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At least 109 records · Page 6

Computational control of flexible aerospace systems

The main objective of this project is to establish a distributed parameter modeling technique for structural analysis, parameter estimation, vibration suppression and control synthesis of large flexible aerospace structures. This report concentrates on the research outputs produced in the last two years. The main accomplishments can be summarized as follows. A new version of the PDEMOD Code had been completed based on several incomplete versions. The verification of the code had been conducted by comparing the results with those examples for which the exact theoretical solutions can be obtained. The theoretical background of the package and the verification examples has been reported in a technical paper submitted to the Joint Applied Mechanics & Material Conference, ASME. A brief USER'S MANUAL had been compiled, which includes three parts: (1) Input data preparation; (2) Explanation of the Subroutines; and (3) Specification of control variables. Meanwhile, a theoretical investigation of the NASA MSFC two-dimensional ground-based manipulator facility by using distributed parameter modeling technique has been conducted. A new mathematical treatment for dynamic analysis and control of large flexible manipulator systems has been conceived, which may provide an embryonic form of a more sophisticated mathematical model for future modified versions of the PDEMOD Codes.

Sharpe, Lonnie, Jr.

The Verification and Validation of a Magnetic Plasma Fluid Model Utilizing the MOOSE (Multiphysics Object Oriented Simulation Environment) Framework

As the goal of achieving fusion power on the grid comes closer to fruition, fully coupled multiphysics models of fusion devices will be crucial. Currently, there are two main approaches to developing these platforms: (1) loosely coupled, where one couples existing codes and solvers together through input and output parameters and data, and (2) tightly coupled, where one develops the necessary models within a singular, integrated framework. This work focuses on the latter approach for magnetically confined fusion devices by developing a fluid-based plasma-edge model within the Multiphysics Object Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE) Framework. This effort is coordinated with other efforts to develop, test, demonstrate, and deploy fusion relevant multiphysics capabilities including electromagnetics, particle-in-cell plasma, tritium transport, and fusion blanket design. This new model is an expansion of the MOOSE-based plasma application, Zapdos, which was originally formulated to model low-temperature, non-magnetized plasma processes. Verification, benchmarking, and validation studies have been conducted. Verification studies involved utilizing the method of manufactured solutions and comparing the convergence slope of a known solution to the theoretical slope. Benchmarking consists of comparisons to existing edge codes, namely BOUT++ and SOLEDGE3X. Validation efforts focused on comparisons against open-source data from the TCV tokamak.

70 - PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY

A Python Tool for Aqueous Plutonium Nitrate Density Law Input Preprocessing in MCNP6

Here, this work develops a predictive density tool in Python, named Plutonium Nitrate Solutions (PuNS), to reduce bias and uncertainty in nuclear criticality safety calculations for plutonium nitrate systems. The Pitzer method and an empirical method were implemented into the PuNS tool to generate atom densities for use in MCNP6 material cards. These material cards are directly prepared into an MCNP6 input text file and are calculated based on customizable user inputs of plutonium content, nitric acid content, temperature, and plutonium isotope weight percentages. The PuNS tool is validated and verified against the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project Handbook experiments and is observed to predict densities within a root mean square error of 0.89% for the Pitzer method and 1.82% for the empirical method. These errors in density lead to up to 1569 pcm difference in MCNP6 calculated k eff for the Pitzer method and up to a 1751 pcm difference for the empirical method when compared to experimental benchmarks. Simultaneous work is also being performed at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of New Mexico to create a similar tool for plutonium chloride solutions, named Plutonium Chloride Solution, which aims to provide the accreditation of the chlorine absorption. These capabilities will not only provide more accurate models but also facilitate an improved understanding of solution systems and a potential relaxation in the conservatism of current aqueous plutonium processing criticality safety limits.

