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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 127 records · Page 7

Control And Optimization Modular Modeling Application For Nuclear Deployment

The purpose of the COMMAND code is to provide a flexible, scalable tool for use in developing, integrating, and testing the technologies necessary for achieving autonomous operations of advanced nuclear reactors. The code enables users to efficiently implement custom simulations and experiments by combining key methods from different software modules. These modules are focused on: modeling and simulation tools, such as nuclear simulation tools used for high-fidelity modeling (e.g., Reactor Excursion and Leak Analysis Program [RELAP5-3D] and Monte Carlo N-Particle [MCNP]); machine learning and optimization tools (e.g., anomaly detection and data-driven modeling techniques); advanced control in its digital, high-performance, and supervisory control forms (e.g., proportional integral derivative (PID) control and model predictive control (MPC); and integration with hardware through industrial communication protocols. To ensure flexibility and scalability, COMMAND was designed to be both modular—the software “pieces” all inherit from generic building blocks and can be combined and connected to create complicated simulations—and high performing—designed for parallel processing, enabling simulations and experiments to take advantage of multi-core computers, servers, and nodes. The code is written in the Python programming language due to the language's popularity, active community, and open-source and cross-platform nature. Maintaining consistency with other simulation tools used within the nuclear energy community, users implement simulations and experiments through text input files, which define components, parameters, connections, etc., through lines of text. Given that COMMAND is written in Python, these input files are native Python scripts, and so use the standard Python structure and formatting. This also enables users to take advantage of Python's extensive package library to develop custom capabilities for their specific use cases.

Faber, Jacob [Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Ida↗

Adorym: a multi-platform generic X-ray image reconstruction framework based on automatic differentiation

We describe and demonstrate an optimization-based X-ray image reconstruction framework called Adorym. Our framework provides a generic forward model, allowing one code framework to be used for a wide range of imaging methods ranging from near-field holography to fly-scan ptychographic tomography. By using automatic differentiation for optimization, Adorym has the flexibility to refine experimental parameters including probe positions, multiple hologram alignment, and object tilts. It is written with strong support for parallel processing, allowing large datasets to be processed on high-performance computing systems. We demonstrate its use on several experimental datasets to show improved image quality through parameter refinement.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Generating Billion-Edge Scale-Free Networks in Seconds: Performance Study of a Novel GPU-based Preferential Attachment Model

A novel parallel algorithm is presented for generating random scale-free networks using the preferential-attachment model. The algorithm, named cuPPA, is custom-designed for single instruction multiple data (SIMD) style of parallel processing supported by modern processors such as graphical processing units (GPUs). To the best of our knowledge, our algorithm is the first to exploit GPUs, and also the fastest implementation available today, to generate scale free networks using the preferential attachment model. A detailed performance study is presented to understand the scalability and runtime characteristics of the cuPPA algorithm. In one of the best cases, when executed on an NVidia GeForce 1080 GPU, cuPPA generates a scale free network of a billion edges in less than 2 seconds.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

NSR&D FY17 Report: CartaBlanca Capability Enhancements

Over the last several years, particle technology in the CartaBlanca code has been matured and has been successfully applied to a wide variety of physical problems. It has been shown that the particle methods, especially Los Alamos's dual domain material point method, is capable of computing many problems involves complex physics, chemistries accompanied by large material deformations, where the traditional finite element or Eulerian method encounter significant difficulties. In FY17, the CartaBlanca code has been enhanced with physical models and numerical algorithms. We started out to compute penetration and HE safety problems. Most of the year we focused on the TEPLA model improvement testing against the sweeping wave experiment by Gray et al., because it was found that pore growth and material failure are essentially important for our tasks and needed to be understood for modeling the penetration and the can experiments efficiently. We extended the TEPLA mode from the point view of ensemble phase average to include the effects of nite deformation. It is shown that the assumed pore growth model in TEPLA is actually an exact result from the theory. Alone this line, we then generalized the model to include finite deformations to consider nonlinear dynamics of large deformation. The interaction between the HE product gas and the solid metal is based on the multi-velocity formation. Our preliminary numerical results suggest good agreement between the experiment and the numerical results, pending further verification. To improve the parallel processing capabilities of the CartaBlanca code, we are actively working with the Next Generation Code (NGC) project to rewrite selected packages using C++. This work is expected to continue in the following years. This effort also makes the particle technology developed with CartaBlanca project available to other part of the laboratory. Working with the NGC project and rewriting some parts of the code also given us an opportunity to improve our numerical implementations of the method and to take advantage of recently advances in the numerical methods, such as multiscale algorithms.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

