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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 1,009 records · Page 56

Automatic Building Energy Model Creation (AutoBEM) for Urban-Scale Energy Modeling and Assessment of Value Propositions for Electric Utilities

Residential and commercial buildings in the United States consume 73% of all electricity generated. Demand charges (i.e. “peak usage”) can account for 30-70% of a utility bill and continue to grow even as energy prices are decreasing, due largely in part to adoption of intermittent renewables and less efficient, more costly generation assets which must be brought online during peak demand. In order to quantitatively assess business value and either enhance existing or propose new programs for utilities, the ability to detect, generate, and simulate a building energy model has been applied to a 1,385 km2 utility district involving over 160,000 buildings in a smart grid backed by a fiber optic network. The organization operating the electrical distribution and fiber optic networks has prioritized and guided the creation of a virtual utility in order to assess a prioritized list of potential revenue streams and determine the most cost-effective programs for their organization and their rate-payers. We provide an overview of the technical capabilities developed for generally-applicable urban-scale building energy modeling to any geographical area and the utility-defined use cases being assessed.

New, Joshua↗

Toward Accurate Modeling of Galaxy Clustering on Small Scales: Halo Model Extensions and Lingering Tension

This paper represents an effort to provide robust constraints on the galaxy–halo connection and simultaneously test the Planck ΛCDM cosmology using a fully numerical model of small-scale galaxy clustering. We explore two extensions to the standard Halo Occupation Distribution model: assembly bias, whereby halo occupation depends on both halo mass and the larger environment, and velocity bias, whereby galaxy velocities do not perfectly trace the velocity of the dark matter within the halo. Moreover, we incorporate halo mass corrections to account for the impact of baryonic physics on the halo population. We identify an optimal set of clustering measurements to constrain this "decorated" HOD model for both low- and high-luminosity galaxies in SDSS DR7. We find that, for low-luminosity galaxies, a model with both assembly bias and velocity bias provides the best fit to the clustering measurements, with no tension remaining in the fit. In this model, we find evidence for both central and satellite galaxy assembly bias at the 99% and 95% confidence levels, respectively. In addition, we find evidence for satellite galaxy velocity bias at the 99.9% confidence level. For high-luminosity galaxies, we find no evidence for either assembly bias or velocity bias, but our model exhibits significant tension with SDSS measurements. We find that all of these conclusions still stand when we include the effects of baryonic physics on the halo mass function, suggesting that the tension we find for high-luminosity galaxies may be due to a problem with our assumed cosmological model.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Aerodynamic loads measurements on externally blown flap STOL models

Small-scale-model data have shown large static loads on the flap system behind the engines. The large-scale-model tests confirmed the magnitude of these loads and indicated that the relative loading of each flap element depends on the engine-wing-flap geometry. Flap response measurements indicated that the unsteady pressure loading excited the natural vibration modes of the flap system on this model. Since this was a boilerplate model, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the possibility of large vibration loads must be considered for a flight-weight structure. The similarity of the unsteady pressure and flap response spectra for the wind-off and wind-on cases indicated that it may be possible to realistically test flight-weight flap structures on a static test stand rather than endure the extra costs and scheduling problems associated with large-scale wind-tunnel tests. There is a potential flap-temperature problem which if not resolved might preclude the use of materials such as aluminum and the composites in the flap structure.

Greene, G. C.↗

Molecular simulation of liquid–vapor coexistence for NaCl: Full-charge vs scaled-charge interaction models

Scaled-charge models have been recently introduced for molecular simulations of electrolyte solutions and molten salts to attempt to implicitly represent polarizability. Although these models have been found to accurately predict electrolyte solution dynamic properties, they have not been tested for coexistence properties, such as the vapor pressure of the melt. In this work, we evaluate the vapor pressure of a scaled-charge sodium chloride (NaCl) force field and compare the results against experiments and a non-polarizable full-charge force field. The scaled-charge force field predicts a higher vapor pressure than found in experiments, due to its overprediction of the liquid-phase chemical potential. Reanalyzing the trajectories generated from the scaled-charge model with full charges improves the estimation of the liquid-phase chemical potential but not the vapor pressure.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

merlin , an improved framework for the reconstruction of high-quality genome-scale metabolic models

