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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 91 records · Page 5
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2022

OPERATIONAL TECHNOLOGY BEHAVIORAL ANALYTICS (OTBA) – A DATA-CENTRIC APPROACH FOR REDUCING CYBERSECURITY RISK

This paper provides a summary of the methodology, findings, lessons learned, and insights from an investigation into the feasibility of the Operational Technology Behavioral Analytics (OTBA) cybersecurity approach. The concept was evaluated with data from the National Carbon Capture Center (NCCC) – a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) funded facility that is managed and operated by Southern Company at Alabama Power’s E. C. Gaston generating power plant in Wilsonville, Alabama. Appropriate data sources for the post-combustion carbon capture system were identified. Infrastructure was deployed to monitor, capture and archive data for the system. Critical parameters for each subsystem were identified and analyzed. Machine-learning algorithms were used to establish and characterize normal operations and subsequently identify anomalies. This effort yielded valuable insights and formed the basis of a data-centric strategy for detecting cyber-attacks along with a coordinated response philosophy. A significant takeaway is that the OTBA cybersecurity approach is quite portable; it can be applied to other critical infrastructure beyond fossil power generation.

Black, Clifton↗
DOE OSTI2020

Net Load Redistribution Attacks on Nodal Voltage Magnitude Estimation in AC Distribution Networks

A high penetration level of smart devices and communication networks increases the threat of cyber-attacks in the distribution system. In this paper, we model a hidden, coordinated, net load redistribution attack (NLRA) in an AC distribution system. Based on local information of an attack region, the attacker’s goal is to create violations in nodal voltage magnitude estimation. Acting as a system operator equipped with global AC state estimation and bad data detection, we validate the stealthiness of the hidden NLRA in multiple attack cases. Simulation results on a modified PG&E 69-node distribution system show the validity of the proposed NLRA. The influence of NLRA on the distribution system is assessed and the impact of attack regions, attack timing, and system observability is also revealed.

Zhang, Hang↗
DOE OSTI2023

Systems and methods for control system security

A component security device may be disposed at an interface between a component and a cyber-physical system. The disclosed component security device may be physically and/or electrically coupled between the component and infrastructure of the cyber-physical system, such as a backplane, bus, and/or the like. The component security device may be configured to monitor the component, and selectively isolate the component from the cyber-physical system. Since the component security device is interposed at the interface of the component, the component security device may be capable of isolating the component regardless of whether the component has been compromised (e.g., regardless of whether the component is capable of complying with system commands).

Rieger, Craig G.↗
NASA NTRS1985

High resolution solutions of the Euler equations for vortex flows

Solutions of the Euler equations are presented for M = 1.5 flow past a 70-degree-swept delta wing. At an angle of attack of 10 degrees, strong leading-edge vortices are produced. Two computational approaches are taken, based upon fully three-dimensional and conical flow theory. Both methods utilize a finite-volume discretization solved by a pseudounsteady multistage scheme. Results from the two approaches are in good agreement. Computations have been done on a 16-million-word CYBER 205 using 196 x 56 x 96 and 128 x 128 cells for the two methods. A sizable data base is generated, and some of the practical aspects of manipulating it are mentioned. The results reveal many interesting physical features of the compressible vortical flow field and also suggest new areas needing research.

Murman, E. M.↗
DOE OSTI2024

Risk Analysis for Remote Operation of Microreactors

Microreactors are a subset of advanced nuclear reactors that can be factory fabricated, transportable, and self-regulating. They have the potential to be used in microgrids, rural and remote areas, or emergency response applications, replacing fossil fuel sources like diesel generators and enabling sustainable energy generation. In order to make microreactor operation cost-effective, it is likely that remote communications will be needed to reduce the number of personnel required to be on site. While remote operation of energy generation and other industrial control systems is common in other industries, it is not yet adopted in the nuclear community and has many perceived and actual risks. In this paper, the severity of the risks introduced by remote operations for microreactors are explored. The primary changes in the operations involve the addition of a remote communications network and a certification system for data and controls. These changes lend themselves to considerations of cyber risks, whether unintentional or adversarial, but the assessment considers not just cyber risks introduced, but also how physical and human factors-based risks will impact the remote operations system and change the overall risk profile. This initial assessment indicates that there are standard cyber and mitigation measures that can be put in place so the risk of doing remote operations does not dramatically increase compared to local operations. This evaluation is a critical step in the process of evaluating if remote operations of microreactors is a suitable solution to meet future sustainable grid needs