38 RADIATION CHEMISTRY, RADIOCHEMISTRY, AND NUCLEA

HDL to verification logic translator

The increasingly higher number of transistors possible in VLSI circuits compounds the difficulty in insuring correct designs. As the number of possible test cases required to exhaustively simulate a circuit design explodes, a better method is required to confirm the absence of design faults. Formal verification methods provide a way to prove, using logic, that a circuit structure correctly implements its specification. Before verification is accepted by VLSI design engineers, the stand alone verification tools that are in use in the research community must be integrated with the CAD tools used by the designers. One problem facing the acceptance of formal verification into circuit design methodology is that the structural circuit descriptions used by the designers are not appropriate for verification work and those required for verification lack some of the features needed for design. We offer a solution to this dilemma: an automatic translation from the designers' HDL models into definitions for the higher-ordered logic (HOL) verification system. The translated definitions become the low level basis of circuit verification which in turn increases the designer's confidence in the correctness of higher level behavioral models.

Gambles, J. W.

Vidyut3d: A GPU accelerated fluid solver for non-equilibrium plasmas on adaptive grids

We present the numerical methods, programming methodology, verification, and performance assessment of a non-equilibrium plasma fluid solver that can effectively utilize current and upcoming central processing and graphics processing unit (CPU+GPU) architectures, in this work. Our plasma fluid model solves the coupled conservation equations for species transport, electrostatic Poisson and electron temperature on adaptive Cartesian grids. Our solver is written using performance portable adaptive-grid/particle management library, AMReX, and is portable over widely available vendor specific GPU architectures. We present verification of our solver using method of manufactured solutions that indicate formal second order accuracy with central diffusion and fifth-order weighted-essentially-non-oscillatory (WENO) advection scheme. We also verify our solver with published literature on capacitive discharges and atmospheric pressure streamer propagation. We demonstrate the use of our solver on two 3D simulation cases: an atmospheric streamer propagation in Ar-H2 mixtures and a low pressure three-electrode radio frequency reactor. Our performance studies on three different CPU+GPU architectures indicate ~ 150-400X speed-up using AMD and NVIDIA GPUs per time step compared to a single CPU core for a 4 million cell simulation with 15 species.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC

Vidyut3d: A Gpu Accelerated Fluid Solver for Non-Equilibrium Plasmas on Adaptive Grids

We present the numerical methods, programming methodology, verification, and performance assessment of a non-equilibrium plasma fluid solver that can effectively utilize current and upcoming central processing and graphics processing unit (CPU+GPU) architectures, in this work. Our plasma fluid model solves the coupled conservation equations for species transport, electrostatic Poisson and electron temperature on adaptive Cartesian grids. Our solver is written using performance portable adaptive-grid/particle management library, AMReX, and is portable over widely available vendor specific GPU architectures. We present verification of our solver using method of manufactured solutions that indicate formal second order accuracy with central diffusion and fifth-order weighted-essentially-non-oscillatory (WENO) advection scheme. We also verify our solver with published literature on capacitive discharges and atmospheric pressure streamer propagation. We demonstrate the use of our solver on two 3D simulation cases: an atmospheric streamer propagation in Ar-H2 mixtures and a low pressure twin electrode radio frequency reactor. Our performance studies on three different CPU+GPU architectures indicate approximately 150-400X speed-up using AMD and NVIDIA GPUs per time step compared to a single CPU core for a 4 million cell simulation with 15 species.

Sitaraman, Hariswaran

Study of solution procedures for nonlinear structural equations

A method for the redution of the cost of solution of large nonlinear structural equations was developed. Verification was made using the MARC-STRUC structure finite element program with test cases involving single and multiple degrees of freedom for static geometric nonlinearities. The method developed was designed to exist within the envelope of accuracy and convergence characteristic of the particular finite element methodology used.

