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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
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

Accumulation of trace elements in soil and fauna within a site historically contaminated with coal combustion residues

Legacy contaminants tied to energy production are a worldwide concern. Coal combustion residues (CCRs) contain high concentrations of potentially toxic trace elements such as arsenic (As), mercury (Hg), and selenium (Se), which can persist for decades after initial contamination. Coal combustion residue disposal methods, including aquatic settling basins and landfills, can facilitate environmental exposure through intentional and accidental releases. Wildlife exposed to CCRs can experience numerous deleterious effects, such as on development, reproduction, and survival. In the current study, we quantified and compared concentrations of As, Hg, Se, and strontium (Sr) within soils and target fauna (three vertebrate and three invertebrate taxa) from a CCR-contaminated site and a reference site within the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site, South Carolina, United States. Our objectives were to (1) compare current concentrations of tested elements in soil and resident fauna to levels from our reference site, (2) assess natural attenuation of elements in soils by comparing current concentrations to historic levels, and (3) evaluate the biomagnification potential of the elements measured via body burden and trophic position correlations among fauna. Here, element concentrations were higher in contaminated soils than reference soils; however, concentrations in 2022 were unchanged from concentrations measured in 2003, suggesting no natural attenuation of tested elements. Additionally, target fauna had elevated As, Se, and Sr levels in comparison to reference samples. A positive correlation was observed in southern toads between Sr concentrations and trophic position, as assessed by nitrogen stable isotope ratios, suggesting potential for biomagnification of Sr within our study system. Collectively, our results demonstrate that legacy contaminants are still present and bioaccumulate in a diversity of taxa in a CCR-contaminated site that has not received effluents in more than 50 years, suggesting monitoring programs in CCR-contaminated sites should be maintained long term in the absence of remediation.

63 RADIATION, THERMAL, AND OTHER ENVIRON. POLLUTAN↗
NASA NTRS2007

[Space Weather Impact on the Electricity Market]

Forbes & St. Cyr (2004, hereafter "FISC") have provided evidence that the electricity market can be impacted by space weather. Our analysis indicated that the estimated market impact for PJM was 3.7 % or approximately $500 million dollars over the 19 month sample period. Kappenman has taken exception to this estimate and contends that we have exaggerated the magnitude of the problem that space weather poses to PJM. There are four specific issues: (1) he claims that we have ignored relevant literature; (2) he asserts that Dst is not an appropriate proxy for GICs in PJM; (3) he charges that our findings are inconsistent with the impact of the 17 September 2000 storm; and (4) he alleges that our discussion of October 2003 storms is misleading. In our article, we have explained our methodology, multivariate regression analysis, with a particular focus on how it compares to correlation analysis. We have also explained the limitations of our analysis. We noted that "...While the Dstlprice relationship was found to be robust, the precise estimate should be treated with a relatively high degree of caution given that econometric modeling is not an exact science as well as the fact that the measure of space weather may be a poor proxy for GICs" (paragraph 96). We have also noted that additional research using local magnetometer data are needed (paragraph 97). We did not claim that that our findings for PJM are representative of the impact of space weather on other power grids. On the contrary, we noted that ... "Only analysis of other power grids will tell. " (paragraph 97). Kappenman inaccurately asserts that we have indicated that our findings . . . "imply much higher total costs are likely across the US and elsewhere in the world." He also inaccurately asserts that we have claimed that " . . . Dst is the most suited proxy for GIC in the PJM grid.. ." Moreover, he inaccurately refers to our analysis as a correlation study that uses Dst as quasi-binary indicator.

