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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 991 records · Page 55
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Equilipy: a python package for calculating phase equilibria

The CALPHAD (CALculation of PHAse Diagram) approach (Nigel Saunders & Miodownik, 1998) provides predictions for thermodynamically stable phases in multicomponent-multiphase materials across a wide range of temperatures. Consequently, the CALPHAD calculations became an essential tool in materials and process design (Luo, 2015). Such design tasks frequently require navigating a high-dimensional space due to multiple components involved in the system. This increasing complexity demands high-throughput CALPHAD calculations, especially in the rapidly evolving field of alloy design. In response to the need, we developed Equilipy an open-source Python package designed for calculating phase equilibria of multicomponent-multiphase systems. Equilipy is specifically tailored for high-throughput CALPHAD calculations, offering parallel computations across multiple processors and nodes with the given NPT input conditions namely elemental compositions (N), pressure (P), and temperature (T). Equilipy utilizes the program structure and Gibbs energy functions from the Fortran-based program, Thermochimica (Piro et al., 2013), with incorporating a new Gibbs energy minimization algorithm. This algorithm, originally developed by Capitani and Brown in 1987 (Capitani & Brown, 1987), has been revised and implemented to enhance the stability and performance of calculations. The Fortran codes are precompiled and interfaced with Python via F2PY, ensuring high computation speed. Benchmark tests shown in Figure 1 demonstrate that Equilipy’s computation speed is comparable to those of established commercial software, TC-Python and PanPython. This result highlights its efficiency and potential applications in various scientific and industrial fields.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2025

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↗
NASA NTRS1991

A parallel-pipelined architecture for a multi carrier demodulator

Analog devices have been used for processing the information on board the satellites. Presently, digital devices are being used because they are economical and flexible as compared to their analog counterparts. Several schemes of digital transmission can be used depending on the data rate requirement of the user. An economical scheme of transmission for small earth stations uses single channel per carrier/frequency division multiple access (SCPC/FDMA) on the uplink and time division multiplexing (TDM) on the downlink. This is a typical communication service offered to low data rate users in commercial mass market. These channels usually pertain to either voice or data transmission. An efficient digital demodulator architecture is provided for a large number of law data rate users. A demodulator primarily consists of carrier, clock, and data recovery modules. This design uses principles of parallel processing, pipelining, and time sharing schemes to process large numbers of voice or data channels. It maintains the optimum throughput which is derived from the designed architecture and from the use of high speed components. The design is optimized for reduced power and area requirements. This is essential for satellite applications. The design is also flexible in processing a group of a varying number of channels. The algorithms that are used are verified by the use of a computer aided software engineering (CASE) tool called the Block Oriented System Simulator. The data flow, control circuitry, and interface of the hardware design is simulated in C language. Also, a multiprocessor approach is provided to map, model, and simulate the demodulation algorithms mainly from a speed view point. A hypercude based architecture implementation is provided for such a scheme of operation. The hypercube structure and the demodulation models on hypercubes are simulated in Ada.

Kwatra, S. C.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Interactive explorations of hierarchical segmentations

The authors report on the implementation of an interactive tool, called HSEGEXP, to interactively explore the hierarchical segmentation produced by the iterative parallel region growing (IPRG) algorithm to select the best segmentation result. This combination of the HSEGEXP tool with the IPRG algorithm amounts to a computer-assisted image segmentation system guided by human interaction. The initial application of the HSEGEXP tool is in the refinement of ground reference data based on the IPRG/HSEGEXP segmentation of the corresponding remotely sensed image data. The HSEGEXP tool is being used to help evaluate the effectiveness of an automatic 'best' segmentation process under development.

Tilton, James C.↗
NASA NTRS1985

Performance evaluation of a simulated data-flow computer with low-resolution actors

Basic problems related to the exploitation of parallelism in a program include sequencing of the instructions and communication of the data. It is pointed out that the data-flow approach offers an elegant solution to the sequencing problem, since all data dependencies are automatically handled and only instructions with ready input sets are activated. It is shown that a change in the level of subcomputations (actors) affects communications costs. The concept of variable resolution is discussed, and the testbed environment is examined. Attention is given to the architecture of the processing elements, the communication network, and the simulators. A description of the analytical model is also provided. Simulation and results are discussed, taking into account test programs and allocation, the variation of the number of processing elements, the variation of the resolution in directed acyclic graphs, performance in processing loops, and array handling.