Young, C. T., II

An Overview of Ares-I CFD Ascent Aerodynamic Data Development And Analysis Based on USM3D

An overview of the computational results obtained from the NASA Langley developed unstructured grid, Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes flow solver USM3D, in support of the Ares-I project within the NASA s Constellation program, are presented. The numerical data are obtained for representative flow conditions pertinent to the ascent phase of the trajectory at both wind tunnel and flight Reynolds number without including any propulsion effects. The USM3D flow solver has been designated to have the primary role within the Ares-I project in developing the computational aerodynamic data for the vehicle while other flow solvers, namely OVERFLOW and FUN3D, have supporting roles to provide complementary results for fewer cases as part of the verification process to ensure code-to-code solution consistency. Similarly, as part of the solution validation efforts, the predicted numerical results are correlated with the aerodynamic wind tunnel data that have been generated within the project in the past few years. Sample aerodynamic results and the processes established for the computational solution/data development for the evolving Ares-I design cycles are presented.

FUN3D

Development of a Performance Portable Non-Equilibrium Plasma Fluid Solver on Adaptive Grids

This presentation will describe the numerical techniques, programming paradigms, verification, and performance of a non-equilibrium plasma fluid solver that can effectively utilize current and upcoming central processing and graphics processing unit (CPU+GPU) architectures. Our plasma fluid model solves the conservation equations for self-consistent electrostatic Poisson, electron and heavy species transport, and electron temperature on adaptive Cartesian grids. Our solver is written using performance portable adaptive mesh management library, AMReX (Zhang et al., JOSS, 4 (37) 1370, 2019), and can be built and run on widely available vendor specific GPU architectures (NVIDIA/AMD/Intel). We utilize a non-subcycled second order semi-implicit time-stepping method where all adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) levels are advanced with the same time step. The composite multi-level multigrid solver from within AMReX is used for each of the governing equations that are cast into a Helmholtz equation form. We have also developed a python based chemical mechanism parser framework that uses a similar format as CANTERA (Goodwin et al., Zenodo, 2018) yaml files as input. Our custom parser reads the yaml file and provides C++ files with transport and production rate functions that can be executed on both host (CPU) and device (GPU). We present verification of our solver using method of manufactured solutions that indicate formal second order accuracy with central diffusion and fifth order weighted-essentially-non-oscillatory (WENO) advection scheme. We also verify our solver with published literature on low-pressure capacitive and high-pressure streamer discharges. Our initial performance studies indicate 10X speed-up using 20 NVIDIA GPUs versus 200 CPUs for an atmospheric streamer discharge problem solved on a 512 x 1024 x 512 grid.

graphics processing units

An analytical investigation of the impingement jets on curved deflectors

Numerical solutions are obtained for the cases of straight circular jets impinging on axisymmetric curved surfaces and plane jets impinging symmetrically on two-dimensional curved surfaces. These geometries are representative of some types of thrust reversers for transport aircraft. The solutions are based on the assumptions of incompressible and potential flow. The velocity field, pressure distribution at the deflector surface and reverser effectiveness are predicted for deflector turning angles of 15 to 75 deg, deflector width to jet diameter ratios of 1.5 to 2.0, and ratios of deflector clearance to jet diameter of 1.0 to 3.0. Reverser effectiveness is found to be a maximum for a ratio of deflector clearance to jet diameter of about 2.0. The effect of back pressuring due to the presence of the deflector is predicted. Experimental verification of the theoretical predictions is obtained. A compressible solution obtained for a limited number of cases indicates that the incompressible solution is satisfactory for jet exit Mach numbers less than 0.8.

Schnurr, N. M.

Automated Generation of Finite-Element Meshes for Aircraft Conceptual Design

This paper presents a novel approach for automated generation of fully connected finite-element meshes for all internal structural components and skins of a given wing-body geometry model, controlled by a few conceptual-level structural layout parameters. Internal structural components include spars, ribs, frames, and bulkheads. Structural layout parameters include spar/rib locations in wing chordwise/spanwise direction and frame/bulkhead locations in longitudinal direction. A simple shell thickness optimization problem with two load conditions is used to verify versatility and robustness of the automated meshing process. The automation process is implemented in ModelCenter starting from an OpenVSP geometry and ending with a NASTRAN 200 solution. One subsonic configuration and one supersonic configuration are used for numerical verification. Two different structural layouts are constructed for each configuration and five finite-element meshes of different sizes are generated for each layout. The paper includes various comparisons of solutions of 20 thickness optimization problems, as well as discussions on how the optimal solutions are affected by the stress constraint bound and the initial guess of design variables.