SaintCyr, O. Chris↗
DOE OSTI2026

Multidimensional Distributional Neural Network Output Demonstrated in Super‐Resolution of Surface Wind Speed

Accurate quantification of uncertainty in neural network predictions remains a central challenge for scientific applications involving high-dimensional, correlated data. While existing methods capture either aleatoric or epistemic uncertainty, few offer closed-form, multidimensional distributions that preserve spatial correlation while remaining computationally tractable. In this work, we present a framework for training neural networks with a multidimensional Gaussian loss, generating a closed-form predictive distribution over outputs informed by non-identically distributed training data. Our approach captures aleatoric uncertainty by iteratively estimating the means and covariance matrices, and is demonstrated on a super-resolution example out-of-training-sample. We leverage a Fourier representation of the covariance matrix to stabilize network training and preserve spatial correlation. We introduce a novel regularization strategy—referred to as information sharing—that interpolates between image-specific and global covariance estimates, enabling convergence of the super-resolution downscaling network trained on image-specific distributional loss functions. This framework allows for efficient sampling, explicit correlation modeling, and extensions to more complex distribution families all without disrupting prediction performance. We demonstrate the method on a surface wind speed downscaling task and discuss its broader applicability to uncertainty-aware prediction in scientific models.

17 WIND ENERGY↗
NASA NTRS1996

A Study of the Development of Steady and Periodic Unsteady Turbulent Wakes Through Curved Channels at Positive, Zero, and Negative Streamwise Pressure Gradients, Part 1

The turbomachinery wake flow development is largely influenced by streamline curvature and streamwise pressure gradient. The objective of this investigation is to study the development of the wake under the influence of streamline curvature and streamwise pressure gradient. The experimental investigation is carried out in two phases. The first phase involves the study of the wake behind a stationary circular cylinder (steady wake) in curved channels at positive, zero, and negative streamwise pressure gradients. The mean velocity and Reynolds stress components are measured using a X-hot-film probe. The measured quantities obtained in probe coordinates are transformed to a curvilinear coordinate system along the wake centerline and are presented in similarity coordinates. The results of the steady wakes suggest strong asymmetry in velocity and Reynolds stress components. However, the velocity defect profiles in similarity coordinates are almost symmetrical and follow the same distribution as the zero pressure gradient straight wake. The results of Reynolds stress distributions show higher values on the inner side of the wake than the outer side. Other quantities, including the decay of maximum velocity defect, growth of wake width, and wake integral parameters, are also presented for the three different pressure gradient cases of steady wake. The decay rate of velocity defect is fastest for the negative streamwise pressure gradient case and slowest for the positive pressure gradient case. Conversely, the growth of the wake width is fastest for the positive streamwise pressure gradient case and slowest for the negative streamwise pressure gradient. The second phase studies the development of periodic unsteady wakes generated by the circular cylinders of the rotating wake generator in a curved channel at zero streamwise pressure gradient. Instantaneous velocity components of the periodic unsteady wakes, measured with a stationary X-hot-film probe, are analyzed by the phase averaging techniques. The temporal distribution of velocity and Reynolds stress components obtained in a stationary frame of reference are transformed to a spatial distribution in a relative frame of reference. Profiles of phase-averaged velocity and Reynolds stress distributions in the relative frame of reference and similarity coordinates are presented. The velocity defect and Reynolds stress distributions agree with the results of the wake development behind a stationary cylinder in the curved channel at zero streamwise pressure gradient. The phase-averaged third-order correlations, presented in the relative frame of reference and similarity coordinates, show pronounced asymmetric features.

Schobeiri, M. T.↗
NASA NTRS1999

Refinement of Models for VLBI Analysis

Continual refinement of models and estimation methods is an integral part of improving VLBI measurements of Earth orientation and position along with advances in instrumentation and observing strategy. The modeling of the troposphere continues to be challenging with recent improvements in treating the mean gradient and gradient variations affecting the terrestrial reference frame scale and celestial declinations near the current limits of accuracy. Revised models of nutation and solid Earth tides are implemented in CALC 9.0 to conform to the latest IERS Conventions along with other changes to facilitate use by VLBI correlators. Using data since 1995 the celestial reference frame has been extended and improved consistent with the definition and 0.25 mas accuracy limit of the ICRF. The current definition of the VLBI terrestrial reference frame places a floor on the accuracy of station velocities at the 0.4 mm/yr level. The establishment of the IVS (International VLBI Service for Geodesy and Astrometry) in the past year will provide a forum for further improvements of VLBI data analysis.

