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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 109 records · Page 6

Adaptive function allocation reduces performance costs of static automation

Adaptive automation offers the option of flexible function allocation between the pilot and on-board computer systems. One of the important claims for the superiority of adaptive over static automation is that such systems do not suffer from some of the drawbacks associated with conventional function allocation. Several experiments designed to test this claim are reported in this article. The efficacy of adaptive function allocation was examined using a laboratory flight-simulation task involving multiple functions of tracking, fuel-management, and systems monitoring. The results show that monitoring inefficiency represents one of the performance costs of static automation. Adaptive function allocation can reduce the performance cost associated with long-term static automation.

Parasuraman, Raja↗

Control Law-Control Allocation Interaction: F/A-18 PA Simulation Test - Bed

This report documents the first stage of research into Control Law - Control Allocation Interactions. A three-year research effort was originally proposed: 1. Create a desktop flight simulation environment under which experiments related to the open questions may be conducted. 2. Conduct research to determine which aspects of control allocation have impact upon control law design that merits further research. 3. Conduct research into those aspects of control allocation identified above, and their impacts upon control law design. Simulation code was written utilizing the F/A-18 airframe in the power approach (PA) configuration. A dynamic inversion control law was implemented and used to drive a state-of-the-art control allocation subroutine.

Durham, Wayne↗

Real-Time Adaptive Control Allocation Applied to a High Performance Aircraft

Abstract This paper presents the development and application of one approach to the control of aircraft with large numbers of control effectors. This approach, referred to as real-time adaptive control allocation, combines a nonlinear method for control allocation with actuator failure detection and isolation. The control allocator maps moment (or angular acceleration) commands into physical control effector commands as functions of individual control effectiveness and availability. The actuator failure detection and isolation algorithm is a model-based approach that uses models of the actuators to predict actuator behavior and an adaptive decision threshold to achieve acceptable false alarm/missed detection rates. This integrated approach provides control reconfiguration when an aircraft is subjected to actuator failure, thereby improving maneuverability and survivability of the degraded aircraft. This method is demonstrated on a next generation military aircraft Lockheed-Martin Innovative Control Effector) simulation that has been modified to include a novel nonlinear fluid flow control control effector based on passive porosity. Desktop and real-time piloted simulation results demonstrate the performance of this integrated adaptive control allocation approach.

Davidson, John B.↗

Motion-Based Piloted Simulation Evaluation of a Control Allocation Technique to Recover from Pilot Induced Oscillations

This paper describes the maturation of a control allocation technique designed to assist pilots in the recovery from pilot induced oscillations (PIOs). The Control Allocation technique to recover from Pilot Induced Oscillations (CAPIO) is designed to enable next generation high efficiency aircraft designs. Energy efficient next generation aircraft require feedback control strategies that will enable lowering the actuator rate limit requirements for optimal airframe design. One of the common issues flying with actuator rate limits is PIOs caused by the phase lag between the pilot inputs and control surface response. CAPIO utilizes real-time optimization for control allocation to eliminate phase lag in the system caused by control surface rate limiting. System impacts of the control allocator were assessed through a piloted simulation evaluation of a non-linear aircraft simulation in the NASA Ames Vertical Motion Simulator. Results indicate that CAPIO helps reduce oscillatory behavior, including the severity and duration of PIOs, introduced by control surface rate limiting.

pilot induced oscillation↗

An Innovative Control Allocation Scheme to Address Reaction Thruster Interactions on a 3U CubeSat

A wealth of literature exists on control allocation algorithms for over-actuated air vehicles, launch vehicles, and spacecraft's. Most of these algorithms focus primarily on minimizing some objective function such as command tracking error and/or control effector usage. Linear allocators (pseudo inverses) are usually the conventional choice due to their simplicity and the ability to achieve a significant portion of the theoretical moment/impulse space. Generally, it is assumed that there exists minimal interaction effects between control effectors. In fact, very few studies address the problem of control effector interactions in the context of control allocation, especially for small spacecraft's with a reaction control system (RCS). This paper presents a CubeSat RCS design with a four thruster tetrahedral layout such that when two or more thrusters re, the resultant impulse differs noticeably compared to the sum of the contributions from individual thruster rings. This undesirable effect is caused by the design of the propellant tank and regulator. To mitigate this issue, an innovative modified pseudo inverse (MPI) control allocation algorithm was developed that adjusts the pseudo inverse solution based on test data. The algorithm is iteration-free and superior to the standard pseudo inverse in minimizing the command tracking error.