Gaudiot, J. L.↗
DOE OSTI2025

Determining Levels of Detail for Simulators of Parallel and Distributed Computing Systems via Automated Calibration

There are two sources of inaccuracy when simulating parallel and distributed computing systems: (i) a simulator implemented at an insufficient level of detail; and (ii) incorrectly calibrated simulation parameter values. Increasing the simulator’s level of detail can improve accuracy, but at the cost of higher space, time, and/or software complexity. Furthermore, evaluating the intrinsic accuracy of a simulator requires that its parameters be well-calibrated. Making decisions regarding the level of detail is thus challenging. We propose a methodology for instantiating the simulation calibration process and a framework for automating this process, which makes it possible to pick appropriate levels of detail for any simulator. We demonstrate the usefulness of our approach via two case studies for two different domains.

McDonald, Jessie [University of Hawaii at Manoa, H↗
NASA NTRS1975

Skylab M518 multipurpose furnace convection analysis

An analysis was performed of the convection which existed on ground tests and during skylab processing of two experiments: vapor growth of IV-VI compounds growth of spherical crystals. A parallel analysis was also performed on Skylab experiment indium antimonide crystals because indium antimonide (InSb) was used and a free surface existed in the tellurium-doped Skylab III sample. In addition, brief analyses were also performed of the microsegregation in germanium experiment because the Skylab crystals indicated turbulent convection effects. Simple dimensional analysis calculations and a more accurate, but complex, convection computer model, were used in the analysis.

Bourgeois, S. V.↗
NASA NTRS2001

Laser Powered Launch Vehicle Performance Analyses

The purpose of this study is to establish the technical ground for modeling the physics of laser powered pulse detonation phenomenon. Laser powered propulsion systems involve complex fluid dynamics, thermodynamics and radiative transfer processes. Successful predictions of the performance of laser powered launch vehicle concepts depend on the sophisticate models that reflects the underlying flow physics including the laser ray tracing the focusing, inverse Bremsstrahlung (IB) effects, finite-rate air chemistry, thermal non-equilibrium, plasma radiation and detonation wave propagation, etc. The proposed work will extend the base-line numerical model to an efficient design analysis tool. The proposed model is suitable for 3-D analysis using parallel computing methods.

Chen, Yen-Sen↗
NASA NTRS2016

An Integrated Circuit for Radio Astronomy Correlators Supporting Large Arrays of Antennas

Radio telescopes that employ arrays of many antennas are in operation, and ever larger ones are being designed and proposed. Signals from the antennas are combined by cross-correlation. While the cost of most components of the telescope is proportional to the number of antennas N, the cost and power consumption of cross-correlationare proportional to N2 and dominate at sufficiently large N. Here we report the design of an integrated circuit (IC) that performs digital cross-correlations for arbitrarily many antennas in a power-efficient way. It uses an intrinsically low-power architecture in which the movement of data between devices is minimized. In a large system, each IC performs correlations for all pairs of antennas but for a portion of the telescope's bandwidth (the so-called "FX" structure). In our design, the correlations are performed in an array of 4096 complex multiply-accumulate (CMAC) units. This is sufficient to perform all correlations in parallel for 64 signals (N=32 antennas with 2 opposite-polarization signals per antenna). When N is larger, the input data are buffered in an on-chipmemory and the CMACs are re-used as many times as needed to compute all correlations. The design has been synthesized and simulated so as to obtain accurate estimates of the IC's size and power consumption. It isintended for fabrication in a 32 nm silicon-on-insulator process, where it will require less than 12mm2 of silicon area and achieve an energy efficiency of 1.76 to 3.3 pJ per CMAC operation, depending on the number of antennas. Operation has been analyzed in detail up to N = 4096. The system-level energy efficiency, including board-levelI/O, power supplies, and controls, is expected to be 5 to 7 pJ per CMAC operation. Existing correlators for the JVLA (N = 32) and ALMA (N = 64) telescopes achieve about 5000 pJ and 1000 pJ respectively usingapplication-specific ICs in older technologies. To our knowledge, the largest-N existing correlator is LEDA atN = 256; it uses GPUs built in 28 nm technology and achieves about 1000 pJ. Correlators being designed for the SKA telescopes (N = 128 and N = 512) using FPGAs in 16nm technology are predicted to achieve about 100 pJ.

ASIC↗
NASA NTRS1988

Efficient parallel architecture for highly coupled real-time linear system applications

A systematic procedure is developed for exploiting the parallel constructs of computation in a highly coupled, linear system application. An overall top-down design approach is adopted. Differential equations governing the application under consideration are partitioned into subtasks on the basis of a data flow analysis. The interconnected task units constitute a task graph which has to be computed in every update interval. Multiprocessing concepts utilizing parallel integration algorithms are then applied for efficient task graph execution. A simple scheduling routine is developed to handle task allocation while in the multiprocessor mode. Results of simulation and scheduling are compared on the basis of standard performance indices. Processor timing diagrams are developed on the basis of program output accruing to an optimal set of processors. Basic architectural attributes for implementing the system are discussed together with suggestions for processing element design. Emphasis is placed on flexible architectures capable of accommodating widely varying application specifics.