Ma, C.↗
NASA NTRS1978

The free shear layer tone phenomenon and probe interference

The reported investigation shows that the hot-wire probe induces stable upstream oscillations in a free shear layer, similar to the jet edge tone mechanism. This effect can be significant also in measurements involving large-scale organized structure, conditional sampling, space-time correlation, and convection velocity, when a reference or indicator probe may be used near the origin of the free shear layer. It appears that even in a free shear layer without any wedge, an object in the flow sufficiently downstream can also provide feedback to the flow upstream. A description is given of the edge-tone phenomenon which is observed when a thin slit jet impinges on a plane wedge. Attention is given to the free shear layer tone induced by a hot-wire probe, the free shear layer tone phenomenon, and shear layer tone eigenvalues and eigenfunctions.

Hussain, A. K. M. F.↗
NASA NTRS1979

Apparatus for measuring an aircraft's speed and height

An apparatus for measuring aircraft horizontal speed and height above ground without the need for airborne cooperative devices is presented. Two ground level TV cameras separated by a measured distance and pointed at zenith are placed in line with the projection of the expected path of the aircraft. Speed is determined by measuring the time that it takes the aircraft to travel between the fields of view of the two TV cameras using zenith crossings as the reference points. Height is determined by correlating the speed with the time required to cross the field of view of either of the two cameras.

Young, W. R.↗
NASA NTRS1989

Ordering of the O-O stretching vibrational frequencies in ozone

The ordering of nu1 and nu3 for O3 is incorrectly predicted by most theoretical methods, including some very high level methods. The first systematic electron correlation method based on one-reference configuration to solve this problem is the coupled cluster single and double excitation method. However, a relatively large basis set, triple zeta plus double polarization is required. Comparison with other theoretical methods is made.

Scuseria, Gustavo E.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Simplified Digital Spectrum Analyzer

Spectrum analyzer computes approximate cross-correlations between noisy input signal and reference signal of known frequency, yielding measure of amplitude of sinusoidal component of input. Complexity and power consumed less than other digital spectrum analyzers. Performs no multiplications, and because processes data on each frequency independently, focuses on narrow spectral range without processing data on rest of spectrum.

Cole, Steven W.↗
NASA NTRS1990

Stress Analyzer

SPATE 900 Dynamic Stress Analyzer is an acronym for Stress Pattern Analysis by Thermal Emission. It detects stress-induced temperature changes in a structure and indicates the degree of stress. Ometron, Inc.'s SPATE 9000 consists of a scan unit and a data display. The scan unit contains an infrared channel focused on the test structure to collect thermal radiation, and a visual channel used to set up the scan area and interrogate the stress display. Stress data is produced by detecting minute temperature changes, down to one-thousandth of a degree Centigrade, resulting from the application to the structure of dynamic loading. The electronic data processing system correlates the temperature changes with a reference signal to determine stress level.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2016

Basin-Scale Assessment of the Land Surface Water Budget in the National Centers for Environmental Prediction Operational and Research NLDAS-2 Systems

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the components of the land surface water budget in the four land surface models (Noah, SAC-Sacramento Soil Moisture Accounting Model, (VIC) Variable Infiltration Capacity Model, and Mosaic) applied in the newly implemented National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) operational and research versions of the North American Land Data Assimilation System version 2 (NLDAS-2). This work focuses on monthly and annual components of the water budget over 12 National Weather Service (NWS) River Forecast Centers (RFCs). Monthly gridded FLUX Network (FLUXNET) evapotranspiration (ET) from the Max-Planck Institute (MPI) of Germany, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) total runoff (Q), changes in total water storage (dS/dt, derived as a residual by utilizing MPI ET and USGS Q in the water balance equation), and Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) observed total water storage anomaly (TWSA) and change (TWSC) are used as reference data sets. Compared to these ET and Q benchmarks, Mosaic and SAC (Noah and VIC) in the operational NLDAS-2 overestimate (underestimate) mean annual reference ET and underestimate (overestimate) mean annual reference Q. The multimodel ensemble mean (MME) is closer to the mean annual reference ET and Q. An anomaly correlation (AC) analysis shows good AC values for simulated monthly mean Q and dS/dt but significantly smaller AC values for simulated ET. Upgraded versions of the models utilized in the research side of NLDAS-2 yield largely improved performance in the simulation of these mean annual and monthly water component diagnostics. These results demonstrate that the three intertwined efforts of improving (1) the scientific understanding of parameterization of land surface processes, (2) the spatial and temporal extent of systematic validation of land surface processes, and (3) the engineering-oriented aspects such as parameter calibration and optimization are key to substantially improving product quality in various land data assimilation systems.