Abstract Genome-scale metabolic models have been recognised as useful tools for better understanding living organisms’ metabolism. merlin (https://www.merlin-sysbio.org/) is an open-source and user-friendly resource that hastens the models’ reconstruction process, conjugating manual and automatic procedures, while leveraging the user's expertise with a curation-oriented graphical interface. An updated and redesigned version of merlin is herein presented. Since 2015, several features have been implemented in merlin, along with deep changes in the software architecture, operational flow, and graphical interface. The current version (4.0) includes the implementation of novel algorithms and third-party tools for genome functional annotation, draft assembly, model refinement, and curation. Such updates increased the user base, resulting in multiple published works, including genome metabolic (re-)annotations and model reconstructions of multiple (lower and higher) eukaryotes and prokaryotes. merlin version 4.0 is the only tool able to perform template based and de novo draft reconstructions, while achieving competitive performance compared to state-of-the art tools both for well and less-studied organisms.

Capela, João (ORCID:0000000212352922)↗

Representing farmer irrigated crop area adaptation in a large-scale hydrological model

Abstract. Large-scale hydrological models (LHMs) are commonly used for regional and global assessment of future water shortage outcomes under climate and socioeconomic scenarios. The irrigation of croplands, which accounts for the lion's share of human water consumption, is critical in understanding these water shortage trajectories. Despite irrigation's defining role, LHM frameworks typically impose trajectories of land use that underlie irrigation demand, neglecting potential dynamic feedbacks in the form of human instigation of and subsequent adaptation to water shortages via irrigated crop area changes. We extend an LHM, MOSART-WM, with adaptive farmer agents, applying the model to the continental United States to explore water shortage outcomes that emerge from the interplay between hydrologic-driven surface water availability, reservoir management, and farmer irrigated crop area adaptation. The extended modeling framework is used to conduct a hypothetical computational experiment comparing differences between a model run with and without the incorporation of adaptive farmer agents. These comparative simulations reveal that accounting for farmer adaptation via irrigated crop area changes substantially alters modeled water shortage outcomes, with US-wide annual water shortages being reduced by as much as 42 % when comparing adaptive and non-adaptive versions of the model forced with US climatology from the period 1950–2009.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Design and fabrication of the NASA HL-20 full scale research model

A full-scale engineering model of the HL-20 Personnel Launch System (PLS) was constructed for systems and human factors evaluation. Construction techniques were developed to enable the vehicle to be constructed with a minimum of time and cost. The design and construction of the vehicle are described.

Driver, K. Dean↗

Data for KETCHUP: Parameterizing of Large-Scale Kinetic Models Using Multiple Datasets with Different Reference States

Repository for Kinetic Estimation Tool Capturing Heterogeneous Datasets Using Pyomo (KETCHUP), a flexible parameter estimation tool that leverages a primal-dual interior-point algorithm to solve a nonlinear programming (NLP) problem that identifies a set of parameters capable of recapitulating the steady-state fluxes and concentrations in wild-type and perturbed metabolic networks. KETCHUP can use K-FIT [2] input files. Example K-FIT input files are located in the K-FIT repository at https://github.com/maranasgroup/K-FIT.

Metabolomics↗

Mesoscale informed parameter estimation through machine learning: A case-study in fracture modeling

Scale bridging is a critical need in computational sciences, where the modeling community has developed accurate physics models from first principles, of processes at lower length and time scales that influence the behavior at the higher scales of interest. However, it is not computationally feasible to incorporate all of the lower length scale physics directly into upscaled models. This is an area where machine learning has shown promise in building emulators of the lower length scale models, which incur a mere fraction of the computational cost of the original higher fidelity models. We demonstrate the use of machine learning using an example in materials science estimating continuum scale parameters by emulating, with uncertainties, complicated mesoscale physics. Additionally, we describe a new framework to emulate the fine scale physics, especially in the presence of microstructures, using machine learning, and showcase its usefulness by providing an example from modeling fracture propagation. Our approach can be thought of as a data-driven dimension reduction technique that yields probabilistic emulators. Our results show well-calibrated predictions for the quantities of interests in a low-strain simulation of fracture propagation at the mesoscale level. Furthermore, on average, we achieve ~10% relative errors on time-varying quantities like total damage and maximum stresses. Successfully replicating mesoscale scale physics within the continuum models is a crucial step towards predictive capability in multi-scale problems.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

A non-isotropic multiple-scale turbulence model

A newly developed non-isotropic multiple scale turbulence model (MS/ASM) is described for complex flow calculations. This model focuses on the direct modeling of Reynolds stresses and utilizes split-spectrum concepts for modeling multiple scale effects in turbulence. Validation studies on free shear flows, rotating flows and recirculating flows show that the current model perform significantly better than the single scale k-epsilon model. The present model is relatively inexpensive in terms of CPU time which makes it suitable for broad engineering flow applications.