An FPGA-based Pattern Recognition Associative Memory

Pattern recognition associative memory (PRAM) devices are parallel processing engines which are used to tackle the complex combinatorics of track nding algorithms, particularly for silicon based tracking triggers. PRAM development has been mostly limited to the realm of ASICs, which often leads to lengthy and expensive design cycles. FPGAs allow for quick iterations, making them an ideal hardware platform for designing and evaluating new PRAM features before committing to silicon. In this paper we present our FPGA-based PRAM designs and discuss how logic blocks which were originally developed for ASICs have been redesigned to take advantage of modern FPGA architectures.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

A Scalable HPC Insider Threat Monitoring System

Cyber Equations, Inc. is reporting on the results of its DOE SBIR Phase I project for the development of a Scalable HPC Insider Threat Monitoring System. This final report to the Department of Energy for Task DE-FOA-0001618 covers the period from 02/21/2017 to 02/20/2018 and summarizes the larger research accomplishments, which can be divided in theoretical and laboratory experiments. One of the many challenges for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is the support of the high-performance computing (HPC) centers while providing quality information services, strategic vision, leadership, technical expertise, and capabilities necessary to enable the DOE to deliver effective, efficient, economical, and secure HPC services. In order to realize a secure DOE laboratory enterprise, DOE facilities operations must counter a wide range of cyber insider threats, from unsophisticated adversaries up to advanced, nation state sponsored actors. The DOE laboratories also presents an enormous insider attack surface of an ever-growing number of computers, networks, and devices all running a myriad of software. In addition, the DOE laboratories are connected to a variety of external organizations which multiplies the possibility of insider threat. During this SBIR project Cyber Equations developed a strategic combination of supervised and unsupervised machine learning techniques to control scale and classify whether entities, such as hosts, actors, or documents, are showing suspicious insider behavior. We conducted experiments using real cyber data to show that changes in observable behavior (e.g., changes in outbound traffic patterns) are indicative of attacks executing (e.g., insiders exfiltrating data, bots calling home, or an attack spreading). The features and methods we use, have been used in the anomaly detection research and development community for a significant amount of time and robust implementations are openly available. K-Means clustering, Decision Trees, and Support Vector Machine based classifiers are readily available through the R language and open source H20 machine learning framework. The Cyber Equations approach is novel in its use of these classifiers combined with Hadoop based parallel processing technology. The five stages of processing used by CyberInsider improve scalability and reduce the high number of false positives normally associated with network anomaly detection. In summary, the Cyber Equations has successfully accomplished all of its Phase I tasks and demonstrated the feasibility of the Insider Threat Monitoring System.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Dynamic Contingency Analysis Tool 2.0 User Manual with Test System Examples

This document introduces Version 2 of the Dynamic Contingency Analysis Tool (DCAT) software package developed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and serves as a guide for using this package to conduct cascading failure simulations for the electric power system. The DCAT is an open-platform and publicly available software; it is intended to help develop applications that aim to improve the capabilities of power system planning engineers to assess the impact and likelihood of extreme contingencies and potential cascading events across their systems and interconnections. Outputs from the DCAT will support finding mitigating actions to reduce the risk of cascading outages in technically sound and effective ways. This manual provides detailed instructions on how to use this tool on multicore Windows workstations or servers. In the public version of DCAT, several improvements have been made over the previous version: (1) it was modularized; (2) a graphical user interface (GUI) was developed; (3) a new version of the MPjobs parallel processing module was incorporated; and (4) a batch-processing function was added. The features of the DCAT GUI are described, including some examples of how to use the GUI to perform simulations. A full explanation of the DCAT methodology is available in the Phase 1 report.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Massively Parallel Capability in Sierra/SD for Simulation Vibration with Piezoelectrics

