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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 1,513 records · Page 84

Experimental and modeling study of the autoignition behavior of a standard oxygenated gasoline fuel

Gasoline surrogate models can be conveniently used to simulate the combustion behavior of fuels in internal combustion engines. Because of limitations in the number of robust models available and the high computational cost of running them, simple surrogates with only 2 or 3 components (namely n-heptane, iso-octane and toluene) have been long preferred to simulate the ignition behavior of gasoline in engine calculations. More recently, thanks to the development of new, well-validated kinetic models and the access to cheap high-performance computing, the scientific and engineering community is utilizing the higher fidelity provided by more complex mixture models. The added detail in composition can in fact better reproduce variation in the fuel reactivity with pressure (an important feature for downsized, boosted conditions) and blending behavior of real fuels. In this study, the ignition behavior of a research grade full blend oxygenated fuel matching the typical specification of US standard grade gasoline has been investigated by means of rapid compression experiments and detailed kinetic calculations. A multicomponent fuel surrogate model has been developed using compositional information and a surrogate optimization tool. Based on the experimental and computational results presented in this study, general considerations about guidelines in the formulation of gasoline fuel surrogates are provided.

autoignition↗

Open Source Platform for Live Processing of High Data Rate Electron Microscopy (SBIR Phase I Award Topic 15, Subtopic B, Final Scientific / Technical Report)

4D scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) is experiencing a revolution both in terms of data size, and data veracity, as are many other areas of experimental data acquisition. This presents enormous opportunities to make new scientific discoveries, but is also hamstrung by aging software that is no longer fit for purpose. Experimental data acquisition platforms must make the same investments in software infrastructure that the simulation community made decades ago to take advantage of high-performance computing (HPC) if they hope to realize the full potential of the latest advances made in detector technology. This requires rethinking the design and deployment of hardware, moving away from small, fixed commodity computing capabilities with closed interfaces to open, modular, scalable systems designed for parallelism and throughput. The technical approach will leverage best-in-class open source technologies, and develop new approaches strategically to build an open source platform for experimental data acquisition targeting high data rate electron microscopy. The project will develop a software platform that uses the power and performance of modern HPC resources to ingest the large volume of data produced by electron microscopes using direct electron detectors. A set of configurable pipelines will be used to enable the processing to be tailored to the problem being investigated with builtin visualization of data at interactive rates. This project will leverage investments made by the DOE and other agencies to provide a powerful software platform for the experimental data community working with most powerful electron microscopes, such as 4D STEM detectors. It will create a platform that serves as a reference for the community. Permissive open source licensing will make the platform available to all, with a simple deployment strategy offering the ability to keep data close to where it is generated. This advanced software platform will require customization for each deployment, creating opportunities for software services that are typically offered to extend open source software platforms.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Machine learning enabled discovery of superhard and ultrahard carbon polymorphs

The demand for multifunctional materials has motivated the move from near-equilibrium materials to metastable i.e. out-of-equilibrium phases that can meet several desired target properties. The search for such metastable phases with exotic properties is non-trivial and often serendipitous. Inverse design approaches based on evolutionary search have been powerful tools, but such traditional searches have focused on identifying primarily stable and metastable materials with the lowest enthalpy. The inverse design of materials, with a focus on a desired property such as, for example, hardness is a challenging task because of the expensive computational cost involved in sampling multiple structures. The recent advances in machine learning have brought new powerful AI techniques to the forefront which can potentially revolutionize the inverse design and discovery of materials, especially metastable phases capable of meeting multifunctionality. Here, in this work, we develop and apply an automated reinforcement learning workflow for inverse design that integrates first principles physics and atomistic simulations with machine learning (ML), and high-performance computing to allow rapid exploration of the superhard and ultrahard metastable phases of Carbon. We demonstrate an automatic machine learning based inverse design workflow to map new undiscovered metastable states ranging from near equilibrium to those far-from-equilibrium that satisfy multiple property objectives, specifically bulk moduli, shear moduli and hardness. We create a comprehensive library of carbon stable and metastable phases with varying hardness and subsequently shortlist 10 top performing candidate carbon structures, including two newly reported phases, based on their hardness and characterize their temperature dependent mechanical properties. A neural network model is built using featurization of allotropes of carbon to predict the quasi-harmonic Gibbs free energies. The Gibbs free energies of the top performing phases are analyzed to get an estimate of the experimental synthesizability of these superhard and ultrahard carbon phases. In general, we show using machine learning based inverse design approaches how hitherto inaccessible metastable states can be identified and potentially synthesized to meet the demand for multifunctional materials.