NLDAS-2↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Flow field Reconstruction for Inhomogeneous Turbulence using Data and Physics Driven Models

A methodology combining Large Eddy Simulation (LES) trained data and a physics driven wave packet model to obtain a reduced order reconstruction for broadband, three-dimensional, temporally stationary but spatially inhomogeneous, incompressible turbulence. Wake turbulence generated by an axisymmetric dragging disk with a turbulent co-flow serves as the benchmark test case. We begin by studying the proper-orthogonal decomposition of the turbulent fluctuations taken from a high-resolution LES to first identify whether the fields demonstrate a low-rank character. It is argued that the presence of the turbulent co-flow results in a largely broadband character lacking any tonal properties. This is especially true for Strouhal numbers greater than 1 and only a small fraction of energy is contained in the leading order Kelvin-Helmholtz modes. As such reconstructions and reduced order modeling purely relying on data from LES does not appear to be a lucrative solution - contrary to problems with strongly tonal character. To supplement the missing energy from a low order truncated mode expansion, we utilize a physics based super-resolution (enrichment) algorithm that relies on spatio-temporally localized Gabor wave packets whose time evolution is described using a set of ordinary differential equations. The reconstructed flow has single- and two-point correlations that are consistent with the reference high resolution simulation data.

SLS↗
NASA NTRS2009

New Nd-142 Evidence for a Non-Chondritic Composition of the Moon

The coupled Sm-147,146-Nd-143,142 systematics of lunar samples has been extensively studied for estimating the timescale of lunar differentiation. The published datasets yield consistent ages for Nd isotopic closure within the lunar mantle of approx.200 Myr after CAI formation. Although this time constraint is consistent with estimates derived from Hf-W chronometry of the Moon (>60 Myr after CAI formation), there is debate as to whether this age has chronological significance. Furthermore, there are discrepancies regarding the Nd isotope composition of the bulk Moon. Rankenburg et al. obtained a epsilon Nd-142 vs. Sm-147/Nd-144 correlation for lunar samples passing though the chondritic reference value (Sm-147/Nd-144 = 0.1967, epsilon Nd-142 = -0.21), suggesting that the Moon has a chondritic bulk composition. In contrast, the other datasets define a correlation line that passes approx.10-20 ppm above, suggesting that the Moon has a superchondritic Sm-147/Nd-144 (approx.0.206), close to that of the early depleted Earth (EDM). We present new Sm-Nd data for a high-Ti mare basalt (70135), two low-Ti mare basalt (LAP 02205 and MIL 05035) and a KREEPy low-Ti mare basalt (NWA 2977). These data are used to evaluate the significance of the Sm-Nd systematics for constraining the timescale of lunar differentiation and the bulk Nd isotope composition of the Moon.

Nyquist, L.↗
NASA NTRS2019

Accelerated Simulation of Air Pollution Using NVIDIA RAPIDS

Atmospheric chemistry models are a central tool to study and forecast the impact of air pollution on the environment, vegetation, and human health. However, the numerical simulation of chemical kinetics is computationally expensive due to the stiffness of the system of ordinary differential equations that describes atmospheric chemistry. Here we present an alternative approach to the computation of atmospheric chemistry based on machine learning. Our training data set is produced using the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) model with GEOS-Chem chemistry, run on the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) Discover supercomputing cluster on 384 Intel Xeon Haswell cores. This model spends more than 50% of total run time on solving atmospheric chemistry. The data set contains as input features the air pollution concentrations before solving the differential equations, together with some key physical parameters such as temperature and sun intensity. As target variables we define the air pollution concentrations after solving the differential equations. Using Dask-cuDF and Dask-XGBoost on the NVIDIA RAPIDS platform on 8 Tesla V100 GPUs, we generate from this training set gradient boosted decision tree models that can reproduce the simulation of chemical kinetics. We do this on the NCCS Advanced Data Analytics Platform (ADAPT) science cloud environment. Our application takes full advantage of recent advances in Dask-XGBoost, such as multi-node and multi-GPU scaling for distributed training with large data sets. The increase in training data size enabled by this is critical to capture the full range of chemical environments encountered across the globe and all annual seasons.The boosted tree models offer good predictability and show many of the features of the full chemistry reference simulation. Further improvements can be achieved through mass balance considerations and by accounting for error correlations. We incorporate the boosted tree models into the GEOS reference model using XGBoost's C API. This enables a seamless integration of the GPU trained models into GEOS-Chem, which is written in Fortran and optimized for use in a massively parallel CPU environment. We show the benefits of this approach and discuss the potential speedup of this machine learning accelerated atmospheric chemistry model.

