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BISON Capability to Account for Dopant Sensitivity in Relevant UO 2 Material Models

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation program aims to develop predictive capabilities using computational methods for the analysis and design of advanced reactor and fuel cycle systems. This program has been supporting the development of BISON, a high-fidelity and high-resolution fuel performance tool at the engineering scale. Incorporation of more physics-based models in BISON for the accident tolerant fuel applications motivated this study. This document details integration of new modeling capabilities in BISON, including: a tensile strength model for uranium dioxide (UO 2 ) fuel to incorporate the microstructural effects (e.g., grain size, fabrication pore size, and porosity), and atomistic-informed creep model for UO 2 fuel that is developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory. Sensitivity analyses are conducted on these models separately as well as a two-dimensional full rod application under normal operating conditions. Lastly, these new modeling capabilities in BISON are exercised in Halden IFA-677.1 and IFA-716.1 assessment cases.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

Nondestructive Evaluation for the Space Shuttle's Wing Leading Edge

The loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia highlighted concerns about the integrity of the Shuttle's thermal protection system, which includes Reinforced Carbon-Carbon (RCC) on the leading edge. This led NASA to investigate nondestructive evaluation (NDE) methods for certifying the integrity of the Shuttle's wing leading edge. That investigation was performed simultaneously with a large study conducted to understand the impact damage caused by errant debris. Among the many advanced NDE methods investigated for applicability to the RCC material, advanced digital radiography, high resolution computed tomography, thermography, ultrasound, acoustic emission and eddy current systems have demonstrated the maturity and success for application to the Shuttle RCC panels. For the purposes of evaluating the RCC panels while they are installed on the orbiters, thermographic detection incorporating principal component analysis (PCA) and eddy current array scanning systems demonstrated the ability to measure the RCC panels from one side only and to detect several flaw types of concern. These systems were field tested at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and at several locations where impact testing was being conducted. Another advanced method that NASA has been investigating is an automated acoustic based detection system. Such a system would be based in part on methods developed over the years for acoustic emission testing. Impact sensing has been demonstrated through numerous impact tests on both reinforced carbon-carbon (RCC) leading edge materials as well as Shuttle tile materials on representative aluminum wing structures. A variety of impact materials and conditions have been evaluated including foam, ice, and ablator materials at ascent velocities as well as simulated hypervelocity micrometeoroid and orbital debris impacts. These tests have successfully demonstrated the capability to detect and localize impact events on Shuttle's wing structures. A first generation impact sensing system has been designed for the next Shuttle flight and is undergoing final evaluation for deployment on the Shuttle's first return to flight. This system will employ wireless accelerometer sensors that were qualified for other applications on previous Shuttle flights. These sensors will be deployed on the wing's leading edge to detect impacts on the RCC leading edge panels. The application of these methods will help to insure the continued integrity of the Shuttle wing's leading edge system as the Shuttle flights resume and until their retirement.

Eric I Madaras↗

Accelerated simulation of stochastic particle removal processes in particle-resolved aerosol models

Stochastic particle-resolved methods have proven useful for simulating multi-dimensional systems such as composition-resolved aerosol size distributions. While particle-resolved methods have substantial benefits for highly detailed simulations, these techniques suffer from high computational cost, motivating efforts to improve their algorithmic efficiency. Here we formulate an algorithm for accelerating particle removal processes by aggregating particles of similar size into bins. We present the Binned Algorithm for particle removal processes and analyze its performance with application to the atmospherically relevant process of aerosol dry deposition. We show that the Binned Algorithm can dramatically improve the efficiency of particle removals, particularly for low removal rates, and that computational cost is reduced without introducing additional error. In simulations of aerosol particle removal by dry deposition in atmospherically relevant conditions, we demonstrate about 50-times increase in algorithm efficiency.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Software Engineering Support of the Third Round of Scientific Grand Challenge Investigations: An Earth Modeling System Software Framework Strawman Design that Integrates Cactus and UCLA/UCB Distributed Data Broker

One of the most significant challenges in large-scale climate modeling, as well as in high-performance computing in other scientific fields, is that of effectively integrating many software models from multiple contributors. A software framework facilitates the integration task. both in the development and runtime stages of the simulation. Effective software frameworks reduce the programming burden for the investigators, freeing them to focus more on the science and less on the parallel communication implementation, while maintaining high performance across numerous supercomputer and workstation architectures. This document proposes a strawman framework design for the climate community based on the integration of Cactus, from the relativistic physics community, and UCLA/UCB Distributed Data Broker (DDB) from the climate community. This design is the result of an extensive survey of climate models and frameworks in the climate community as well as frameworks from many other scientific communities. The design addresses fundamental development and runtime needs using Cactus, a framework with interfaces for FORTRAN and C-based languages, and high-performance model communication needs using DDB. This document also specifically explores object-oriented design issues in the context of climate modeling as well as climate modeling issues in terms of object-oriented design.