Li, Wu

Verification and Demonstration of One-Dimensional Freezing Model in SAM for Salt-Cooled Reactor Analysis Applications

This work presented the development and implementation of the one-dimensional freezing model in system analysis code, SAM, as well as code verification, and code demonstration during a postulated overcooling transient, for fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactor (FHR) system and safety analysis applications. The paper at first summarized the freezing model, finite element numerical method, and special numerical treatment for handling phase appearance/disappearance. Analytical solutions were derived for two cases (with and without solid walls) for code verifications purpose. As expected, numerical results predicted by the SAM code agreed very well with the analytical solution. A code demonstration was then performed on a postulated protected overcooling event transient of a generic reference PB-FHR design. The code was found to successfully predict salt freezing during such a postulated event. However, due to lack of salt freezing testing data, code validation has not been performed in this work, which will be pursued in later studies when such data becomes available.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS

Check-Cases for Verification of 6-Degree-of-Freedom Flight Vehicle Simulations

The rise of innovative unmanned aeronautical systems and the emergence of commercial space activities have resulted in a number of relatively new aerospace organizations that are designing innovative systems and solutions. These organizations use a variety of commercial off-the-shelf and in-house-developed simulation and analysis tools including 6-degree-of-freedom (6-DOF) flight simulation tools. The increased affordability of computing capability has made highfidelity flight simulation practical for all participants. Verification of the tools' equations-of-motion and environment models (e.g., atmosphere, gravitation, and geodesy) is desirable to assure accuracy of results. However, aside from simple textbook examples, minimal verification data exists in open literature for 6-DOF flight simulation problems. This assessment compared multiple solution trajectories to a set of verification check-cases that covered atmospheric and exo-atmospheric (i.e., orbital) flight. Each scenario consisted of predefined flight vehicles, initial conditions, and maneuvers. These scenarios were implemented and executed in a variety of analytical and real-time simulation tools. This tool-set included simulation tools in a variety of programming languages based on modified flat-Earth, round- Earth, and rotating oblate spheroidal Earth geodesy and gravitation models, and independently derived equations-of-motion and propagation techniques. The resulting simulated parameter trajectories were compared by over-plotting and difference-plotting to yield a family of solutions. In total, seven simulation tools were exercised.

Murri, Daniel G.

Verification of the ENDF/B-VII.1 Based MC 2 -3 Library Rev.1

The MC 2 -3 code, developed by Argonne National Laboratory under the DOE-NE NEAMS program, is a multigroup cross section generation code for fast reactor applications. Last year, the ENDF/B-VII.0 (E70) MC 2 -3 library, which has been extensively used, verified, and validated over a long period, was intensively reverified and updated to support the commercial grade dedication (CGD) requirement of the TerraPower Natrium project. This year, the ENDF/B-VII.1 (E71) MC 2 -3 library, the preliminary version of which was generated several years ago, was regenerated and rigorously verified to support the Natrium project as well as the completion of verification of the E71 library. The E71 library was verified using the process developed during the verification of the E70 library, including comparisons of cross sections with the NJOY-generated cross sections, comparisons of the resolved resonance cross sections with those using the PEDNF library, and comparison of total cross sections with the sum of partial cross sections. Additional verifications were conducted to ensure that the benchmark problem solutions with the E71 library are reasonable compared to the corresponding Monte Carlo solutions. Furthermore, the E71 gamma library was generated, which includes data for prompt gamma, delayed gamma, and delayed beta as well as neutron and gamma heating. The gamma library was verified at the level of individual isotopes. The EBR-II core solutions from MC 2 -3/ DIF3D and MCNP were compared, demonstrating that those solutions in terms of k-effective and assembly powers were in good agreement.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS