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2022

Assurance by Design for Cyber Physical Data-Driven Systems

Currently, Cyber Physical Data-Driven Systems (CPDDS) employ machine learning for the classification, data fusion, and control of our nation’s infrastructure, such as the power grid, transportation networks (e.g., fuel distribution, air traffic control), and DoD long-duration collaborative autonomous platforms including unmanned underwater, ground, surface, space, and aerial systems. Many CPDDSs are system-of-systems that should be designed to communicate over disadvantaged networks. It is important to assure that the CPDDSs are resilient against physical and cyber threats by design. Additionally, their design should tolerate misclassification errors resulting from natural and/or adversarial distribution shifts within their data driven components. The all-domain nature of the problem of assuring the design of CPDDSs requires a multi-disciplinary perspective as outlined in this chapter.

Chikkagoudar, Satish↗
DOE OSTI2024

Self-Aware Local Autonomous and Semi-Cooperative Control for Cross-Layered Resilience (SLAC3R)

The objective of this work is to develop and demonstrate novel, adaptive, lightweight algorithms that enable the decision-making agents in a large cyber-physical network to act both autonomously and in collaborative harmony to enforce assured resilience across spatiotemporal layers, even under unforeseen adversarial scenarios (e.g., high- impact-low-probability events). Towards this end, the proposed solution will serve as minimally invasive add-on layers that bridge the existing (faster, reactive) local myopic controls and (slower, predictive) centralized optimization. Importantly, the proposed algorithms will enable the multi-agent network to autonomously and collaboratively enforce resilient operation under no or limited communication environment typical of severe cyber- physical adversarial events. The expected outcome of this effort is a suite of prototype, open-source, software algorithms for safety-aware local autonomous and semi-cooperative control (SLAC3R), demonstrated on networked microgrids (via RD2C/Thrust-1 OPAL-RT testbed).

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2023

High-fidelity model-driven deception platform for cyber-physical systems

Methods are described for protecting a cyber-physical system against a potential attacker of the system. The methods include a method of generating a plurality of examples for a training data set and training a system model using the training data set to generate a decoy configured to generate a synthetic output that mimics historical outputs generated by the system for a given historical system context. Also described is a method including receiving a system context of a cyber-physical system; receiving an inquiry into the system by a potential attacker; applying a system model to the system context and the inquiry; obtaining from the system model a synthetic output that mimics how a component of the system would respond to the inquiry given the system context; and providing the synthetic output to the potential attacker.

Edgar, Thomas W.↗
DOE OSTI2022

FIC Threat Profile: Provided by Shamrock Cyber

The FIC team has engaged with PNNL’s Shamrock Cyber Team to produce this Threat Profile. The Threat Profile provides the foundation for a thorough understanding of threats for development teams and stakeholders, and users of the system. The Threat Profile can be used as is, or as content to inform other reports tailored to a specific audience. It is intended to enable decision makers at all levels to improve the security posture of the system.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2020

Attack Scenarios Relating to Army Facility-Related Control Systems: Quantifying the Cost to Secure and Cost Savings of the Army’s FRCS Program

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) analyzed the cyber-threat environment to U.S. Army facilities. This report describes three key factors in securing Army-owned facility-related control systems (FRCS). First, Section 1.0 provides background information about the project. Section 2.0 describes the various types of cyber-attacks. Section 3.0 provides a series of attack scenarios from real-world use cases are described in Section 3. These examples are relevant to the Army because the targeted systems or operating environments are like those used at Army installations. An estimated range for the cost to secure these systems is described in Section 4.0. Finally, the cost savings of preventing these kinds of attacks are described in Section 5.0.

