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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

Evaluation of cooling setpoint setback savings in commercial buildings using electricity and exterior temperature time series data

Commercial buildings account for a significant amount of total energy produced in the US, and the Heating Ventilation and Cooling (HVAC) systems are one of the most significant components of their overall consumption. In this study, we proposed a new data-driven approach to evaluate HVAC cooling systems in commercial buildings and identify savings opportunities. The focus is an investigation of the impact of thermostat setpoint setback but using only whole building, electricity data taken at 15-min intervals for the analysis. We conducted a comparative study of setpoint setback characteristics on 432 commercial buildings with 5 building usage types across the United States. To accomplish this, both piecewise and Random Forest regression algorithms were employed using electricity and exterior temperature datasets to identify operational characteristics and the effective setpoints in the building to determine the corresponding savings opportunities. Both occupied and unoccupied time periods were studied across cooling degree days (CDD), when air conditioning is typically operational. Here the results show that in commercial buildings, on average, cooling systems account for 9.5% of total consumption. When a one degree setback during the cooling season is applied, an average of approximately 1.1% of annual consumption is achieved; retail and office buildings demonstrate the highest potential for savings. Additionally, we identified that the number of cooling degree days and base to peak ratio (BPR) are the most important variables for predicting the magnitude of the consumption of cooling systems.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

A critical analysis of U-Pu-Zr phase transitions using calorimetric, microstructural, and phase equilibria data

Metallic fuels consisting primarily of uranium, plutonium, and zirconium (U-Pu-Zr) are a leading material candidate for fast-spectrum nuclear reactors. Early demonstration programs proved the principle of safe and efficient fast reactor operation, however there is still considerable uncertainty regarding the phase equilibria and microstructural evolution across the ternary composition space. Quantitative phase formation and identification measurements are scarce and often incomplete, with studies reporting either phase transition temperatures or phase identification data, but not both from the same specimens. In this study, we critically compared experimental and calculated phase transition data and correlated with the microstructure and phase characterization data of as-cast and annealed U-Pu-Zr alloys. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) was used to measure phase transitions in the subsolidus regions (723−948 K) of three ternary U-Pu-Zr alloys with similar plutonium concentrations but various U/Zr ratios. Due to sluggish kinetics and narrow ranges of phase stability, complex peaks required the use of a Frazier-Suzuki peak fitting algorithm to deconvolute and calculate transition peak temperatures and enthalpies. We also identified trends of phase transition behavior by critically comparing our DSC data with previous phase transition measurements as well as historical and calculated phase equilibrium diagrams. In conclusion, this provides a critical approach for benchmarking and assessing the quality of new U-Pu-Zr phase equilibria data prior to its incorporation into nuclear material databases.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Automated fault detection of residential air-conditioning systems using thermostat drive cycles

Residential air conditioning equipment comprises a significant portion of the total energy consumption of a home. Unfortunately, air-conditioning systems can be susceptible to faulty operation either from installation errors or faults that accrue over the equipment’s lifetime. This paper presents a novel automated fault detection algorithm for residential air-conditioning systems that can alert the homeowner of the presence of these faults. The proposed algorithm utilizes only the home’s thermostat and outside air temperature to perform automated fault detection over the course of the equipment’s lifetime, including immediately after installation. The algorithm uses an extended Kalman filter approach to identify a three-resistor, two-capacitor (3R2C) electrical equivalent thermodynamic model. The identified 3R2C model is used to predict cooling times during a testing period comprising of a series of thermostat drive-cycle experiments. We tested the algorithm on an EnergyPlus™ model of a typical residential building in Orlando, Florida. Duct faults, indoor airflow faults, and refrigerant undercharge faults were introduced into the building model one at a time. The algorithm was able to accurately determine duct-leak faults, 40% airflow faults, 40% undercharge faults, and no-fault cases with an accuracy of 70%, 77%, 82%, and 87%, respectively.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Acoustic Tomography of the Atmosphere: A Large-Eddy Simulation Sensitivity Study