Restoring Redundancy to the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotrophy Probe Propulsion System

The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe is a follow-on to the Differential Microwave Radiometer instrument on the Cosmic Background Explorer. Attitude control system engineers discovered sixteen months before launch that configuration changes after the critical design review had resulted in a significant migration of the spacecraft's center of mass. As a result, the spacecraft no longer had a viable backup control mode in the event of a failure of the negative pitch-axis thruster. A tiger team was formed and identified potential solutions to this problem, such as adding thruster-plume shields to redirect thruster torque, adding or removing mass from the spacecraft, adding an additional thruster, moving thrusters, bending thruster nozzles or propellant tubing, or accepting the loss of redundancy. The project considered the impacts on mass, cost, fuel budget, and schedule for each solution, and decided to bend the propellant tubing of the two roll-control thrusters to allow the pair to be used for backup control in the negative pitch axis. This paper discusses the problem and the potential solutions, and documents the hardware and software changes and verification performed. Flight data are presented to show the on-orbit performance of the propulsion system and lessons learned are described.

O'Donnell, James R., Jr.

Fusing Quantitative Requirements Analysis with Model-based Systems Engineering

A vision is presented for fusing quantitative requirements analysis with model-based systems engineering. This vision draws upon and combines emergent themes in the engineering milieu. "Requirements engineering" provides means to explicitly represent requirements (both functional and non-functional) as constraints and preferences on acceptable solutions, and emphasizes early-lifecycle review, analysis and verification of design and development plans. "Design by shopping" emphasizes revealing the space of options available from which to choose (without presuming that all selection criteria have previously been elicited), and provides means to make understandable the range of choices and their ramifications. "Model-based engineering" emphasizes the goal of utilizing a formal representation of all aspects of system design, from development through operations, and provides powerful tool suites that support the practical application of these principles. A first step prototype towards this vision is described, embodying the key capabilities. Illustrations, implications, further challenges and opportunities are outlined.

optimization

Description of a Website Resource for Turbulence Modeling Verification and Validation

The activities of the Turbulence Model Benchmarking Working Group - which is a subcommittee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Fluid Dynamics Technical Committee - are described. The group s main purpose is to establish a web-based repository for Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes turbulence model documentation, including verification and validation cases. This turbulence modeling resource has been established based on feedback from a survey on what is needed to achieve consistency and repeatability in turbulence model implementation and usage, and to document and disseminate information on new turbulence models or improvements to existing models. The various components of the website are described in detail: description of turbulence models, turbulence model readiness rating system, verification cases, validation cases, validation databases, and turbulence manufactured solutions. An outline of future plans of the working group is also provided.

Rumsey, Christopher L.

Improved Detection Technique for Solvent Rinse Cleanliness Verification

The NASA White Sands Test Facility (WSTF) has an ongoing effort to reduce or eliminate usage of cleaning solvents such as CFC-113 and its replacements. These solvents are used in the final clean and cleanliness verification processes for flight and ground support hardware, especially for oxygen systems where organic contaminants can pose an ignition hazard. For the final cleanliness verification in the standard process, the equivalent of one square foot of surface area of parts is rinsed with the solvent, and the final 100 mL of the rinse is captured. The amount of nonvolatile residue (NVR) in the solvent is determined by weight after the evaporation of the solvent. An improved process of sampling this rinse, developed at WSTF, requires evaporation of less than 2 mL of the solvent to make the cleanliness verification. Small amounts of the solvent are evaporated in a clean stainless steel cup, and the cleanliness of the stainless steel cup is measured using a commercially available surface quality monitor. The effectiveness of this new cleanliness verification technique was compared to the accepted NVR sampling procedures. Testing with known contaminants in solution, such as hydraulic fluid, fluorinated lubricants, and cutting and lubricating oils, was performed to establish a correlation between amount in solution and the process response. This report presents the approach and results and discusses the issues in establishing the surface quality monitor-based cleanliness verification.

Hornung, S. D.