Pei, Jing↗

Control Effector Unsaturation Modification to the Cascading Generalized Inverse Control Allocation Algorithm

Control allocation has sufficiently progressed such that it is used in front-line fighter aircraft such as the F-18Superhornet and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Published literature shows the F-35 utilizes Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion in conjunction with an Effector Blender that incorporates the Cascading Generalized Inverse control allocation algorithm. While the Cascading Generalized Inverse algorithm is one of the premier generalized inverse methods, it does suffer from three deficiencies. In particular, it suffers from an inability to achieve some desired outcomes, it intermittently provides non-optimal solutions and generally fails to preserve moment direction near maximal achievable moments. An effector unsaturation method based on a Scalar Difference Quadratic was first introduced and implemented on the iterative Prediction Method control allocation algorithm which was shown to consistently achieve optimal (weighted) control allocation solutions throughout the entire Attainable Moment Set while preserving desired moment direction. In this paper, the shortcomings of the Cascading Generalized Inverse algorithm are addressed by augmenting the baseline algorithm with Scalar Difference Quadratic unsaturation identification and location at each iteration. Numerical case studies demonstrate that the Modified Cascading Generalized Inverse algorithm resolves the aforementioned deficiencies.

Michael J Acheson↗

System and method for memory allocation in a multiclass memory system

A system for memory allocation in a multiclass memory system includes a processor coupleable to a plurality of memories sharing a unified memory address space, and a library store to store a library of software functions. The processor identifies a type of a data structure in response to a memory allocation function call to the library for allocating memory to the data structure. Using the library, the processor allocates portions of the data structure among multiple memories of the multiclass memory system based on the type of the data structure.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Hybrid prioritized resource allocation in thermally-or power-constrained computing devices

Various embodiments comprise prioritizing frequency allocations in thermally- or power-constrained computing devices. Computer elements may be assigned ‘weights’ based on their priorities. The computer elements with higher weights may receive higher frequency allocations to assure they receive priority in processing more quickly. The computer elements with lower weights may receive lower frequency allocations and suffer a slowdown in their processing. Elements with the same weight may be grouped together for the purpose of frequency allocation.

Al-Rawi, Asma↗

Co-Operative Resource Allocation: Building an Open Cloud Market Using Shared Infrastructure

In this paper we present DRIVE, a distributed service-based system designed to facilitate an open economic market for federating Cloud providers. Additionally, to address the challenges associated with market ownership and operation we propose the use of a cooperative (co-op) infrastructure in which the services that make up DRIVE are hosted across participants' resources. To prevent malicious behavior we use cryptographic, secure and privacy preserving allocation protocols as a means of establishing trust in the allocation infrastructure. Finally, we investigate through simulation the effect of different strategies, pricing functions, and penalty models on allocation performance and revenue, and show that the overhead of running DRIVE's services on commodity infrastructure is modest.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Beyond carbon flux partitioning: Carbon allocation and nonstructural carbon dynamics inferred from continuous fluxes

Carbon (C) allocation and nonstructural carbon (NSC) dynamics play essential roles in plant growth and survival under stress and disturbance. However, quantitative understanding of these processes remains limited. Here, in this work, we propose a framework where we connect commonly measured carbon cycle components (eddy covariance fluxes of canopy CO 2 exchange, soil CO 2 efflux, and allometry-based biomass and net primary production) by a simple mass balance model to derive ecosystem-level NSC dynamics (NSC i ), C translocation (dC i ), and the biomass production efficiency (BPE i ) in above- and belowground plant (i = agp and bgp) compartments. We applied this framework to two long-term monitored loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) plantations of different ages in North Carolina and characterized the variations of NSC and allocation in years under normal and drought conditions. The results indicated that the young stand did not have net NSC flux at the annual scale, whereas the mature stand stored a near-constant proportion of new assimilates as NSC every year under normal conditions, which was comparable in magnitude to new structural growth. Roots consumed NSC in drought and stored a significant amount of NSC post drought. The above- and belowground dC i and BPE i varied more from year to year in the young stand and approached a relatively stable pattern in the mature stand. The belowground BPE bgp differed the most between the young and mature stands and was most responsive to drought. With the internal C dynamics quantified, this framework may also improve biomass production estimation, which reveals the variations resulting from droughts. Overall, these quantified ecosystem-scale dynamics were consistent with existing evidence from tree-based manipulative experiments and measurements and demonstrated that combining the continuous fluxes as proposed here can provide additional information about plant internal C dynamics. Given that it is based on broadly available flux data, the proposed framework is promising to improve the allocation algorithms in ecosystem C cycle models and offers new insights into observed variability in soil–plant–climate interactions.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Power allocation by load aggregator with heterogeneous loads using weighted projection