Accurate measurement of atmospheric turbulent fluctuations is critical for understanding environmental dynamics and improving models in applications such as wind energy. Advanced remote sensing technologies are essential for capturing instantaneous velocity and temperature fluctuations. Acoustic tomography (AT) offers a promising approach that utilizes sound travel times between an array of transducers to reconstruct turbulence fields. This study presents a systematic evaluation of the time-dependent stochastic inversion (TDSI) algorithm for AT using synthetic travel-time measurements derived from large-eddy simulation (LES) fields under both neutral and convective atmospheric boundary-layer conditions. Unlike prior work that relied on field observations or idealized fields, the LES framework provides a ground-truth atmospheric state, enabling quantitative assessment of TDSI retrieval reliability, sensitivity to travel-time measurement noise, and dependence on covariance model parameters and temporal data integration. A detailed sensitivity analysis was conducted to determine the best-fit model parameters, identify the tolerance thresholds for parameter mismatch, and establish a maximum spatial resolution. The TDSI algorithm successfully reconstructed large-scale velocity and temperature fluctuations with root mean square errors ( RMSE s) below 0.35 m/s and 0.12 K, respectively. Spectral analysis established a maximum spatial resolution of approximately 1.4 m, and reconstructions remained robust for travel-time measurement uncertainties up to 0.002 s. These findings provide critical insights into the operational limits of TDSI and inform future applications of AT for atmospheric turbulence characterization and system design.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

Structural analysis of molten materials by a remote fiber optic Raman sensor

This study presents a novel in situ high-temperature fiber optic Raman probe that enables the study of the physical properties and structure of molten samples at temperatures up to 1400 °C. To demonstrate the functionality of the high-temperature fiber optic Raman probe, different composition mold fluxes were evaluated in this report. The Raman spectra at flux molten temperature were successfully collected and analyzed. A deconvolution algorithm was employed to identify peaks in the spectra associated with the molecular structure of the components in each sample. Here, the experimental results demonstrate that the composition-dependent Raman signal shift can be detected at high temperatures, indicating that molten materials analysis using a high-temperature Raman system shows significant promise. This flexible and reliable high-temperature Raman measurement method has great potential for various applications, such as materials development, composition and structure monitoring during high-temperature processing, chemical identification, and process monitoring in industrial production.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

Fracture Characterization Via AI‐Assisted Analysis of Temperature Logs

Abstract Fractures control fluid flow, mass transport, and heat transfer in a geothermal reservoir. This makes accurate characterization of fracture networks a prerequisite for optimal design and control of a reservoir's exploitation. We develop a deep‐learning procedure to identify fracture locations via interpretation of temporally and spatially continuous downhole temperature measurements. A long short‐term memory fully convolutional network (LSTM‐FCN) is used both to capture long‐term dependencies in sequential temperature data and to distill local features around fractures. A wellbore and fractured‐reservoir thermal model is established to generate temperature data for network training. The trained LSTM‐FCN exhibits a unique ability to detect multiple fractures intersecting a borehole. We use the LSTM‐FCN algorithm to evaluate the effectiveness of different‐stage wellbore temperature measurements on fracture detection in a complex fractured system. Our experiments reveal that the use of various‐stage temperature information as an input feature set improves the robustness of fracture detection to noise interference. This study indicates the practical feasibility of obtaining accurate fracture‐network reconstructions from temperature signals, at reasonable computational cost.

Yang, Xiaoyu↗

Convolutional Neural Network–Aided Temperature Field Reconstruction: An Innovative Method for Advanced Reactor Monitoring

In this study, the capabilities of a physics-informed convolutional neural network (CNN) for reconstructing the temperature field from a limited set of measurements taken at the boundaries of internal flows are demonstrated. Such an approach enables the development of less invasive monitoring methods for real-time plant diagnostics. As a test case, a Molten Salt Fast Reactor (MSFR) design was selected. This circulating fuel reactor has received interest from both scientific and industrial communities due to its intrinsic safety and sustainability. Molten salt flows in such reactors, however, can present highly localized temperature peaks that can induce significant thermal stresses onto the vessel walls. At these local maxima, the salt temperature may exceed a thousand kelvins, which makes a direct measurement challenging or even unfeasible. The proposed CNN algorithm allows one to detect indirectly such discontinuities through an accurate, albeit indirect, temperature measurement method during reactor operation. The datasets employed to train and test the machine learning models in the present work were generated with Nek5000, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code developed at Argonne National Laboratory. The CNN algorithm is trained with CFD results that span a set of MSFR operational power and flow ranges. Here, to demonstrate the efficacy of the algorithm, predictions are made for test cases contained within the training range but for which the CFD data were not used when training. Results demonstrate that the proposed technique properly characterizes temperature peaks and distributions within the domain for a broad range of scenarios.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

Estimation of extreme temperatures in direct solar methane pyrolysis within a porous medium