Keller, Christoph A.↗
DOE OSTI2026

Evaluation of a Smoke Opacity Sensor for Improving Residential Wood Heater Combustion

Residential wood heating lacks real-time particulate matter (PM) monitoring technologies capable of measuring emissions directly from flue gases. This study evaluates the performance of the Octoring, an opacity-based smoke sensor developed to monitor wood heater emissions and provide feedback for improved combustion. The device was tested on catalytic and non-catalytic cordwood heaters and a pellet heater during startup, high-burn, and low-burn phases. Performance was assessed against reference particle instruments and gravimetric measurements using concordance, correlation, and agreement analyses. Results show that temperature-dependent drift is the primary limitation affecting sensor accuracy, with systematic drift observed across ambient and combustion conditions. Agreement with reference instruments ranged from poor to good depending on operating conditions, with the strongest performance observed during pellet heater high-burn operation. These findings establish a performance baseline for opacity-based sensing technologies and identify key areas for further development before practical deployment in residential wood combustion monitoring systems.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
NASA NTRS1997

GOME wavelength calibration using solar and atmospheric spectra

Spectral information in the global ozone monitoring experiment (GOME) solar irradiance spectra and GOME earth radiance spectra are used in conjunction with the GOME solar reference spectrum to provide absolute vacuum internal wavelength calibration for GOME. Two methods for wavelength calibration of GOME data are investigated. The first employs chi-square minimization of a merit function involving wavelength and the GOME slit function. It is quite robust and requires little GOME data in the processing (calibration window regions from 15 to 40 pixels). The second employs cross correlation of GOME data and the solar reference spectrum in the Fourier transform domain, using a procedure in the image reduction and analysis facility (IRAF) software system developed for the determination of galaxy redshifts. It also requires small amounts of GOME data (calibration window regions with from 10 to 15 pixels). Both methods provide absolute wavelength calibration accurate to a small fraction of a GOME pixel across the entire GOME spectrum, and to 0.001 nm over much of the range.

Caspar, C.↗
NASA NTRS2011

Reducing the Read Noise of H2RG Detector Arrays by more Efficient use of Reference Signals

We present a process for characterizing the correlation properties of the noise in large two-dimensional detector arrays, and describe an efficient process for its removal. In the case of the 2k x 2k HAWAII-2RG detectors (H2RG) detectors from Teledyne which are being used on the Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), we find that we can reduce the read noise by thirty percent. Noise on large spatial scales is dramatically reduced. With this relatively simple process, we provide a performance improvement that is equivalent to a significant increase in telescope collecting area for high resolution spectroscopy with NIRSpec.

Rauscher, Bernard J.↗
NASA NTRS2003

X-29 High Alpha Test in the National Transonic Facility

This paper describes the X-29A research program at the National Transonic Facility. This wind tunnel test leveraged the X-29A high alpha flight test program by enabling ground-to-flight correlation studies with an emphasis on Reynolds number effects. The background and objectives of this test program, as well as the comparison of high Reynolds number wind tunnel data to X-29A flight test data are presented. The effects of Reynolds number on the forebody pressures at high angles of attack are also presented. The purpose of this paper is to document this test and serve as a reference for future ground-to-flight correlation studies, and high angle-of-attack investigations. Good ground-to-flight correlations were observed for angles of attack up to 50 deg, and Reynolds number effects were also observed.

Underwood, Pamela J.↗