Talbot, Bryan↗

A computational investigation of high-flux, plate-and-frame membrane modules for industrial carbon capture

In this work, we study the application of membrane-based separation systems for carbon capture, considering plate-and-frame membrane modules. The successful deployment of membrane CO 2 capture system relies on high-performing membranes as well as effective membrane modules that can fully exploit the developed membranes. A plate-and-frame membrane module is especially attractive for CO 2 capture from industrial flue gas due to its lower pressure drop compared to its counterparts such as spiral wound modules and hollow fiber modules. To design better plate-and-frame modules, we investigate their basic unit - a single membrane stack through a combination of computational modeling and experimental investigations. The modeling approach is based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to represent a multiphysics problem, including the fluid flow and diffusion processes within a membrane module. We use experimental data collected under different operating conditions to validate the CFD model. Numerical results suggest a good agreement between experiments and model outputs for the CO 2 recovery, CO 2 mole fraction in the retentate and permeate, and stage-cut. The CFD model is able to predict accurately the flow behavior, providing valuable insights on the effects of fluid dynamics on mass transfer of CO 2 . We also carry out a sensitivity analysis to identify the effect of key parameters on the CO 2 recovery and the CO 2 purity of the outlet streams.

CFD simulation↗

Numerical Investigation of the Spark Discharge Process in a Crossflow

The present study numerically investigates the spark discharge process under crossflow conditions using a thermal equilibrium plasma solver that fully couples the electromagnetic physics and fluid dynamics in a computational framework. Numerical results are validated by the comparison with experimental data. Here, the spark discharge experiment is performed in a constant volume vessel using an inductive coil ignition system for automotive applications, and the evolution of the spark channel is measured using high-speed imaging. The crossflow in the gap between the spark-plug electrodes is generated by a rotating fan with two different fan speeds, and the flow velocity across the gap is characterized by particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurement. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver is employed to simulate the crossflow and provide the flow field variables (velocity, pressure, temperature) to the plasma solver. The crossflow velocity predicted in the flow simulation agrees well with the PIV data in that the non-uniform velocity profiles at monitoring points are reproduced by the CFD code. With the crossflow initialization in the plasma solver, the simulated spark discharge process from the breakdown to spark discharge matches the experimental data, including the voltage and circuit waveforms and the high-speed images of the spark channel evolution. The stretch of spark channel captured by plasma simulations agrees with the measured data. The plasma simulation reveals that the mean temperature of the spark channel is maintained at 5000 K during the discharge phase, and the temperature varies along the spark channel so that the highest value is obtained at the spark root on the center electrode. Overall, the results presented in this paper are meant to provide valuable information about the properties of the plasma generated by the spark discharge.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Neutrons in Structural Biology: Challenges and Opportunities (Workshop Report)