Carroll, Chester C.↗
NASA NTRS1998

Current Status on the use of Parallel Computing in Turbulent Reacting Flow Computations Involving Sprays, Monte Carlo PDF and Unstructured Grids

The state of the art in multidimensional combustor modeling as evidenced by the level of sophistication employed in terms of modeling and numerical accuracy considerations, is also dictated by the available computer memory and turnaround times afforded by present-day computers. With the aim of advancing the current multi-dimensional computational tools used in the design of advanced technology combustors, a solution procedure is developed that combines the novelty of the coupled CFD/spray/scalar Monte Carlo PDF (Probability Density Function) computations on unstructured grids with the ability to run on parallel architectures. In this approach, the mean gas-phase velocity and turbulence fields are determined from a standard turbulence model, the joint composition of species and enthalpy from the solution of a modeled PDF transport equation, and a Lagrangian-based dilute spray model is used for the liquid-phase representation. The gas-turbine combustor flows are often characterized by a complex interaction between various physical processes associated with the interaction between the liquid and gas phases, droplet vaporization, turbulent mixing, heat release associated with chemical kinetics, radiative heat transfer associated with highly absorbing and radiating species, among others. The rate controlling processes often interact with each other at various disparate time 1 and length scales. In particular, turbulence plays an important role in determining the rates of mass and heat transfer, chemical reactions, and liquid phase evaporation in many practical combustion devices.

Raju, M. S.↗
NASA NTRS1995

Algorithms for parallel flow solvers on message passing architectures

The purpose of this project has been to identify and test suitable technologies for implementation of fluid flow solvers -- possibly coupled with structures and heat equation solvers -- on MIMD parallel computers. In the course of this investigation much attention has been paid to efficient domain decomposition strategies for ADI-type algorithms. Multi-partitioning derives its efficiency from the assignment of several blocks of grid points to each processor in the parallel computer. A coarse-grain parallelism is obtained, and a near-perfect load balance results. In uni-partitioning every processor receives responsibility for exactly one block of grid points instead of several. This necessitates fine-grain pipelined program execution in order to obtain a reasonable load balance. Although fine-grain parallelism is less desirable on many systems, especially high-latency networks of workstations, uni-partition methods are still in wide use in production codes for flow problems. Consequently, it remains important to achieve good efficiency with this technique that has essentially been superseded by multi-partitioning for parallel ADI-type algorithms. Another reason for the concentration on improving the performance of pipeline methods is their applicability in other types of flow solver kernels with stronger implied data dependence. Analytical expressions can be derived for the size of the dynamic load imbalance incurred in traditional pipelines. From these it can be determined what is the optimal first-processor retardation that leads to the shortest total completion time for the pipeline process. Theoretical predictions of pipeline performance with and without optimization match experimental observations on the iPSC/860 very well. Analysis of pipeline performance also highlights the effect of uncareful grid partitioning in flow solvers that employ pipeline algorithms. If grid blocks at boundaries are not at least as large in the wall-normal direction as those immediately adjacent to them, then the first processor in the pipeline will receive a computational load that is less than that of subsequent processors, magnifying the pipeline slowdown effect. Extra compensation is needed for grid boundary effects, even if all grid blocks are equally sized.

Vanderwijngaart, Rob F.↗
NASA NTRS1982

Digital system for structural dynamics simulation

State-of-the-art digital hardware and software for the simulation of complex structural dynamic interactions, such as those which occur in rotating structures (engine systems). System were incorporated in a designed to use an array of processors in which the computation for each physical subelement or functional subsystem would be assigned to a single specific processor in the simulator. These node processors are microprogrammed bit-slice microcomputers which function autonomously and can communicate with each other and a central control minicomputer over parallel digital lines. Inter-processor nearest neighbor communications busses pass the constants which represent physical constraints and boundary conditions. The node processors are connected to the six nearest neighbor node processors to simulate the actual physical interface of real substructures. Computer generated finite element mesh and force models can be developed with the aid of the central control minicomputer. The control computer also oversees the animation of a graphics display system, disk-based mass storage along with the individual processing elements.