Porous media have wide application in renewable energy conversion processes, such as solar-thermal fuels production and decarbonization. Heat transport mechanisms within porous media can be highly complex, particularly under extreme conditions encountered in concentrated solar thermal reactors in which direct measurement of temperature is challenging. Here, we implement and report an inverse heat conduction model to estimate the temperature distribution throughout a porous substrate domain in a direct solar methane pyrolysis process. By solving a two-dimensional heat transfer problem and applying an inverse optimization algorithm, we estimate the quasi-steady state spatial temperature distribution in a fibrous porous carbon substrate. The results are validated indirectly by experimentally measured graphite deposition and a simplified reaction kinetic model.

finite difference method↗

High-Throughput Nanoindentation Mapping of Additively Manufactured T91 Steel

Here, this work aims to adapt nanoindentation mapping combined with a k-means algorithm as a high-throughput technique to study the nano-scale spatial changes in mechanical properties for a heterogeneous material. This technique can also classify the individual data points based on their properties. Hundreds to thousands of indents were performed on additively manufactured T91 at room temperature, 300°C, 400°C, and 500°C across a square area with a side length of 120 μm to 400 μm. From this data, the hardness and reduced modulus at each point could be calculated and mapped. Using k-means clustering, we were able to arrange the data into three or four clusters corresponding roughly to the ferritic and martensitic phases as well as one or two intermediate clusters sampling both the phases. The hardness of these two phases appears to be quite stable as a function of temperature. Nanoindentation mapping and the k-means algorithm can therefore be used to rapidly assess the feasibility of heterogeneous materials under extreme conditions, such as nuclear reactor steels.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Fast and Universal Kohn-Sham Density Functional Theory Algorithm for Warm Dense Matter to Hot Dense Plasma

Understanding many processes, e.g., fusion experiments, planetary interiors, and dwarf stars, depends strongly on microscopic physics modeling of warm dense matter and hot dense plasma. This complex state of matter consists of a transient mixture of degenerate and nearly free electrons, molecules, and ions. This regime challenges both experiment and analytical modeling, necessitating predictive ab initio atomistic computation, typically based on quantum mechanical Kohn-Sham density functional theory (KS-DFT). However, cubic computational scaling with temperature and system size prohibits the use of DFT through much of the warm dense matter regime. A recently developed stochastic approach to KS-DFT can be used at high temperatures, with the exact same accuracy as the deterministic approach, but the stochastic error can converge slowly and it remains expensive for intermediate temperatures (< 50 eV). Here we have developed a universal mixed stochastic-deterministic algorithm for DFT at any temperature. This approach leverages the physics of KS-DFT to seamlessly integrate the best aspects of these different approaches. We demonstrate that this method significantly accelerated self-consistent field calculations for temperatures from 3 to 50 eV, while producing stable molecular dynamics and accurate diffusion coefficients.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Conceptual study of a two-layer silicon pixel detector to tag the passage of muons from cosmic sources through quantum processors

Abstract Recent studies in quantum computing have shown that quantum error correction with large numbers of physical qubits are limited by ionizing radiation from high-energy particles. Depending on the physical setup of the quantum processor, the contribution of muons from cosmic sources can constitute a significant fraction of these interactions. As most of these muons are difficult to stop, we perform a conceptual study of a two-layer silicon pixel detector to tag their hits on a solid-state quantum processor instead. With a typical dilution refrigerator geometry model, we find that efficiencies greater than 50% are most likely to be achieved if at least one of the layers is operated at the deep-cryogenic (<1 K) flanges of the refrigerator. Following this finding, we further propose a novel research program that could allow the development of silicon pixel detectors that are fast enough to provide input to quantum error correction algorithms, can operate at deep-cryogenic temperatures, and have very low power consumption.

Instruments & Instrumentation↗

Acoustic Travel-Time Tomography for Wind Energy

New remote sensing technologies for direct observation of the atmospheric flow in the proximity of operating wind turbines are necessary for the advancement of wind turbine design, wind plant control, and the validation of high-fidelity numerical models; fundamental goals of the DOE Wind Energy Technology Office's (WETO's) A2e program. Modern remote sensing technologies for commercial and research applications rely on the backscatter of light or sound waves, which limits spatial and temporal resolution and cannot produce reliable flow estimates near solid bodies or reflective surfaces. Acoustic tomography (AT) is an innovative sensing technology based on fundamental thermodynamic properties of the atmosphere and an inverse algorithm that can reconstruct both velocity and temperature fields within a network of acoustic transducers. AT relies on the direct travel path of acoustic signals between speakers and microphones in the network and can achieve much higher resolutions than conventional backscatter technologies. For wind energy R&D applications, AT represents an extremely economical option over other remote sensing technologies, integrating mature and commonly available acoustic and signal processing hardware. This report is intended as an update on the development of the AT array on the NREL Flatirons Campus (FC) and includes a brief review of the instrumentation, the calibration of equipment, signal processing, and resulting flow field estimates. Designs for future AT systems and applications are detailed in this report, including summaries of new capabilities, engineering and theoretical challenges, and anticipated costs help to outline future directions for AT technology R\&D. The potential for application of AT to utility-scale turbines is also discussed. Investing in the development of the proposed instrument will establish AT as a transformational RS technique that represents a significant advance in measurement instrumentation, enabling new fundamental insights into the structure of the atmospheric boundary layer and supporting applications for wind energy, pollution transport, and resource characterization. AT is also an extremely economical option over other RS instruments, integrating mature and commonly available acoustic and signal processing hardware.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