Gaining a thorough understanding of biological systems requires building our knowledge about biological processes from the level of atoms and electrons, and up to whole organisms. Such comprehensive knowledge will allow for a predictive understanding of complex biological systems behavior. It will guide us in the design and development of novel therapeutics and vaccines to tackle existing health threats and to prepare for future pandemics, and it will provide information necessary to create new biomaterials and bio-inspired technologies through manipulation of biological macromolecules, their assemblies, single cells and even microorganisms. Reaching these goals will require a synergistic combination of multiple experimental techniques with molecular calculations and predictive simulations, and the design and development of new techniques and capabilities that bridge current knowledge and technology gaps. Neutron scattering provides unique information about the biomacromolecular structure and function and can play a major role in achieving these goals. A workshop was held to engage the scientific community in identifying pressing challenges in biochemistry, structural biology, enzymology and structure-guided drug design not solved with the current neutron scattering technologies or utilizing other structural biology techniques such as X-ray crystallography, NMR, and cryo-EM. The workshop brought together structural biology, biochemistry and computational experts, as well as early career researchers and students, creating a forum for discussing scientific advancement and collaboration. The workshop included a one-day satellite training workshop where graduate students and postdoctoral researchers were educated in the application of neutron crystallography and small-angle scattering in structural biology. Furthermore, the Instrument Scientific Advisory Board (ISAB) for the development of a macromolecular neutron diffractometer at ORNL’s Second Target Station was introduced at the workshop. The major outcome was that neutrons can provide atomic-level understanding of biomacromolecular structure, function and dynamics which is of paramount importance for addressing the identified challenges. Neutron crystallography, in particular, can resolve long-standing biochemical issues regarding enzyme function by delineating the underlying chemistry and can have a major impact on the design of small-molecule therapeutics, especially in combination with molecular computation (quantum chemistry and molecular dynamics simulations) and the emerging artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted drug design technologies. The unique properties of neutrons, including their high sensitivity to hydrogen and their non-destructive nature, make them ideal probes of biological matter. There is a palpable need in the scientific community to expand and enhance the impact of neutron sciences on biology. Neutron crystallography is the only structural biology method capable of determining positions of all hydrogen atoms in proteins, nucleic acids and their complexes at near-physiological temperatures and of unstable species at cryogenic temperatures. Moreover, neutron analysis is non-ionizing, non-destructive and does not perturb the structure or redox chemistry of active site metal centers and clusters in proteins, which can be invaluable for studying radiation-sensitive metalloprotein complexes. Further, neutron energies used in scattering applications are similar to atomic motions, permitting neutron spectroscopies to characterize the dynamics of biomacromolecules on the picosecond to microsecond timescales. The different sensitivities of neutrons to protium (H) and deuterium (D) isotopes of hydrogen allow enhanced visibility of specific parts of biological complexes through isotopic labeling. The impact of neutrons will be most powerful when neutron scattering is combined with complementary experimental techniques that use photons and electrons, and with high-performance computing. The interconnection and mutuality of the experimental and theoretical capabilities will drive discoveries in biological and health sciences to generate more complete picture of complex biological systems. The major limitation in the field of biological neutron crystallography has been signal-to-noise, demanding large samples that are difficult to produce for the majority of biomacromolecules and limiting the applicability of this technique in biological sciences. A neutron crystallography instrument at the Second Target Station will revolutionize biological science with neutrons by engaging a large scientific community of structural biologists, enabling successful neutron diffraction experiments from radically smaller biomacromolecular crystals, resolving unanswered biochemical questions, and meaningfully contributing to rational drug design. The meeting highlighted 10 grand challenges that will be addressed with this advanced capability over the next decade and beyond, and the recommendations required to help address them are given below.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Profiling and Improving I/O Performance of a Large-Scale Climate Scientific Application

Exascale computing systems are soon to emerge, which will pose great challenges on the huge gap between computing and I/O performance. Many large-scale scientific applications play an important role in our daily life. The huge amounts of data generated by such applications require highly parallel and efficient I/O management policies. In this paper, we adopt a mission-critical scientific application, GEOS-5, as a case to profile and analyze the communication and I/O issues that are preventing applications from fully utilizing the underlying parallel storage systems. Through in-detail architectural and experimental characterization, we observe that current legacy I/O schemes incur significant network communication overheads and are unable to fully parallelize the data access, thus degrading applications' I/O performance and scalability. To address these inefficiencies, we redesign its I/O framework along with a set of parallel I/O techniques to achieve high scalability and performance. Evaluation results on the NASA discover cluster show that our optimization of GEOS-5 with ADIOS has led to significant performance improvements compared to the original GEOS-5 implementation.

Exascale↗

Design and Analysis Tools for Concurrent Blackboard Systems

A blackboard system consists of a set of knowledge sources, a blackboard data structure, and a control strategy used to activate the knowledge sources. The blackboard model of problem solving is best described by Dr. H. Penny Nii of the Stanford University AI Laboratory: "A Blackboard System can be viewed as a collection of intelligent agents who are gathered around a blackboard, looking at pieces of information written on it, thinking about the current state of the solution, and writing their conclusions on the blackboard as they generate them. " The blackboard is a centralized global data structure, often partitioned in a hierarchical manner, used to represent the problem domain. The blackboard is also used to allow inter-knowledge source communication and acts as a shared memory visible to all of the knowledge sources. A knowledge source is a highly specialized, highly independent process that takes inputs from the blackboard data structure, performs a computation, and places the results of the computation in the blackboard data structure. This design allows for an opportunistic control strategy. The opportunistic problem-solving technique allows a knowledge source to contribute towards the solution of the current problem without knowing which of the other knowledge sources will use the information. The use of opportunistic problem-solving allows the data transfers on the blackboard to determine which processes are active at a given time. Designing and developing blackboard systems is a difficult process. The designer is trying to balance several conflicting goals and achieve a high degree of concurrent knowledge source execution while maintaining both knowledge and semantic consistency on the blackboard. Blackboard systems have not attained their apparent potential because there are no established tools or methods to guide in their construction or analyze their performance.