Krauter, A. I.↗
NASA NTRS1986

Automated matching of pairs of SIR-B images for elevation mapping

During the SIR-B mission in October 1984, a significant number of overlapping synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images of various ground areas was collected. This has offered the first opportunity to perform stereo analyses on images from space that cover large ground areas to determine elevation information. This paper presents the preliminary results of an investigation to obtain elevation data from stereo pairs of SIR-B images. First, the accuracy with which elevation information can be derived from SIR-B image pairs is evaluated theoretically. It is shown that elevation accuracy is a function of the slant range resolution, the incidence angles with which the stereo pair is obtained, the accuracies in spacecraft state estimation, and determination of corresponding pixels in the stereo pair. Next, a hierarchical method is developed to match the corresponding pixels. This method involves iterative removal of local distortions and correlations of pairs of local neighborhoods in the two images. Since it is necessary to perform the matching at every pixel in the image, it is very computationally intensive. Therefore, it has been implemented on the Massively Parallel Processor (MPP) at the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). The MPP's speed permits two iterations of this technique to operate on a pair of 512 x 512 images within 7 s. Results of applying this algorithm of SIR-B images of Mount Shasta, CA, are shown. The matching algorithm performs well in regions of the image with significant features. An approximate elevation image derived from the matching process corresponds to published topographic map data, except for certain obvious discontinuities.

Ramapriyan, H. K.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Additive Manufacturing Model-Based Process Metrics: Reduced Order Modeling of the Laser Powder Bed Fusion Process

The multi-scale and complex process of printing additively manufactured (AM) parts can have unexpected, but predictable, build conditions that result in material microstructure variability. In this work, we describe a fully parallel reduced order modeling approach that has been developed to evaluate the evolution of AM processes, termed the AM moment measure method. This method couples the known sequence of the AM process with a physically informed nearest neighbors’ calculation to map the conditions of a part-scale build. The result is a map of the build that is derived directly from build files or in-situ process monitoring sensors. The methodology and terminology of the approach will be described, and computed build maps will be calculated and compared for various laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) builds of Ti-6Al-4V. Such comparative results develop understanding of how the sequential process actions can affect the LPBF-AM build quality and microstructure variability.

Laser Powder Bed Fusion↗
NASA NTRS1985

On evaluating parallel computer systems

A workshop was held in an attempt to program real problems on the MIT Static Data Flow Machine. Most of the architecture of the machine was specified but some parts were incomplete. The main purpose for the workshop was to explore principles for the evaluation of computer systems employing new architectures. Principles explored were: (1) evaluation must be an integral, ongoing part of a project to develop a computer of radically new architecture; (2) the evaluation should seek to measure the usability of the system as well as its performance; (3) users from the application domains must be an integral part of the evaluation process; and (4) evaluation results should be fed back into the design process. It is concluded that the general organizational principles are achievable in practice from this workshop.

Adams, George B., III↗
NASA NTRS1972

Some new techniques for processing remotely obtained images by self-generated spectral masks.

An extension of a new technique that makes possible parallel, simultaneous processing of remotely obtained images is presented. The technique holds out promise for automatic onboard classification of data. The central feature involves the generation of binary masks, directly from the image, based on object reflectance data, that group objects into equivalence classes. These masks, called equivalence class masks, can be used in various logical combinations to isolate classes of objects with a priori known reflectance or radiance signatures. Experimental verification of the technique is furnished for simple scenes. A computational scheme, based on a sequence of integrated irradiance measurements on the image, that makes it possible to identify objects within an equivalence class is suggested.

Stark, H.↗
NASA NTRS1988

DFT algorithms for bit-serial GaAs array processor architectures

Systems and Processes Engineering Corporation (SPEC) has developed an innovative array processor architecture for computing Fourier transforms and other commonly used signal processing algorithms. This architecture is designed to extract the highest possible array performance from state-of-the-art GaAs technology. SPEC's architectural design includes a high performance RISC processor implemented in GaAs, along with a Floating Point Coprocessor and a unique Array Communications Coprocessor, also implemented in GaAs technology. Together, these data processors represent the latest in technology, both from an architectural and implementation viewpoint. SPEC has examined numerous algorithms and parallel processing architectures to determine the optimum array processor architecture. SPEC has developed an array processor architecture with integral communications ability to provide maximum node connectivity. The Array Communications Coprocessor embeds communications operations directly in the core of the processor architecture. A Floating Point Coprocessor architecture has been defined that utilizes Bit-Serial arithmetic units, operating at very high frequency, to perform floating point operations. These Bit-Serial devices reduce the device integration level and complexity to a level compatible with state-of-the-art GaAs device technology.

Mcmillan, Gary B.↗