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At least 1,171 records · Page 65

On-line evaluation of multiloop digital controller performance

The purpose of this presentation is to inform the Guidance and Control community of capabilities which were developed by the Aeroservoelasticity Branch to evaluate the performance of multivariable control laws, on-line, during wind-tunnel testing. The capabilities are generic enough to be useful for all kinds of on-line analyses involving multivariable control in experimental testing. Consequently, it was decided to present this material at this workshop even though it has been presented elsewhere. Topics covered include: essential on-line analysis requirements; on-line analysis capabilities; on-line analysis software; frequency domain procedures; controller performance evaluation frequency-domain flutter suppression; and plant determination.

Wieseman, Carol D.↗

An Introduction to Markov Modeling: Concepts and Uses

Kharkov modeling is a modeling technique that is widely useful for dependability analysis of complex fault tolerant systems. It is very flexible in the type of systems and system behavior it can model. It is not, however, the most appropriate modeling technique for every modeling situation. The first task in obtaining a reliability or availability estimate for a system is selecting which modeling technique is most appropriate to the situation at hand. A person performing a dependability analysis must confront the question: is Kharkov modeling most appropriate to the system under consideration, or should another technique be used instead? The need to answer this gives rise to other more basic questions regarding Kharkov modeling: what are the capabilities and limitations of Kharkov modeling as a modeling technique? How does it relate to other modeling techniques? What kind of system behavior can it model? What kinds of software tools are available for performing dependability analyses with Kharkov modeling techniques? These questions and others will be addressed in this tutorial.

Boyd, Mark A.↗

A definition study of the on-orbit assembly operations for the outboard photovoltaic power modules for Space Station Freedom

A concept is described for the assembly of the outboard PV modules for Space Station Freedom. Analysis of the on-orbit assembly operations was performed using CADAM design graphics software. A scenario for assembly using the various assembly equipment, as currently defined, is described in words, tables and illustrations. This work is part of ongoing studies in the area of space station assembly. The outboard PV module and the assembly equipment programs are all in definition and preliminary design phases. An input is provided to the design process of assembly equipment programs. It is established that the outboard PV module assembly operations can be performed using the assembly equipment currently planned in the Space Station Freedom Program.

Sours, Thomas J.↗

The challenges of theory-software translation

Background: Software is now ubiquitous within research. In addition to the general challenges common to all software development projects, research software must also represent, manipulate, and provide data for complex theoretical constructs. Ensuring this process of theory-software translation is robust is essential to maintaining the integrity of the science resulting from it, and yet there has been little formal recognition or exploration of the challenges associated with it. Methods: We thematically analyse the outputs of the discussion sessions at the Theory-Software Translation Workshop 2019, where academic researchers and research software engineers from a variety of domains, and with particular expertise in high performance computing, explored the process of translating between scientific theory and software. Results: We identify a wide range of challenges to implementing scientific theory in research software and using the resulting data and models for the advancement of knowledge. We categorise these within the emergent themes of design, infrastructure, and culture, and map them to associated research questions. Conclusions: Systematically investigating how software is constructed and its outputs used within science has the potential to improve the robustness of research software and accelerate progress in its development. We propose that this issue be examined within a new research area of theory-software translation, which would aim to significantly advance both knowledge and scientific practice.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Compatibility of TOPEX/Poseidon trajectory propagation with JPL and GSFC/FDF operational software

Two independent trajectory software systems are used to perform the TOPEX/Poseidon operational orbit determination and propagation: the Goddard Trajectory Determination System (GTDS) at the GSF/FDF and the Double Precision Trajectory System (DPTRAJ) at JPL. GTDS is used for operational tracking and TDRS-based orbit determination. DPTRAJ is used for ephemeris generation necessary to conduct day-to-day mission operations. This paper describes the DPTRAJ/GTDS trajectory comparison analysis conducted jointly by JPL and GSFC to ensure the compatibility of these two independent trajectory software systems.