McManus, John W.↗

Low-GWP HVAC System with Ultra-small Centrifugal Compression

Mechanical Solutions, Incorporated (MSI) was awarded a contract from the United States Department of Energy under Contract DE-EE0007042 to advance the potential of vapor compression utilizing an advanced high speed centrifugal compressor with an advanced heat exchanger design. The design was mandated to maintain high efficiency while utilizing a low GWP refrigerant. The specific goal of this program was to develop an advanced 5 ton air conditioning system. The target of the air conditioner is residential and commercial. To accomplish these goals, MSI teamed with Lennox International, a leading air conditioning manufacturer. MSI would design, oversee manufacturing, assemble, and test the compressor, while Lennox designed the heat exchanger and tested the overall air conditioner. Lennox initiated the project with a detailed cycle analysis that examined systems and refrigerants. At various break points, MSI performed a preliminary compressor design to identify realizable targets. Initially, the refrigerant that was targeted was R1234ze(E), but this was subsequently rejected over concerns of flammability. R515a was ultimately accepted as a qualified fluid based upon its GWP and flammability rating. MSI performed a complete design of the centrifugal compressor based upon the cycle system design and analysis. The design was based upon advanced aerodynamics utilizing transient Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), as well as mechanical and rotordynamic analysis. A detailed materials investigation was conducted to ensure mechanical integrity and refrigerant compatibility. To achieve the high rotational speed required by the compressor (105,300 rpm), foil bearings were designed by MSI, as was a high speed motor to provide the required torque for the compressor. All elements of the design complied with Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA) principles. The compressor was manufactured in components, utilizing specializing subcontractors throughout the country. The components were assembled into an operational compressor in MSI’s Albany facility, where it was tested in the MSI refrigeration test loop. The compressor achieved 90% of its maximum speed during testing at MSI. The interaction between the inverter and the high speed motor was the reason that full speed could not be attained. The compressor operated smoothly and quietly at all speeds, with the bearings performing as expected. The compressor was then shipped to Lennox’s facilities in Texas, where it was tested in the entire air conditioning system. Lennox was able to achieve 95% of the maximum rotational speed. They employed the same inverter as MSI. Lennox compiled the results of the testing and based upon the results, a go forward plan has been developed to correct the issues with the inverter, as well as redesign some parts that proved to be a challenge during the program. The consensus of the team is that a fully functional air conditioning system can be developed to achieve all of the goals identified in this program.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

DCDM1: Lessons Learned from the World's Most Energy Efficient Data Center

This presentation discusses the holistic approach to design the world's most energy-efficient data center, which is located at the U.S. Department of Energy National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). This high-performance computing (HPC) data center has achieved a trailing twelve-month average power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.04 and features a chiller-less design, component-level warm-water liquid cooling, and waste heat capture and reuse. We provide details of the demonstrated PUE and energy reuse effectiveness (ERE) and lessons learned during four years of production operation. Recent efforts to dramatically reduce the water footprint will also be discussed. Johnson Controls partnered with NREL and Sandia National Laboratories to deploy a thermosyphon cooler (TSC) as a test bed at NREL's HPC data center that resulted in a 50% reduction in water usage during the first year of operation. The Thermosyphon Cooler Hybrid System (TCHS) integrates the control of a dry heat rejection device with an open cooling tower.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Mitigation of Cosmic Rays-Induced Errors in Superconducting Quantum Processors

Environmental radioactivity and cosmic-rays have recently been identified as a source of decoherence in super-conducting quantum bits (qubits). In particular, the absorption of cosmic-ray muons and gamma rays emitted by naturally occurring radioactive isotopes in the qubit substrate leads to correlated errors in superconducting quantum processors, posing significant challenges to quantum error correction. To enable quantum computing to scale, it is therefore necessary the devel-opment of mitigation strategies to prevent, or keep under control, error bursts due to particle impacts in the chip. While most environmental radioactive sources can be effectively suppressed using dedicated shielding, cosmic-ray muons, with their high penetration capability, can only be mitigated by moving the entire facility in a deep underground laboratory. This work explores the potential for developing a novel class of quantum processors equipped with an active veto system to protect superconducting-based quantum computers from the detrimental effects of atmospheric muons. Such a device would enable the identification of an atmospheric muon interaction within the processor and veto all operations performed during the occurrence of such an interaction. By demonstrating high detection efficiency and negligible dead time, we aim to establish that the future of quantum processors can be envisioned in above-around facilities.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