Sierra/SD is an engineering structural dynamics code that provides Sandia and other customers a tool to model structural and acoustic physics on large complex physical systems using massively parallel processing. This report provides a detailed overview on Sierra/SD’s most recent physics package: coupled electro-mechanical physics. This capability uses the finite element method to model coupled electro-mechanical physics exhibited by piezoelectric materials. This report provides an applications overview, theory overview, and verification examples demonstrating the electro-mechanical physics modeling capabilities of Sierra/SD.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Rapid QSTS Simulations for High-Resolution Comprehensive Assessment of Distributed PV

The rapid increase in penetration of distributed energy resources on the electric power distribution system has created a need for more comprehensive interconnection modeling and impact analysis. Unlike conventional scenario-based studies, quasi-static time-series (QSTS) simulations can realistically model time-dependent voltage controllers and the diversity of potential impacts that can occur at different times of year. However, to accurately model a distribution system with all its controllable devices, a yearlong simulation at 1-second resolution is often required, which could take conventional computers a computational time of 10 to 120 hours when an actual unbalanced distribution feeder is modeled. This computational burden is a clear limitation to the adoption of QSTS simulations in interconnection studies and for determining optimal control solutions for utility operations. The solutions we developed include accurate and computationally efficient QSTS methods that could be implemented in existing open-source and commercial software used by utilities and the development of methods to create high-resolution proxy data sets. This project demonstrated multiple pathways for speeding up the QSTS computation using new and innovative methods for advanced time-series analysis, faster power flow solvers, parallel processing of power flow solutions and circuit reduction. The target performance level for this project was achieved with year-long high-resolution time series solutions run in less than 5 minutes within an acceptable error.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Understanding Phase Stability of Metallic 1T-MoS2 Anodes for Sodium-Ion Batteries

We discuss metallic 1T-MoS2 as an anode material for sodium-ion batteries (SIBs). In situ Raman is used to investigate the stability of metallic MoS2 during the charging and discharging processes. Parallel first-principles computations are used to gain insight into the experimental observations, including the measured conductivities and the high capacity of the anode.

Lane, Christopher (ORCID:0000000329459352)↗

CUDA Enabled Graph Subset Examiner

Finding Godsil-McKay switching sets in graphs is one way to demonstrate that a specific graph is not determined by its spectrum--the eigenvalues of its adjacency matrix. An important area of active research in pure mathematics is determining which graphs are determined by their spectra, i.e. when the spectrum of the adjacency matrix uniquely determines the underlying graph. We are interested in exploring the spectra of graphs in the Johnson scheme and specifically seek to determine which of these graphs are determined by their spectra. Given a graph G, a Godsil-McKay switching set is an induced subgraph H on 2k vertices with the following properties: I) H is regular, ii) every vertex in G/H is adjacent to either 0, k, or 2k vertices of H, and iii) at least one vertex in G/H is adjacent to k vertices in H. The software package examines each subset of a user specified size to determine whether or not it satisfies those 3 conditions. The software makes use of the massive parallel processing power of CUDA enabled GPUs. It also exploits the vertex transitivity of graphs in the Johnson scheme by reasoning that if G has a Godsil-McKay switching set, then it has a switching set which includes vertex 1. While the code (in its current state) is tuned to this specific problem, the method of examining each induced subgraph of G can be easily re-written to check for any user specified conditions on the subgraphs and can therefore be used much more broadly.