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEF↗
NASA NTRS1980

A computer program for the generation of logic networks from task chart data

The Network Generation Program (NETGEN), which creates logic networks from task chart data is presented. NETGEN is written in CDC FORTRAN IV (Extended) and runs in a batch mode on the CDC 6000 and CYBER 170 series computers. Data is input via a two-card format and contains information regarding the specific tasks in a project. From this data, NETGEN constructs a logic network of related activities with each activity having unique predecessor and successor nodes, activity duration, descriptions, etc. NETGEN then prepares this data on two files that can be used in the Project Planning Analysis and Reporting System Batch Network Scheduling program and the EZPERT graphics program.

Herbert, H. E.↗
DOE OSTI2025

The Arctic

The Arctic environment in 2024 continued on a trajectory that has put it in a state far different from that of the twentieth century. Ongoing accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continues to quickly warm the Arctic, resulting in rapid changes in the cryosphere that are driving cascading impacts to climate, ecological, and societal systems. Many weather- and climate-related impacts in the Arctic are the result of compounding change, such as increased riverbank erosion, which is proximately due to increased river discharge from higher seasonal precipitation, yet is also exacerbated by thawing permafrost. However, even individual storms occur within very different ocean and ice conditions than were typically present in the late twentieth century. As a result, the impacts, including high winds, excessive precipitation, and coastal inundation, may be quite different nowadays, as exemplified by the October 2024 storm in northwest Alaska that produced severe coastal flooding in several communities. To share some of these impacts with a wider audience, select extreme weather impacts around the greater Arctic have been highlighted through the inclusion of sidebars in recent State of the Climate Arctic chapters (e.g., Benestad et al. 2023; Thoman et al. 2024).

Thoman, Richard L. [Univ. of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK↗
DOE OSTI2022

FIC Vulnerability Profile

The FIC team is engaged with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s (PNNL’s) Shamrock Cyber Team to provide cybersecurity analyses of the FIC software. Shamrock offers both Threat-Based Analysis services and Secure Software Development services. These services are ultimately used to understand and mitigate threats against software and to reduce vulnerabilities in software, thus improving overall cybersecurity and informing decision makers. Shamrock’s Secure Software Development services, specifically Static Analysis Security Testing (SAST) and Open-Source Analysis (OSA), produced this Vulnerability Profile.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2024

Architecture Design for Remote Operation of Microreactors: Poster

The nuclear sector is pursuing a number of advanced reactor concepts, one of which is the microreactor, an advanced reactor characterized by a power output of less than 20 MWth. These reactors are intended for use in applications where traditional power solutions are economically or logistically impractical. One key feature required for the successful deployment of microreactors is a remote operation capability, which can dramatically cut staffing expenses by eliminating the need for licensed operators to be present at the site of each reactor and instead concentrate in a centrally located operations center. In moving to a remote operations framework for nuclear reactors, the number of potential attack surfaces for a cyber adversary looking to cause harm or disruption increases. Therefore, a robust cybersecurity architecture is required to mitigate these potential vulnerabilities. This paper explores the functional infrastructure, security, and communication requirements to adapt remote operations to nuclear applications. It then presents a reference architecture for remote operations of microreactors that applies best practices in cybersecurity and remote communications in the context of a digital twin remote operation system.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2023