GPU algorithms for Efficient Exascale Discretizations

In this paper we describe the research and development activities in the Center for Efficient Exascale Discretization within the US Exascale Computing Project, targeting state-of-the-art high-order finite-element algorithms for high-order applications on GPU-accelerated platforms. Furthermore, we discuss the GPU developments in several components of the CEED software stack, including the libCEED, MAGMA, MFEM, libParanumal, and Nek projects. We report performance and capability improvements in several CEED-enabled applications on both NVIDIA and AMD GPU systems.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Multidisciplinary analysis and sensitivity derivatives for isolated helicopter rotors in hover

A new method is presented for using Navier-Stokes results in the system analysis and sensitivity derivative computations for a helicopter rotor in hover. The system coupling includes the interactions between rotor performance, rotor structural properties and aerodynamics (i.e., airfoil shape). Emphasis is placed on the use of high fidelity Navier-Stokes algorithms for the aerodynamic problem. The present formulation is chosen to reduce the number of sensitivity derivative equations and their dimensions as much as possible. In addition, an alternative adjoint formulation is presented which dramatically reduces the computational requirement for disciplines in which there may be a large number of design variables (e.g., aerodynamics). The theoretical method makes use of a combination of derivatives from each discipline; the computation of these derivatives has already been shown to be feasible. Sample computations for the aerodynamic-rotor model coupling and an associated sensitivity derivative are also presented.

Jones, Henry E.↗

DESIGN AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF A HIGH PRESSURE AND SUPERCRITICAL METHANE-OXYGEN BURNER

Directly heated supercritical oxy-fuel power cycles have potential to offer a higher thermal efficiency and lower pollutant emissions compared to existing power cycles. Recent thermodynamic analysis of the cycle performed by several groups including the UTEP-Air Liquide research team show that combustion in the vicinity of 300 bar pressure and 1000-1400 K temperature allows for relatively high system efficiencies while operating within the limit of practical combustor materials. However, the realization of directly heated supercritical power cycle requires combustion systems be designed to operate in supercritical conditions and at temperature far below the blowout limit of conventional flames (above 1500 K), where not only the thermodynamic properties but also the combustion properties and kinetics are unexplored. To minimize these knowledge gaps, some intermediate pressure ranges (up to 20 bar) are experimented and modeled using a CFD simulation tool. The knowledge obtained from the high pressure test will assist in understanding the combustion chamber pressurization mechanism, ignition and flame behavior at the elevated pressure. This is a systematic first step in testing at higher pressures of 100 and 300 bar pressures. The primary objective of this dissertation is to perform qualitative analysis on oxy-methane combustion at high pressure (< 20 bar) and compare to CFD model for future scale up to supercritical condition. For modeling of the system, a commercial computational fluid dynamics simulation tool, ANSYS Fluent, is used. The inlet conditions for the CFD analysis are obtained from the experiments. The geometry used for the study is same as the test apparatus and operates at the same power ratings. The expertise gained from this experimental study is important to accurately and safely design combustors at elevated pressures up to 300bar. A high pressure methane-oxygen fuel burner and combustor have been developed to accommodate oxycombustion environment. A detailed CFD analysis is conducted to understand the flame length and cooling phenomenon inside the combustor first at pressures up to 20 bar to compare to experiments then at supercritical pressure. The first part of the dissertation compares CFD results with high pressure burner experiments at pressures up to 20 bar. The test is conducted for 30 s within 150 kW – 250 kW thermal power inputs. Afterwards, based on the simulation results a cooling system is proposed for steady state high pressure combustion experiments. It is observed from the experimental study that the proposed pressurization mechanism able to pressurize the vessel up to 20 bar. It is also determined that the current combustor can operate up to 20 bar for short term. The steady state CFD simulation demonstrates that a cooling system must be incorporated for continuous operation. Additionally, the study focuses on the ignition delay due to added diluent during the combustion process. It is observed that as the carbon dioxide recirculation ratio increases the ignition delay time increases. Later part of the dissertation provides a preliminary guideline for developing a laboratory scale supercritical oxy combustor. The employment of supercritical fluid in gas turbine is fairly a new concept. Hence, there are many questions that need to be answered. During this dissertation study an investigation is performed to understand the impact of equation of state in the supercritical combustion simulation. Finally, a CFD model for developing supercritical oxy-methane burner and the combustor, incorporating real gas model, is presented. Although Lee-Kesler equation of state provides better accuracy than Peng Robinson, due to the computational time Peng Robinson equation of state is used for the simulation. It is found that existing knowledge is not enough to simulate combustion at supercritical phase. Detailed combustion chemistry at the supercritical condition must be developed and should be incorporated to accurately replicate the combustion phenomenon.