Polynomial-time preparation of low-temperature Gibbs states for two-dimensional toric code

In this work, we propose a polynomial-time algorithm for preparing the Gibbs state of the two-dimensional toric code Hamiltonian at any temperature, starting from any initial state, significantly improving upon prior estimates that suggested exponential scaling with inverse temperature. We prove that fast mixing at low temperature for the two-dimensional toric code can be achieved by augmenting local jump operators with simple global jump operators, which enable efficient transitions between logical sectors. To establish tight lower bounds on the spectral gap, we introduce a new reduction method that eventually maps the problem to estimating the spectral gap of a perturbed graph Laplacian on a stair graph. Our proof also shows that the Lindblad dynamics with a digitally implemented low-temperature local Davies generator is able to efficiently drive the quantum state toward the ground state manifold.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Coastal typologies and surface and subsurface characteristics of the Alaskan Beaufort Sea Coast

This dataset was generated to classify the Alaskan Beaufort Sea Coast (ABSC) into a set of distinct coastal typologies, to understand the surface and subsurface characteristics and variability of the ABSC, and to quantify relationships between these characteristics and historical rates of shoreline change. This geospatial dataset contains two csv files of points along the ABSC at a 50 m spacing, one for points sheltered by a barrier island and one for points exposed to the open ocean. Each point has a lat/lon location, and we have attributed to each point average values for elevation, historical long-term shoreline change rates, shoreline orientation, landcover, mean annual ground temperature, geomorphic unit, lithology, geology, ecological landscape unit, maximum thaw settlement potential, massive ice content, and segregated ice content. Each point is also assigned to one of 16 coastal typologies, determined by a hierarchical clustering algorithm on the elevation, shoreline change, orientation, and ground temperature data. There are 9 sheltered typologies and 7 exposed typologies, identified by an integer label in the last column of each csv file. The other two csv files contain the integer IDs and classes for the landcover and geomorphology datasets.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Data Science Enabled Enabled Discovery of Superconductors (Final Progress Report)

This Final Technical Report describes efforts by 4 PIs at the University of Florida (Peter Hirschfeld, Richard Hennig, Greg Stewart and James Hamlin), over the period September 2019-August 2023, to use data science and machine learning techniques to discover new conventional superconductors. The PIs constructed a discovery loop with two theorists and two experimentalists to: develop algorithms to machine learn descriptors correlating strongly with the critical temperature Tc (PI's Peter Hirschfeld, UF Physics and Richard Hennig, UF Materials Science and En), synthesize and measure properties of promising materials, and feed back the knowledge gained into the prediction algorithm. This work was motivated by the theoretical prediction and experimental discovery of high-pressure, high-pressure hydride superconductors, and to find ways to recreate the high critical temperatures in these systems at ambient pressure. Highlights from the grant include: 1) a new equation for Tc in terms of moments of the electron-phonon spectral function, improving on the so-called Allen-Dynes equation (1975); 2) study of the metastable A15 superconductor Nb3Si, formed under explosive compression at ~1000GPa to determine the kinetic barrier to the ground state structure; 3) the development of ultra-fast machine-learned atomic potentials for molecular dynamics, and 4) the discovery of superconductivity at 19K in WB2 arising from metastable defect structures in the crystal.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