Salama, Ahmed↗

Mechanical Testing of Innovated Composite Polymer Material for using in Manufacture of Railway Sleepers

Faculty of Engineering at Shoubra has been funded to start a project for manufacturing railway sleepers from plastic wastes and iron slag to replace imported wooden sleepers. In this paper, performance of wooden sleepers in tracks of Egyptian Railways, including high cost and material defects as well as reasons to find out a new sleeper will be presented. Previous studies for using composite materials in manufacturing railway sleepers are illustrated. Mechanical testing has been carried out to determine the important properties of the new mixture; hence results are compared with the minimum requirements of the international railway standards. Linear analysis has been conducted using 3D-SAP2000 software to simulate the actual performance of the proposed sleeper. It is found that the testing results are larger than the required values. Thus; it is concluded that the tested material is effective and adequate to be used in manufacture of railway sleepers.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Voice and video transmission using XTP and FDDI

The use of Xpress Transfer Protocol (XTP) and Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) provides a high speed and high performance network solution to multimedia transmission that requires high bandwidth. FDDI is an ANSI and ISO standard for a MAC and physical layer protocol that provides a signaling rate of 100 Mbits/sec and fault tolerance. XTP is a transport and network layer protocol designed for high performance and efficiency and is the heart of the SAFENET Lightweight Suite for systems that require performance or realtime communications. The testbed consists of several commercially available Intel based i486 PC's containing off-the-shelf FDDI cards, audio analog-digital converter cards, video interface cards, and XTP software. Unicast, multicast, and duplex audio transmission experiments have been performed using XTP software. Unicast and multicast video transmission is in progress. Several potential commercial applications are described.

Drummond, John↗

An optimized FM-index library for nucleotide and amino acid search

Abstract Background Pattern matching is a key step in a variety of biological sequence analysis pipelines. The FM-index is a compressed data structure for pattern matching, with search run time that is independent of the length of the database text. Implementation of the FM-index is reasonably complicated, so that increased adoption will be aided by the availability of a fast and flexible FM-index library. Results We present AvxWindowedFMindex (AWFM-index), a lightweight, open-source, thread-parallel FM-index library written in C that is optimized for indexing nucleotide and amino acid sequences. AWFM-index introduces a new approach to storing FM-index data in a strided bit-vector format that enables extremely efficient computation of the FM-index occurrence function via AVX2 bitwise instructions, and combines this with optional on-disk storage of the index’s suffix array and a cache-efficient lookup table for partial k-mer searches. The AWFM-index performs exact match count and locate queries faster than SeqAn3’s FM-index implementation across a range of comparable memory footprints. When optimized for speed, AWFM-index is $$\sim $$ ∼ 2–4x faster than SeqAn3 for nucleotide search, and $$\sim $$ ∼ 2–6x faster for amino acid search; it is also $$\sim $$ ∼ 4x faster with similar memory footprint when storing the suffix array in on-disk SSD storage. Conclusions AWFM-index is easy to incorporate into bioinformatics software, offers run-time performance parameterization, and provides clients with FM-index functionality at both a high-level (count or locate all instances of a query string) and low-level (step-wise control of the FM-index backward-search process). The open-source library is available for download at https://github.com/TravisWheelerLab/AvxWindowFmIndex.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

A Systematic Comparison for Consistent Scenario Development Using Microscopic Simulation Software

This study aims to explore a methodology that enables the development of consistent traffic micro simulation for emerging traffic and vehicle control technologies for improved mobility and energy efficiency across different modeling platforms. Researchers might study the same application on different platforms and have the need to benchmark across platforms. However, there lacks a systematic study on simulation software comparison, especially for emerging mobility and energy efficiency applications. For this, a systematic scenario development and evaluation approach is presented and demonstrated to compare scenarios generated in different traffic microsimulation platforms. Network-level and vehicle-level trip performance results of the traffic scenario are evaluated in three microscopic simulation platforms - VISSIM, AIMSUN, and SUMO. The results indicate that the network-level performance is consistent among the three software suites except when the demand is high, where the energy consumption performance varies.