Chen, C. P.↗

Large-Scale Materials Modeling at Quantum Accuracy: Ab Initio Simulations of Quasicrystals and Interacting Extended Defects in Metallic Alloys

Ab initio electronic-structure has remained dichotomous between achievable accuracy and length-scale. Quantum many-body (QMB) methods realize quantum accuracy but fail to scale. Density functional theory (DFT) scales favorably but remains far from quantum accuracy. We present a framework that breaks this dichotomy by use of three interconnected modules: (i) invDFT: a methodological advance in inverse DFT linking QMB methods to DFT; (ii) MLXC: a machine-learned density functional trained with invDFT data, commensurate with quantum accuracy; (iii) DFT-FE-MLXC: an adaptive higher-order spectral finite-element (FE) based DFT implementation that integrates MLXC with efficient solver strategies and HPC innovations in FE-specific dense linear algebra, mixed-precision algorithms, and asynchronous compute-communication. Furthermore, we demonstrate a paradigm shift in DFT that not only provides an accuracy commensurate with QMB methods in ground-state energies, but also attains an unprecedented performance of 659.7 PFLOPS (43.1% peak FP64 performance) on 619,124 electrons using 8,000 GPU nodes of Frontier supercomputer.

density functional theory↗

Multiple-Scale Turbulence Model

Turbulence in complex, recirculating flows not in spectral equilibrium. Report discusses mathematical fluid-flow model that includes multiple turbulence scales. Model developed for numerical prediction of confined, recirculating flows. Based on multiple-timescale concepts introduced in previous study, model takes into account turbulence in recirculating flow not in spectral equilibrium and different energy-transfer rates for eddies of different spatial scales treated separately.

Chen, C.↗

Multi-scale dynamic modeling and validation of radial flow fixed bed contactors for post-combustion CO 2 capture using bench scale and pilot plant data

Here, in this work, a multi-scale model of a radial flow fixed bed contactor packed with a carbon sorbent is developed and validated with laboratory-scale and pilot plant scale dynamic data. For the lab scale system, the model results were compared with low, medium and high gas and sweep flowrates, yielding root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.80, 0.63, 0.96 CO 2 mol%, respectively, for the outlet CO 2 concentration profile considering the entire A-D cycle. For the bed outer temperature profile, maximum RMSE was found to be 5.5 °C considering all flowrates and entire A-D cycles. An experimental campaign was developed and applied to a pilot plant at Technology Center Mongstad (TCM), Norway. Approaches were developed for pre-processing of data including consideration of the effect of gas mixing, measurement delay, and determination of cyclic steady-state conditions. Considering profiles during A-D cycles for all test runs, it was found that the maximum RMSE for pressure drop, temperature for the outer section of the bed, temperature for the middle section of the bed, and outlet CO 2 concentration profile remained less than 1.5 mbar, 3.5 °C, 2.8 °C, and 1.3 CO 2 mol%, respectively. The validated model was used to perform sensitivity studies on several key design operating variables for the adsorption-desorption cycle. It was found that the flow rate and concentration of flue gas have dominant nonlinear effects on the breakthrough time while the desorption time was strongly affected by the sweep gas flowrate for the specific sorbent being evaluated in this study.