A Kriging Surrogate Model for Computing Gas Mixture Equations of State

Accurate simulation of the complex flow following the detonation of an explosive material is a challenging problem. In these flows, the detonation products of the explosive must be treated as a real gas while the surrounding air is treated as an ideal gas. As the detonation process unfolds and the blast wave moves into the surrounding ambient air, the products of detonation expand outward and interact with the air creating a mixture region. In this region, both of the state equations for air and the products must be satisfied. One of the most accurate, yet computationally expensive, methods to handle this problem is an algorithm that iterates between the equations of state until both pressure and temperature reach an equilibrium inside of a computational cell. Since this mixture region moves and grows over time, this algorithm must be performed millions, or even billions, of times in a typical detonation simulation. As such, these calculations can account for a large percentage of the overall solution time. This work aims to use a kriging surrogate model to replace this process. The iterative method solves a nonlinear system of equations created from the gas mixture density, internal energy, and composition using a Broyden iterative solver to obtain an output pressure and temperature. Kriging is used to produce curve fits which interpolate selected pressures and temperatures from this solver from appropriate ranges of the mixture input quantities. Using a finite volume hydrocode, the performance of the model with respect to the iterative solver is demonstrated in the simulation of a pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) charge detonation. The model's computational speed and accuracy are quantified as a function of the choice of sampling points in order to try optimize the combination as well as to show the benefits of this novel approach.

Engineering↗

Discovering hidden geothermal signatures using non-negative matrix factorization with customized k-means clustering

Discovery of hidden geothermal resources is challenging. It requires the mining of large datasets with diverse data attributes representing subsurface hydrogeological and geothermal conditions. The commonly used play fairway analysis approach typically incorporates subject-matter expertise to analyze regional data to estimate geothermal characteristics and favorability. We demonstrate an alternative approach based on machine learning (ML) to process a geothermal dataset from southwest New Mexico (SWNM). The study region includes low- and medium-temperature hydrothermal systems. Several of these systems are not well characterized because of insufficient existing data and limited past explorative work. This study discovers hidden patterns and relations in the SWNM geothermal dataset to improve our understanding of the regional hydrothermal conditions and energy-production favorability. This understanding is obtained by applying an unsupervised ML algorithm based on non-negative matrix factorization coupled with customized k-means clustering (NMFk). NMFk can automatically identify (1) hidden signatures characterizing analyzed datasets, (2) the optimal number of these signatures, (3) the dominant data attributes associated with each signature, and (4) the spatial distribution of the extracted signatures. Here, in this study, NMFk is applied to analyze 18 geological, geophysical, hydrogeological, and geothermal attributes at 44 locations in SWNM. Using NMFk, we find data patterns and identify the spatial associations of hydrothermal signatures within two physiographic provinces (Colorado Plateau and Basin and Range) and two sub-regions of these provinces (the Mogollon-Datil volcanic field and the Rio Grande rift) in SWNM. The ML algorithm extracted five hydrothermal signatures in the SWNM datasets that differentiate between low (<90°C) and medium (90-150°C)-temperature hydrothermal systems. The algorithm also suggests that the Rio Grande rift and northern Mogollon-Datil volcanic field are the most favorable regions for future geothermal resource discovery. NMFk also identified critical attributes to identify medium-temperature hydrothermal systems in the study area. The resulting NMFk model can be applied to predict geothermal conditions and their uncertainties at new SWNM locations based on limited data from unexplored regions. The code to execute the performed analyses as well as the corresponding data can be found at https://github.com/SmartTensors/GeoThermalCloud.jl.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗

Application of predictive data analytics to model daily hydrocarbon production using petrophysical, geomechanical, fiber-optic, completions, and surface data: A case study from the Marcellus Shale, North America

Predicting gas production from stimulated unconventional reservoirs has always been a challenge to oil and gas companies because the physics of fluid flow through such reservoirs is not well understood. On the other hand, modeling gas production from shale reservoirs is a complex multi-variate problem that requires proper integration of data from multiple disciplines, such as geology, petrophysics, geomechanics, completions, and surface-based measurements, etc. Here this study demonstrates the application of data-driven machine learning algorithms, integrating geoscientific, distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), distributed temperature sensing (DTS) fiber-optic, completions, flow scanner production log, and surface data to model daily gas production from a 28-stage stimulated horizontal well drilled in the Marcellus Shale of the Appalachian basin in North America. In addition, this study aims to utilize the data from a fiber-optic monitoring system, such as DAS and DTS to evaluate the well performance. We build supervised data-driven machine learning models using Random Forest (RF), Artificial Neural Network (ANN), and Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithms to understand the well performance and forecast the daily gas production. The study compares the forecasted results, tests the level of accuracy, and addresses different issues with these machine learning algorithms. A spatio-temporal database is constructed and used to perform sensitivity analyses to identify the key drivers for gas production. The results show that RF and ANN algorithms can be used to predict daily gas production with significantly high accuracy; however, RF algorithm is the best predictor in terms of highest accuracy (96%), less computational time and cost. Based on sensitivity analysis, it appears that Poisson's ratio, minimum horizontal stress, DAS, casing pressure, gamma log are the most important parameters to predict gas production.

02 PETROLEUM↗