Chowdhury, ASM Arifur Rahim↗

Efficient Parallel Kernel Solvers for Computational Fluid Dynamics Applications

Distributed-memory parallel computers dominate today's parallel computing arena. These machines, such as Intel Paragon, IBM SP2, and Cray Origin2OO, have successfully delivered high performance computing power for solving some of the so-called "grand-challenge" problems. Despite initial success, parallel machines have not been widely accepted in production engineering environments due to the complexity of parallel programming. On a parallel computing system, a task has to be partitioned and distributed appropriately among processors to reduce communication cost and to attain load balance. More importantly, even with careful partitioning and mapping, the performance of an algorithm may still be unsatisfactory, since conventional sequential algorithms may be serial in nature and may not be implemented efficiently on parallel machines. In many cases, new algorithms have to be introduced to increase parallel performance. In order to achieve optimal performance, in addition to partitioning and mapping, a careful performance study should be conducted for a given application to find a good algorithm-machine combination. This process, however, is usually painful and elusive. The goal of this project is to design and develop efficient parallel algorithms for highly accurate Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations and other engineering applications. The work plan is 1) developing highly accurate parallel numerical algorithms, 2) conduct preliminary testing to verify the effectiveness and potential of these algorithms, 3) incorporate newly developed algorithms into actual simulation packages. The work plan has well achieved. Two highly accurate, efficient Poisson solvers have been developed and tested based on two different approaches: (1) Adopting a mathematical geometry which has a better capacity to describe the fluid, (2) Using compact scheme to gain high order accuracy in numerical discretization. The previously developed Parallel Diagonal Dominant (PDD) algorithm and Reduced Parallel Diagonal Dominant (RPDD) algorithm have been carefully studied on different parallel platforms for different applications, and a NASA simulation code developed by Man M. Rai and his colleagues has been parallelized and implemented based on data dependency analysis. These achievements are addressed in detail in the paper.

Sun, Xian-He↗

A Performance Evaluation of the Cray X1 for Scientific Applications

The last decade has witnessed a rapid proliferation of superscalar cache-based microprocessors to build high-end capability and capacity computers because of their generality, scalability, and cost effectiveness. However, the recent development of massively parallel vector systems is having a significant effect on the supercomputing landscape. In this paper, we compare the performance of the recently-released Cray X1 vector system with that of the cacheless NEC SX-6 vector machine, and the superscalar cache-based IBM Power3 and Power4 architectures for scientific applications. Overall results demonstrate that the X1 is quite promising, but performance improvements are expected as the hardware, systems software, and numerical libraries mature. Code reengineering to effectively utilize the complex architecture may also lead to significant efficiency enhancements.

Oliker, Leonid↗

Xenon Recovery at Room Temperature using Metal-Organic Frameworks

Xenon is known to be a very efficient anesthetic gas but its cost prohibits the wider use in medical industry and other potential applications. It has been shown that Xe recovery and recycle from anesthetic gas mixture can significantly reduce its cost as anesthetic. The current technology uses series of adsorbent columns followed by low temperature distillation to recover Xe, which is expensive to use in medical facilities. Herein, we propose much efficient and simpler system to recover and recycle Xe from simulant exhale anesthetic gas mixture at room temperature using metal organic frameworks. Among the MOFs tested, PCN-12 exhibits unprecedented performance with high Xe capacity, Xe/N2 and Xe/O2 selectivity at room temperature. The in-situ synchrotron measurements suggest the Xe is occupied in the small pockets of PCN-12 compared to unsaturated metal centers (UMCs). Computational modeling of adsorption further supports our experimental observation of Xe binding sites in PCN-12.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