Balasubramanian, Karthik [Univ. of Illinois, Chica↗

High throughput phenotyping to accelerate crop breeding and monitoring of diseases in the field

Effective implementation of technology that facilitates accurate and high-throughput screening of thousands of field-grown lines is critical for accelerating crop improvement and breeding strategies for higher yield and disease tolerance. Progress in the development of field-based high throughput phenotyping methods has advanced considerably in the last 10 years through technological progress in sensor development and high-performance computing. In this paper, we review recent advances in high throughput field phenotyping technologies designed to inform the genetics of quantitative traits, including crop yield and disease tolerance. Successful application of phenotyping platforms to advance crop breeding and identify and monitor disease requires: (1) high resolution of imaging and environmental sensors; (2) quality data products that facilitate computer vision, machine learning and GIS; (3) capacity infrastructure for data management and analysis; and (4) automated environmental data collection. Finally, accelerated breeding for agriculturally relevant crop traits is key to the development of improved varieties and is critically dependent on high-resolution, high-throughput field-scale phenotyping technologies that can efficiently discriminate better performing lines within a larger population and across multiple environments.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗

Correction to Reconciling Work Functions and Adsorption Enthalpies for Implicit Solvent Models: A Pt (111)/Water Interface Case Study

This errata is to correct the acknowledgment in the original published article. G.B. (partial support), V.-A.G., M.-T.N., and R.R. were supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences Division. Computer resources were provided by Research Computing at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility operated under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. PNNL is operated by Battelle for the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC05-76RL01830. G.B. acknowledges the EPSRC for partial support in PhD funding. The authors acknowledge the use of the IRIDIS High Performance Computing Facility (IRIDIS 5) and associated support services at the University of Southampton in the completion of this work. We are grateful to the UK Materials and Molecular Modeling Hub (Thomas HPC) for computational resources, which is partially funded by EPSRC (EP/P020194/1).

continuum solvation, metal/water interfaces, ab in↗

Real-space solution to the electronic structure problem for nearly a million electrons

We report a Kohn–Sham density functional theory calculation of a system with more than 200 000 atoms and 800 000 electrons using a real-space high-order finite-difference method to investigate the electronic structure of large spherical silicon nanoclusters. Our system of choice was a 20 nm large spherical nanocluster with 202 617 silicon atoms and 13 836 hydrogen atoms used to passivate the dangling surface bonds. To speed up the convergence of the eigenspace, we utilized Chebyshev-filtered subspace iteration, and for sparse matrix–vector multiplications, we used blockwise Hilbert space-filling curves, implemented in the PARSEC code. For this calculation, we also replaced our orthonormalization + Rayleigh–Ritz step with a generalized eigenvalue problem step. We utilized all of the 8192 nodes (458 752 processors) on the Frontera machine at the Texas Advanced Computing Center. We achieved two Chebyshev-filtered subspace iterations, yielding a good approximation of the electronic density of states. Our work pushes the limits on the capabilities of the current electronic structure solvers to nearly 106 electrons and demonstrates the potential of the real-space approach to efficiently parallelize large calculations on modern high-performance computing platforms.