Saroj, Abhilasha [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000191178063)↗

A.I.-based real-time support for high performance aircraft operations

Artificial intelligence (AI) based software and hardware concepts are applied to the handling system malfunctions during flight tests. A representation of malfunction procedure logic using Boolean normal forms are presented. The representation facilitates the automation of malfunction procedures and provides easy testing for the embedded rules. It also forms a potential basis for a parallel implementation in logic hardware. The extraction of logic control rules, from dynamic simulation and their adaptive revision after partial failure are examined. It uses a simplified 2-dimensional aircraft model with a controller that adaptively extracts control rules for directional thrust that satisfies a navigational goal without exceeding pre-established position and velocity limits. Failure recovery (rule adjusting) is examined after partial actuator failure. While this experiment was performed with primitive aircraft and mission models, it illustrates an important paradigm and provided complexity extrapolations for the proposed extraction of expertise from simulation, as discussed. The use of relaxation and inexact reasoning in expert systems was also investigated.

Vidal, J. J.↗

Light and Dark in Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber Neutrino Detectors

Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LArTPC) neutrino detectors have emerged as a detector technology poised to perform measurements of neutrino interactions with unprecedented precision and as a result answer some of the largest open questions in neutrino physics in the coming decade. This thesis describes methods developed to tackle the computational challenges faced as LArTPC detectors increase in scale and complexity moving towards the multi-kiloton DUNE detectors. These include a new, approximated, model that enables rapid simulation of scintillation light in very large scale detectors, as well as the first demonstration of running the LArSoft software framework on a high performance computer. The high precision of LArTPC detectors designed for next-generation neutrino measurements enables them to also search for Beyond the Standard Model physics produced in high-energy proton--fixed-target collisions in neutrino beams. This thesis presents searches for two dark-sector models performed with the ArgoNeuT experiment: Heavy Neutral Leptons and Heavy QCD Axions. Between them, these models can provide solutions for various unresolved puzzles including neutrino mass generation, the baryon asymmetry of the universe, dark matter and the strong CP problem. In both cases, the dark-sector particles could be produced in the NuMI neutrino beam and can then decay to a pair of oppositely charged muons observable in ArgoNeuT and the downstream MINOS near detector. Both measurements required the development of novel experimental selection techniques and enabled new constraints to be set on the existence of these particles in previously unexplored parameter-space. These searches are both the first of their kind in LArTPC neutrino detectors and pave the way for searches at future neutrino facilities.Date of Award31 Dec 2022Original languageEnglishAwarding InstitutionThe University of ManchesterSupervisorStefan Soldner-Rembold (Supervisor) & Justin Evans (Supervisor)

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Uncertainty Quantification of CFD Model Assumptions Against Sonic Boom Noise Prediction of a Commercial Supersonic Transport

This paper presents the results of uncertainty modeling of sonic boom noise generation from commercial supersonic transport considering the Spalart-Allmaras (SA) turbulence modeling parameters as well as Mach number, angle of attack and altitude. Sample generation and analysis for this uncertainty model was performed by UQPCE, which is a software package developed at the NASA Langley Research Center. To build the uncertainty model, 42 cases of sonic boom noise calculation were performed. Computation of the ground noise can be briefly summarized in two steps. First, the near field pressure waveforms are sampled from CFD calculation using the NASA Langley’s FUN3D solver. Second, this information is passed to an atmospheric propagation code, sBOOM, which solves an augmented Burger’s equation and simulates how the near field waveforms will change while passing through the atmosphere. The ground signature is further processed to obtain the perceived loudness, PLdB. Having a high spatial resolution near the shockwave in the CFD calculation is critical in sonic boom noise prediction. Because the variation in the input parameters for the current uncertainty quantification (UQ) study is likely to lead to change in shock location, angle and strength, the grid adaptation for shock capturing is independently applied for each condition. The final mesh used in the CFD calculation consists of approximately 420 million cells. The pressure signatures are sampled at three, four and five body lengths away from the aircraft to make sure the three dimensional effects around the aircraft are resolved. The results of the UQ analysis shows that within the three aleatory variables, the angle of attack had the most impact against ground noise, followed by the altitude and the Mach number. Between the two SA model parameters, the Kármán constant (𝜅) was significantly more important than the turbulent Prandtl number (𝜎), but these two parameters were only marginally significant in the overall prediction variance in ground noise. The UQ procedure explained in this paper can be widely applied to other model parameters.