With the recently increasing adoption of transactive energy markets, the role of a load aggregator is becoming increasingly important. Among the many tasks of an aggregator, the task of managing the electricity consumption among a group of grid-interactive efficient buildings according to the demand on the grid is taken up. Specifically, here, the task of allocating a certain amount of power among the participating customers while respecting their preferences and comfort is considered. Modeling this as an aggregate flexibility, the virtual battery conditions that are employed to verify the feasibility of a candidate power profile are derived. A feasible power profile, when allocated, satisfies specified comfort bands. To determine the ideal power requirement of the loads, the model-free control method is employed. The feasible power profile is allocated by embedding the customers’ preferences through weights, posing the power constraint as a hyperplane, and employing a weighted projection from the ideal power requirements onto the constraint plane to solve the considered task. The proposed method is computationally efficient and scalable to any number of heterogeneous thermostatically controlled loads in buildings.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

How Does Escherichia coli Allocate Proteome?

Microorganisms are shown to actively partition their intracellular resources, such as pro- teins, for growth optimization. Recent experiments have begun to reveal molecular com- ponents unpinning the partition; however, it remains unclear quantitatively how individual parts orchestrate to yield precise resource allocation that is both robust and dynamic. Here we developed a coarse-grained mathematical framework that centers on guanosine pentaphosphate (ppGpp)-mediated regulation, and used it to systematically uncover the design principles of proteome allocation in Escherichia coli. Our results showed that cellular ability of resource partition lies in an ultrasensitive, negative feedback control- ling topology with the ultrasensitivity arising from zero-order amino acid kinetics and the negative feedback from ppGpp-controlled ribosome synthesis. In addition, together with the time-scale separation between slow ribosome kinetics and fast turnovers of ppGpp and amino acids, the network topology confers the organism an optimization mechanism which mimics sliding mode control, a nonlinear optimization strategy that is widely used in man-made systems. We further showed that such a controlling mechanism is robust against parameter variations and molecular fluctuations, and is also efficient for biomass production over time. Furthermore, this work elucidates the fundamental controlling mechanism of E. coli proteome allocation, thereby providing insights into quantitative microbial physiology as well as the design of synthetic gene networks.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

A Test of Functional Balance Theory for Wetland Biomass Allocation in a Global Change Experiment

Abstract Forecasts of root growth and carbon sequestration under global change are compromised by uncertainty in how plants will allocate biomass between above and belowground pools. Here, we develop a simple model to assess whether functional balance theory can explain a complex biomass allocation response observed in a brackish marsh under experimental warming and elevated CO 2 . Our model shows how treatment‐driven changes in nitrogen supply and demand can explain divergent observations of root growth (i.e., maximum responses under intermediate warming and elevated CO 2 ). The model also reveals a surprising interaction between warming and eutrophication, where enhanced N loading to coastal marshes may reduce adverse impacts of warming on root growth. Our findings provide a mechanistic basis for incorporating biomass allocation into forecast models of marsh evolution. They also provide a general example of using ecological theory to decompose complex net responses observed in multi‐factor global change experiments into constituent processes.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Intramolecular carbon isotope signals reflect metabolite allocation in plants

Abstract Stable isotopes at natural abundance are key tools to study physiological processes occurring outside the temporal scope of manipulation and monitoring experiments. Whole-molecule carbon isotope ratios (13C/12C) enable assessments of plant carbon uptake yet conceal information about carbon allocation. Here, we identify an intramolecular 13C/12C signal at tree-ring glucose C-5 and C-6 and develop experimentally testable theories on its origin. More specifically, we assess the potential of processes within C3 metabolism for signal introduction based (inter alia) on constraints on signal propagation posed by metabolic networks. We propose that the intramolecular signal reports carbon allocation into major metabolic pathways in actively photosynthesizing leaf cells including the anaplerotic, shikimate, and non-mevalonate pathway. We support our theoretical framework by linking it to previously reported whole-molecule 13C/12C increases in cellulose of ozone-treated Betula pendula and a highly significant relationship between the intramolecular signal and tropospheric ozone concentration. Our theory postulates a pronounced preference for leaf cytosolic triose-phosphate isomerase to catalyse the forward reaction in vivo (dihydroxyacetone phosphate to glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate). In conclusion, intramolecular 13C/12C analysis resolves information about carbon uptake and allocation enabling more comprehensive assessments of carbon metabolism than whole-molecule 13C/12C analysis.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Optimal Black Start Allocation for Power System Restoration