Chemistry↗

Modeling of particle transport, neutrals and radiation in magnetically-confined plasmas with Aurora

In this work, we present Aurora, an open-source package for particle transport, neutrals and radiation modeling in magnetic confinement fusion plasmas. Aurora's modern multi-language interface enables simulations of 1.5D impurity transport within high-performance computing frameworks, particularly for the inference of particle transport coefficients. A user-friendly Python library allows simple interaction with atomic rates from the Atomic Data and Atomic Structure database as well as other sources. This enables a range of radiation predictions, both for power balance and spectroscopic analysis. We discuss here the superstaging approximation for complex ions, as a way to group charge states and reduce computational cost, demonstrating its wide applicability within the Aurora forward model and beyond. Aurora also facilitates neutral particle analysis, both from experimental spectroscopic data and other simulation codes. Leveraging Aurora's capabilities to interface SOLPS-ITER results, we demonstrate that charge exchange is unlikely to affect the total radiated power from the ITER core during high performance operation. Finally, we describe the ImpRad module in the one modeling framework for integrated task framework, developed to enable experimental analysis and transport inferences on multiple devices using Aurora.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Vectorised Computation of Diverging Ensembles. In: ICPP 2018 Proceedings of the 47th International Conference on Parallel Processing, Article No. 51

Ensemble computations are used to evaluate a function for multiple inputs, for example in uncertainty quantification. Embedded ensemble computations perform several evaluations within the same program, often enabling a reduced overall runtime by exploiting vectorisation and parallelisation opportunities that are not present in individual ensemble members. This is challenging if members take different control flow paths. We present a source-to-source transformation that turns a given C program into an embedded ensemble program that computes members in a single-instruction-multiple-data fashion using OpenMP SIMD pragmas. We use techniques from whole-function vectorisation, achieving effective vectorisation for moderate amounts of branch divergence, particularly on processors with masked instructions such as recent Xeon Phi or Skylake processors with AVX-512.

Hückelheim, Jan↗

TEAM Project Review, Year 2

This report summarizes our research activities within the TEAM project between December 2020 and December 2021, funded by the ASCR Advanced Research in Quantum Computing program. During the reporting period the LLNL-MSU team has made progress on several fronts. An overarching goal of the team is to provide a comprehensive suite of software tools that can be used for the Characterize-Optimize-Compute loop needed to implement and execute algorithms on quantum devices. We are concurrently developing lightweight solvers that can be used on desktop computers to find optimal control pulses and to characterize small quantum systems (consisting of a few transmons and cavities). However, desktop computers are insufficient for simulating and characterizing larger quantum systems. We have therefore also developed parallel, distributed memory, simulators and optimization solvers, both for open and closed quantum systems. These parallel solvers have, for example, been used to study quantum optimal control for pure-state preparation, utilizing 1000’s of cores on a modern high-performance computing (HPC) platform.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Viskores: Integrating Parallel Scientific Visualization Research into Applications

Viskores is a scientific visualization library that is the primary deployment of such algorithms to the parallel accelerated processors of modern DOE supercomputers. In this paper, we review the capabilities provided by Viskores and how these capabilities are leveraged by other software in the high-performance computing ecosystem. We discuss the Viskores data representation and pay particular attention to array management. Through this array management we describe how data is adapted between Viskores and other software along with strategies for converting dynamic, polymorphic objects to static representations better suited to GPU processing. We conclude with several examples of Viskores integrating with high-performance software that is used in production today.

Moreland, Ken [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000270513288)↗

BULKI-Store v0.3.2

BULKI-Store is a distributed object storage system optimized for high-performance computing environments. Built with a Rust core and Python bindings, it efficiently manages scientific and machine learning datasets across HPC clusters. The system employs a client-server architecture with MPI integration, enabling seamless scaling on supercomputers like Perlmutter. BULKI-Store's object-oriented approach provides intuitive data organization with rich metadata support, contrasting with traditional file-based solutions. Key optimizations include selective checkpoint loading, unified checkpoint files, and object chunking for large data transfers. For machine learning workloads, BULKI-Store offers advantages through fine-grained access patterns, dynamic data sharing between training instances, and reduced memory pressure. Memory management features include strategic Python GC calls, minimized data copies, and batch processing capabilities. The system leverages Rayon's thread pool for asynchronous data prefetching and supports multiple CPU architectures (ARM64, x86, AMD, RISC-V). By combining performance optimizations with developer-friendly APIs, BULKI-Store addresses the complex data management challenges of modern HPC applications while maintaining compatibility across heterogeneous computing environments.