Uncertainty Quantification↗

Uncertainty Quantification of CFD Model Assumptions Against Sonic Boom Noise Prediction of a Commercial Supersonic Transport

This paper presents the results of uncertainty modeling of sonic boom noise generation from commercial supersonic transport considering the Spalart-Allmaras (SA) turbulence modeling parameters as well as Mach number, angle of attack and altitude. Sample generation and analysis for this uncertainty model was performed by UQPCE, which is a software package developed at the NASA Langley Research Center. To build the uncertainty model, 42 cases of sonic boom noise calculation were performed. Computation of the ground noise can be briefly summarized in two steps. First, the near field pressure waveforms are sampled from CFD calculation using the NASA Langley’s FUN3D solver. Second, this information is passed to an atmospheric propagation code, sBOOM, which solves an augmented Burger’s equation and simulates how the near field waveforms will change while passing through the atmosphere. The ground signature is further processed to obtain the perceived loudness, PLdB. Having a high spatial resolution near the shock wave in the CFD calculation is critical in sonic boom noise prediction. Because the variation in the input parameters for the current uncertainty quantification (UQ) study is likely to lead to change in shock location, angle and strength, the grid adaptation for shock capturing is independently applied for each condition. The final mesh used in the CFD calculation consists of approximately 420 million cells. The pressure signatures are sampled at three, four and five body lengths away from the aircraft to make sure the three dimensional effects around the aircraft are resolved. The results of the UQ analysis shows that within the three aleatory variables, the angle of attack had the most impact against ground noise, followed by the altitude and the Mach number. Between the two SA model parameters, the Kármán constant (𝜅) was significantly more important than the turbulent Prandtl number (𝜎), but these two parameters were only marginally significant in the overall prediction variance in ground noise. The UQ procedure explained in this paper can be widely applied to other model parameters.

Uncertainty Quantifications↗

A Workflow to Rapidly Interrogate Multiscale Model Simulation Results Across Multiple Length Scales

Many tools can be used to visualize field and state variables for a single scale analysis so that the influence of relevant mechanisms can be evaluated. Finite element software is often utilized to simulate a unit cell of a material and visualize results at that scale. Material properties can be homogenized from individual constituents and local deformation, damage, and failure mechanisms can be evaluated within the unit cell due to globally applied boundary conditions. Such solutions can produce satisfactory results if a user is only interested in analyzing a single scale. But materials in general contain features across multiple length scales, and assumptions must be made when attempting to account for lower length scale phenomena within a higher length scale model. Multiscale modeling is an attractive means to model materials because detailed material responses can be tracked across multiple disparate length scales while reducing the amount of required assumptions. However, as the complexity of these models increases, a large amount of data can be produced, and data traceability can become increasingly more difficult. Field and state variables, which are naturally dependent on spatial position, may themselves be calculated from one or more lower length scale unit cell models each with their own appropriate field and state variables. The NASA Multiscale Analysis Tool (NASMAT) is one software that can be used to perform a multiscale analysis efficiently and output requested data at all length scales in the analysis. A companion open-source Python software, NASMAT PrePost, can be used to visualize NASMAT model results and rapidly interrogate multiscale data across multiple length scales. This presentation will demonstrate some of the key features of NASMAT PrePost on two multiscale problems by quickly displaying and demonstrating connectivity among multiscale results from large datasets.

Python↗

Understanding the Impact of Dynamic Power Capping on Application Progress

Electrical power has become an important design constraint in high-performance computing (HPC) systems. On future HPC machines, power is likely to be a budgeted resource and thus managed dynamically. Power management software needs to reliably measure application performance at runtime in order to respond effectively to changes in application behavior. Execution time tells us little about how the science in the application is progressing toward an application-defined end goal. To the best of our knowledge, no study has defined or categorized online application progress in the context of power management. Based on semi-structured interviews with HPC application-specialists, we define an online notion of progress—an application-specific metric that can be monitored at runtime to provide a sense of the rate at which application science is being performed. Using instrumentation, we characterize and categorize the progress of various production scientific applications and benchmarks. We propose a model of the impact of dynamic power capping on application progress. By experimental evaluation, we show that our model accurately captures the general behavior of the progress of different classes of applications under a power cap. We believe that such a model is an important first step toward the design of more dynamic power management policies for HPC systems.