Equipment failures, operator errors, natural disasters and cyber-attacks can and have caused extended blackouts of the electric grid. Even though such events are rare, preparedness for them is critical because extended power outages endanger human lives, compromise national security, or result in economic losses of billions of dollars. Since most of the generating units cannot restart without connecting to an energized grid, the system operator relies on a few units with the ability to start autonomously, called Black Start (BS) units, to restore the power system. Allocating and maintaining these units is costly and can severely impact the restoration security and time. We formulate an optimization problem to optimally allocate BS units in the grid, while simultaneously optimizing over the restoration sequence. We extend existing optimal allocation models by including grid considerations such as active power nodal balance, transmission switching, nodal reactive power support and voltage limits. In order to aid the branch and bound tree that solves the resulting large scale mixed integer program, we propose a randomized heuristic that is executed multiple times in parallel on a high-performance computing environment to find feasible solutions. Here, we proceed to solve the IEEE-39, the IEEE-118, and a simplified WECC system with 225 nodes and 136 generators to near optimality.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

A Multi-Objective Approach for Optimizing Edge-Based Resource Allocation Using TOPSIS

Existing approaches for allocating resources on edge environments are inefficient and lack the support of heterogeneous edge devices, which in turn fail to optimize the dependency on cloud infrastructures or datacenters. To this extent, we propose in this paper OpERA, a multi-layered edge-based resource allocation optimization framework that supports heterogeneous and seamless execution of offloadable tasks across edge, fog, and cloud computing layers and architectures. By capturing offloadable task requirements, OpERA is capable of identifying suitable resources within nearby edge or fog layers, thus optimizing the execution process. Throughout the paper, we present results which show the effectiveness of our proposed optimization strategy in terms of reducing costs, minimizing energy consumption, and promoting other residual gains in terms of processing computations, network bandwidth, and task execution time. We also demonstrate that by optimizing resource allocation in computation offloading, it is then possible to increase the likelihood of successful task offloading, particularly for computationally intensive tasks that are becoming integral as part of many IoT applications such robotic surgery, autonomous driving, smart city monitoring device grids, and deep learning tasks. The evaluation of our OpERA optimization algorithm reveals that the TOPSIS MCDM technique effectively identifies optimal compute resources for processing offloadable tasks, with a 96% success rate. Moreover, the results from our experiments with a diverse range of use cases show that our OpERA optimization strategy can effectively reduce energy consumption by up to 88%, and operational costs by 76%, by identifying relevant compute resources.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Addressing Function Allocation for the Digital Transformation of Existing Nuclear Power Plants

The existing nuclear power plants in the United States (U.S.) have a vital role in providing carbon-free electricity. For the existing nuclear power plant fleet to remain economically viable, a significant digital transformation that fundamentally changes the way in which these plants are operated, maintained, and supported ought to be seriously considered. Safe and reliable automation is needed. This work describes important considerations and challenges that come with function allocation for the adoption of new automation at existing nuclear power plants. Specifically, this work reviews the state-of-the-art in function allocation guidance and highlights how it can be used within the U.S. nuclear industry. An objective of this work is to present the current challenges and proposed approaches to the human factors community to support future research and development that ultimately supports the effective use of function allocation in the digital transformation of existing nuclear power plants.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

Visual Attention Allocation Between Robotic Arm and Environmental Process Control: Validating the STOM Task Switching Model

Fifty six participants time shared a spacecraft environmental control system task with a realistic space robotic arm control task in either a manual or highly automated version. The former could suffer minor failures, whose diagnosis and repair were supported by a decision aid. At the end of the experiment this decision aid unexpectedly failed. We measured visual attention allocation and switching between the two tasks, in each of the eight conditions formed by manual-automated arm X expected-unexpected failure X monitoring- failure management. We also used our multi-attribute task switching model, based on task attributes of priority interest, difficulty and salience that were self-rated by participants, to predict allocation. An un-weighted model based on attributes of difficulty, interest and salience accounted for 96 percent of the task allocation variance across the 8 different conditions. Task difficulty served as an attractor, with more difficult tasks increasing the tendency to stay on task.

STOM attention allocation model validation↗