Johnston, Jeremy T.↗

Method of synchronizing independent functional unit

A system for synchronizing parallel processing of a plurality of functional processing units (FPU), a first FPU and a first program counter to control timing of a first stream of program instructions issued to the first FPU by advancement of the first program counter; a second FPU and a second program counter to control timing of a second stream of program instructions issued to the second FPU by advancement of the second program counter, the first FPU is in communication with a second FPU to synchronize the issuance of a first stream of program instructions to the second stream of program instructions and the second FPU is in communication with the first FPU to synchronize the issuance of the second stream program instructions to the first stream of program instructions.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Method of synchronizing independent functional unit

A system for synchronizing parallel processing of a plurality of functional processing units (FPU), a first FPU and a first program counter to control timing of a first stream of program instructions issued to the first FPU by advancement of the first program counter; a second FPU and a second program counter to control timing of a second stream of program instructions issued to the second FPU by advancement of the second program counter, the first FPU is in communication with a second FPU to synchronize the issuance of a first stream of program instructions to the second stream of program instructions and the second FPU is in communication with the first FPU to synchronize the issuance of the second stream program instructions to the first stream of program instructions.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Method of synchronizing independent functional unit

A system for synchronizing parallel processing of a plurality of functional processing units (FPU), a first FPU and a first program counter to control timing of a first stream of program instructions issued to the first FPU by advancement of the first program counter; a second FPU and a second program counter to control timing of a second stream of program instructions issued to the second FPU by advancement of the second program counter, the first FPU is in communication with a second FPU to synchronize the issuance of a first stream of program instructions to the second stream of program instructions and the second FPU is in communication with the first FPU to synchronize the issuance of the second stream program instructions to the first stream of program instructions.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Regulations, Codes, and Standards (RCS) for Multi-Fuel Motor Vehicle Dispensing Stations

In the United States, requirements for liquid motor vehicle fuelling stations have been in place for many years. Requirements for motor vehicle fuelling stations for gaseous fuels, including hydrogen, are relatively new. These requirements have, in the United States, been developed along different code and standards paths. The liquid fuels have been addressed in a single document and the gaseous fuels have been addressed in documents specific to an individual gas. The result of these parallel processes is that multi-fuel stations are subject to requirements in several fuelling regulations, codes, and standards (RCS). This paper describes a configuration of a multi-fuel motor vehicle fuelling station and provides a detailed breakdown of the codes and standards requirements. The multi-fuel station would dispense what the U.S. Department of Energy defines as the six key alternative fuels: biodiesel, electricity, ethanol, hydrogen, natural gas, and propane. The paper will also identify any apparent gaps in RCS and potential research projects that could help fill these gaps.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗

Computing for the DUNE Long-Baseline Neutrino Oscillation Experiment

This is a talk given at Computers in High Energy Physics in Adelaide, South Australia, Australia in November 2019. It is partially intended to explain the context of DUNE Computing for computing specialists. The DUNE collaboration consists of over 180 institutions from 33 countries. The experiment is in preparation now with commissioning of the first 10kT fiducial volume Liquid Argon TPC expected over the period 2025-2028 and a long data taking run with 4 modules expected from 2029 and beyond. An active prototyping program is already in place with a short test beam run with a 700T, 15,360 channel prototype of single-phase readout at the neutrino platform at CERN in late 2018 and tests of a similar sized dual-phase detector scheduled for mid-2019. The 2018 test beam run was a valuable live test of our computing model. The detector produced raw data at rates of up to ~2GB/s. These data were stored at full rate on tape at CERN and Fermilab and replicated at sites in the UK and Czech Republic. In total 1.2 PB of raw data from beam and cosmic triggers were produced and reconstructed during the six week test beam run. Baseline predictions for the full DUNE detector data, starting in the late 2020's are 30-60 PB of raw data per year. In contrast to traditional HEP computational problems, DUNE's Liquid Argon TPC data consist of simple but very large (many GB) 2D data objects which share many characteristics with astrophysical images. This presents opportunities to use advances in machine learning and pattern recognition as a frontier user of High Performance Computing facilities capable of massively parallel processing.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

HERMAN, the Nanoparticle Robot (360 video)

Science in 360°: Say hello to HERMAN, a robot that accelerates the synthesis of nanoparticles for a wide range of cool applications such as biosensors, smart window coatings, and display technologies. HERMAN (aka High-throughput Experimentation Robot for the Multiplexed Automation of Nanochemistry) is a one-of-a-kind robot at Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry that brings parallel processing and an extreme level of precision to the materials discovery process.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