application progress↗

Antenna Controller Replacement Software

The Antenna Controller Replacement (ACR) software accurately points and monitors the Deep Space Network (DSN) 70-m and 34-m high-efficiency (HEF) ground-based antennas that are used to track primarily spacecraft and, periodically, celestial targets. To track a spacecraft, or other targets, the antenna must be accurately pointed at the spacecraft, which can be very far away with very weak signals. ACR s conical scanning capability collects the signal in a circular pattern around the target, calculates the location of the strongest signal, and adjusts the antenna pointing to point directly at the spacecraft. A real-time, closed-loop servo control algorithm performed every 0.02 second allows accurate positioning of the antenna in order to track these distant spacecraft. Additionally, this advanced servo control algorithm provides better antenna pointing performance in windy conditions. The ACR software provides high-level commands that provide a very easy user interface for the DSN operator. The operator only needs to enter two commands to start the antenna and subreflector, and Master Equatorial tracking. The most accurate antenna pointing is accomplished by aligning the antenna to the Master Equatorial, which because of its small size and sheltered location, has the most stable pointing. The antenna has hundreds of digital and analog monitor points. The ACR software provides compact displays to summarize the status of the antenna, subreflector, and the Master Equatorial. The ACR software has two major functions. First, it performs all of the steps required to accurately point the antenna (and subreflector and Master Equatorial) at the spacecraft (or celestial target). This involves controlling the antenna/ subreflector/Master-Equatorial hardware, initiating and monitoring the correct sequence of operations, calculating the position of the spacecraft relative to the antenna, executing the real-time servo control algorithm to maintain the correct position, and monitoring tracking performance.

Chao, Roger Y.↗

Fluidization of Group A Glass Particles: Experiments and Preliminary Validation

This work is aimed at providing reliable high-quality data from fluidization experiments. Geldart Group A glass beads are used as bed material. The fluidizing medium is air at atmospheric pressure which enters the system at 40% relative humidity. The air inlet velocity is varied over a broad range from 2 U mf to 26 U mf , where the minimum fluidization velocity, U mf , is 0.608 cm/s. There is not a significant change in the mean values of differential pressure; however, there are noticeable trends in their standard deviation values. Preliminary validation studies are performed using the open-source software Multiphase Flow with Interphase eXchanges (MFiX) developed by the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL). The results from Eulerian-Eulerian (MFiX-TFM, two-fluid model) and Eulerian-Lagrangian (MFiX-PIC, particle-in-cell) formulations are compared. The work presented in this report highlights the applicability of MFiX-PIC for large-scale applications, and reveals that PIC simulation offers a suitable alternative to TFM simulation when effects due to multiple components or polydispersity are significant. PIC modeling provides a readily extendible framework for such systems. However, PIC models do rely on an empirical closure for inter-particle stress. Some solution discrepancies were evident in MFiX-PIC predictions which require further analysis. As such, the study underlines the need for a systematic approach to quantify the sources of numerical uncertainty within the PIC model. However, even with known empiricism, MFiX-PIC has demonstrated considerable potential in analyzing gas-solid systems. The results obtained are encouraging and warrant further investigation to improve the predictive capability of MFiX-PIC.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Detecting Dwarf Galaxies Around NGC 55

In order to improve our understanding of the satellite populations of low-mass galaxies, the DECam Local Volume Exploration (DELVE) – DEEP Survey is performing a search for satellites around the isolated, low-mass galaxy, NGC 55. As part of this search, we characterize our dwarf galaxy detection sensitivity by injecting artificial dwarf galaxies into our data set and measuring the fraction that we can recover. Additionally, we inject and recover artificial dwarfs to test how the blending of resolved stars affects the detection of dwarf galaxies. We inject 650 artificial dwarfs across 26 DELVE-DEEP coadded images of the NGC 55 halo and use the software tool, Source Extractor, to perform source recovery. A dwarf-search pipeline is then run on our dwarf-injected catalogs, utilizing the photutils function, find peaks, and detections are recorded as a function of dwarf size and luminosity. Our results demonstrate that we are most sensitive to large, bright dwarf galaxies, and our sensitivity begins to decrease as we approach DELVE-DEEP’s detection limit or blending causes significant reductions in recovered magnitude. We also find that our results are hindered by the limitations of star-galaxy separation applied to distant, faint sources, which is possibly a consequence of the blending of small star clusters within dwarf galaxies.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