the first version of PS with such stochastic capabilities. We envision the primary application being machine learning (ML) problems, with the method’s stochastic features facilitating “mini-batch” sampling of datasets. Since it uses a monotone operator formulation, the method can handle not only Lipschitz-smooth loss minimization, but also min–max and noncooperative game formulations, with better convergence properties than the gradient descent-ascent methods commonly applied in such settings. The proposed method can handle any number of constraints and nonsmooth regularizers via projection and proximal operators. We prove almost-sure convergence of the iterates to a solution and a convergence rate result for the expected residual, and close with numerical experiments on a distributionally robust sparse logistic regression problem.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Thermal Management Techniques for Oil-Free Turbomachinery Systems

Tests were performed to evaluate three different methods of utilizing air to provide thermal management control for compliant journal foil air bearings. The effectiveness of the methods was based on bearing bulk temperature and axial thermal gradient reductions during air delivery. The first method utilized direct impingement of air on the inner surface of a hollow test journal during operation. The second, less indirect method achieved heat removal by blowing air inside the test journal to simulate air flowing axially through a hollow, rotating shaft. The third method emulated the most common approach to removing heat by forcing air axially through the bearing s support structure. Internal bearing temperatures were measured with three, type K thermocouples embedded in the bearing that measured general internal temperatures and axial thermal gradients. Testing was performed in a 1 atm, 260 C ambient environment with the bearing operating at 60 krpm and supporting a load of 222 N. Air volumetric flows of 0.06, 0.11, and 0.17 cubic meters per minute at approximately 150 to 200 C were used. The tests indicate that all three methods provide thermal management but at different levels of effectiveness. Axial cooling of the bearing support structure had a greater effect on bulk temperature for each air flow and demonstrated that the thermal gradients could be influenced by the directionality of the air flow. Direct air impingement on the journal's inside surface provided uniform reductions in both bulk temperature and thermal gradients. Similar to the direct method, indirect journal cooling had a uniform cooling effect on both bulk temperatures and thermal gradients but was the least effective of the three methods.

Radil, Kevin↗

Study of the extra-ionic electron distributions in semi-metallic structures by nuclear quadrupole resonance techniques

A straightforward self-consistent method was developed to estimate solid state electrostatic potentials, fields and field gradients in ionic solids. The method is a direct practical application of basic electrostatics to solid state and also helps in the understanding of the principles of crystal structure. The necessary mathematical equations, derived from first principles, were presented and the systematic computational procedure developed to arrive at the solid state electrostatic field gradients values was given.

Murty, A. N.↗