Design and Development of a High Fidelity Cyber-Physical Testbed

In order to ensure that future critical infrastructure systems are resilient to various types of such advanced and persistent threats, it is important to develop and integrate tailored solutions that holistically address cyber-attack detection and mitigation in a timely manner such that adverse system impacts that impact a large population are avoided. Further, it is essential to create environments that allow control, protection and communication to exist within a realistic environment to analyze the effects of adverse conditions and system operating modes. This project aims to establish a high-fidelity testbed environment for modeling and simulating a single microgrid all the way up to a network of microgrids along with baseline controls, protection, and associated cyber communication. This is an important activity because accurately modeling and simulating the various power-electronics-based DERs and loads in a microgrid is critical to adequately capturing their behaviors over a wide range of off-normal conditions, as well as to evaluate the resilience of the system using the developed controls. The work presented in this report focuses on the process of building this high-fidelity testbed and the associated experimentation it enables. The model enables the creation of high-fidelity use cases and associated datasets that have been used extensively within the initiative to study resilience and support novel control development and prototyping. The work heavily leverages existing capability that is part of the high-fidelity cyber-physical system experimentation lab to create a power hardware-in-the-loop setup. The report also details the creation of an automated model building platform that can enable high-fidelity real-time models to be built without much effort allowing existing low-fidelity models to be analyzed in higher fidelity. Lastly, the report also discusses efforts center around scaling to large complex power system models to make the experimentation more effective.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
NASA NTRS1982

Development and application of the GIM code for the Cyber 203 computer

The GIM computer code for fluid dynamics research was developed. Enhancement of the computer code, implicit algorithm development, turbulence model implementation, chemistry model development, interactive input module coding and wing/body flowfield computation are described. The GIM quasi-parabolic code development was completed, and the code used to compute a number of example cases. Turbulence models, algebraic and differential equations, were added to the basic viscous code. An equilibrium reacting chemistry model and implicit finite difference scheme were also added. Development was completed on the interactive module for generating the input data for GIM. Solutions for inviscid hypersonic flow over a wing/body configuration are also presented.

Stainaker, J. F.↗
NASA NTRS2024

Real-Time Temperature Field State Observer and Digital Replica to Support Cyber-Physical Testing

Cyber-physical testing is a class of experimental methods in which a system is partitioned into physical and numerical components to study its overall behavior. Transfer systems are typically needed to capture relevant interactions by enforcing appropriate interface conditions between the physical and numerical portions. While cyber-physical testing is often performed using lumped-parameter systems, thermomechanical cyber-physical testing requires the use of thermal actuators as transfer systems to apply a thermal condition over a spatially distributed region or surface. Thus, the interactions between the numerical and physical components are of a distributed nature, i.e., a field rather than point values. In this paper, we develop and experimentally validate a state observer for temperature fields to enable thermomechanical cyber-physical testing. The state observer provides continuous estimates of temperature over a surface of the thermal actuator using only temperature measurements at discrete locations. The estimated temperature field is then leveraged to account for localized mechanical defects in the interface condition. The method consists of building a digital replica of one portion of the control plant. By imposing defects in the digital replica it is used to generate and output the response of a thermal load pattern that represents that of a physical system with mechanical defects.

Manuel Salmeron↗
DOE OSTI2020

Potential Academic Research Topics of National Security Relevance

Since even before its establishment as an independent national security laboratory in 1949, Sandia has been devoted to an overarching mission of developing advanced technologies for global peace. These technologies have taken a variety of forms, and they exist in and must address an ever-changing global security environment. An understanding of that global security environment and its possible or likely evolution is therefore critical to ensuring that Sandia can maintain its focus on strategic technology investments that will benefit the nation in the next 20- 30 years. Sandia sustains multiple Systems Analysis organizations whose responsibility includes maintaining an understanding of the global security environment as it applies across multiple mission domains. The topics below include two from Sandia's emerging threats and biodefense mission, three with relevance to Sandia's cyber defense mission, and four of particular but not exclusive relevance to Sandia's nuclear deterrence mission. All are intended to spur independent academic thought that could assist Sandia as well as the broader national security community in anticipating and adapting to a continually changing world. Sandia anticipates periodic interactions between Sandia Systems Analysis staff and SciPol Scholars Program faculty and students who choose to expand upon these topics in order to provide opportunities for feedback and communication throughout 2020-2021.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