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS↗

BioRT-Flux-PIHM v1.0: a biogeochemical reactive transport model at the watershed scale

Watersheds are the fundamental Earth surface functioning units that connect the land to aquatic systems. Many watershed-scale models represent hydrological processes but not biogeochemical reactive transport processes. This has limited our capability to understand and predict solute export, water chemistry and quality, and Earth system response to changing climate and anthropogenic conditions. Here we present a recently developed BioRT-Flux-PIHM (BioRT hereafter) v1.0, a watershed-scale biogeochemical reactive transport model. The model augments the previously developed RT-Flux-PIHM that integrates land-surface interactions, surface hydrology, and abiotic geochemical reactions. It enables the simulation of (1) shallow and deep-water partitioning to represent surface runoff, shallow soil water, and deeper groundwater and of (2) biotic processes including plant uptake, soil respiration, and nutrient transformation. The reactive transport part of the code has been verified against the widely used reactive transport code CrunchTope. BioRT-Flux-PIHM v1.0 has recently been applied in multiple watersheds under diverse climate, vegetation, and geological conditions. This paper briefly introduces the governing equations and model structure with a focus on new aspects of the model. It also showcases one hydrology example that simulates shallow and deep-water interactions and two biogeochemical examples relevant to nitrate and dissolved organic carbon (DOC). These examples are illustrated in two simulation modes of complexity. One is the spatially lumped mode (i.e., two land cells connected by one river segment) that focuses on processes and average behavior of a watershed. Another is the spatially distributed mode (i.e., hundreds of cells) that includes details of topography, land cover, and soil properties. Whereas the spatially lumped mode represents averaged properties and processes and temporal variations, the spatially distributed mode can be used to understand the impacts of spatial structure and identify hot spots of biogeochemical reactions. The model can be used to mechanistically understand coupled hydrological and biogeochemical processes under gradients of climate, vegetation, geology, and land use conditions.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Model and full-scale large transport airframe noise

Results are presented for an airframe noise experiment intended to obtain airframe noise data of a 0.03-scale model of a large transport aircraft in a flow facility for comparison with similar airframe noise data from full-scale flyover tests of the same aircraft. The test model simulated the landing and cruise configuration, including individual flap systems. Considerable noise is found to be associated with the extension of the model's leading edge flap system and to be reduced across the noise spectra when the gaps between the leading-edge flaps and the leading edge of the wing are sealed. Amplitude and frequency scaling relationships are developed which correlate respective data for a variety of aircraft configurations. Normalized model landing gear noise failed to simulate full-scale data.

Shearin, J. G.↗

Bridging Scales to Model Reactive Diffusive Transport in Porous Media

Published by ECS. Two novel scale-bridging algorithms to model reaction-diffusion transport in porous media are presented. The algorithms are based on direct numerical simulations and couple the information of a micro-scale model, which accounts for the large field of view provided by micro X-ray computed tomography (X-ray CT), and a nano-scale model, which locally resolves transport in the fine structure extracted from nano X-ray CT. The micro-scale model is discretized in the through-plane direction into a 1D grid, where effective properties and internal boundaries are determined based on the results from the nano-scale model. The validated algorithms are used to examine transport of oxygen in precious group metal-free electrodes considering both zero- and first-order kinetics. Unlike conventional methods, the results show that the effective diffusivity is not a passive property but increases in regions where the reaction-rate coefficient is large. The proposed algorithms account for the multiscale coupling of reaction-diffusion transport and material microstructure, thus improving the predictions compared to conventional methods.

42 ENGINEERING↗

A Method for Estimating Noise from Full-Scale Distributed Exhaust Nozzles

A method to estimate the full-scale noise suppression from a scale model distributed exhaust nozzle (DEN) is presented. For a conventional scale model exhaust nozzle, Strouhal number scaling using a scale factor related to the nozzle exit area is typically applied that shifts model scale frequency in proportion to the geometric scale factor. However, model scale DEN designs have two inherent length scales. One is associated with the mini-nozzles, whose size do not change in going from model scale to full scale. The other is associated with the overall nozzle exit area which is much smaller than full size. Consequently, lower frequency energy that is generated by the coalesced jet plume should scale to lower frequency, but higher frequency energy generated by individual mini-jets does not shift frequency. In addition, jet-jet acoustic shielding by the array of mini-nozzles is a significant noise reduction effect that may change with DEN model size. A technique has been developed to scale laboratory model spectral data based on the premise that high and low frequency content must be treated differently during the scaling process. The model-scale distributed exhaust spectra are divided into low and high frequency regions that are then adjusted to full scale separately based on different physics-based scaling laws. The regions are then recombined to create an estimate of the full-scale acoustic spectra. These spectra can then be converted to perceived noise levels (PNL). The paper presents the details of this methodology and provides an example of the estimated noise suppression by a distributed exhaust nozzle compared to a round conic nozzle.

Kinzie, Kevin W.↗