Zhang, Wei [Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory ↗

Using OpenMP for HEP framework algorithm scheduling

The OpenMP standard is the primary mechanism used at high performance computing facilities to allow intra-process parallelization. In contrast, many HEP specific software packages (such as CMSSW, GaudiHive, and ROOT) make use of Intel’s Threading Building Blocks (TBB) library to accomplish the same goal. In these proceedings we will discuss our work to compare TBB and OpenMP when used for scheduling algorithms to be run by a HEP style data processing framework. This includes both scheduling of different interdependent algorithms to be run concurrently as well as scheduling concurrent work within one algorithm. As part of the discussion we present an overview of the OpenMP threading model. We also explain how we used OpenMP when creating a simplified HEP-like processing framework. Using that simplified framework, and a similar one written using TBB, we will present performance comparisons between TBB and different compiler versions of OpenMP.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Multi-physics melt pool modeling and process optimization for laser direct energy deposition of Nb-based refractory C103: Defect formation, geometric precision, and process mapping

Recent developments in additive manufacturing (AM) technology have reignited interest in the fabrication of the Nb-based refractory C103 alloy offering solutions to the challenges posed by traditional manufacturing methods. However, the limited numerical and experimental studies on laser direct energy deposition (DED) of C103 have hindered the understanding of the relationships between process parameters and build quality. This has made it challenging to consistently produce parts with the desired quality and microstructure suitable for critical applications. In this study, we focus on optimizing the laser DED process for C103 by employing a hybrid approach that combines experimental techniques and computational fluid dynamics (CFD). This approach facilitates the development of process maps for defect detection and geometric precision. To achieve this, multi-layer C103 samples were fabricated using laser DED under various process parameters, enabling the creation of a process map for defect detection. Additionally, a multi-physics, multiphase simulation framework was developed within a high-performance computing (HPC) environment to establish process maps for geometric precision. Using these process maps, printability windows were identified for achieving both the desired geometric accuracy and defect-free prints. It was observed that prints with a power-to-velocity (P/V) ratio close to unity resulted in defect-free outcomes. This study provides a foundation for reducing design lead time and rejected parts, ultimately optimizing the laser DED process for C103.

Defect formation and geometric precision↗

Big Data as a Service from an Urban Information System

Big Data has already proven itself as a valuable tool that lets geographers and urban researchers utilize large data re- sources to generate new insights. However, wider adoption of Big Data techniques in these areas is impeded by a number of difficulties in both knowledge discovery and data and sci- ence production. Typically users face such problems as dis- parate and scattered data, data management, spatial search- ing, insufficient computational capacity for data-driven anal- ysis and modelling, and the lack of tools to quickly visual- ize and summarize large data and analysis results. Here we propose an architecture for an Urban Information Sys- tem (UrbIS) that mitigates these problems by utilizing the Big Data as a Service (BDaaS) concept. With technolog- ical roots in High-performance Computing (HPC), BDaaS is based on the idea of outsourcing computations to dif- ferent computing paradigms, scalable to super-computers. UrbIS aims to incorporate federated metadata search, in- tegrated modeling and analysis, and geovisualization into a single seamless workflow. The system is under active devel- opment and is built around various emerging technologies that include hybrid and NoSQL databases, massively par- allel systems, GPGPU computing, and WebGL-based geo- graphic visualization. UrbIS is designed to facilitate using Big Data across multiple cities to better understand how ur- ban areas impact the environment and how climate change and other environmental change impact urban areas.

Sorokine, Alexandre↗

Nanosystems, Edge Computing, and the Next Generation Computing Systems

It is widely recognized that nanoscience and nanotechnology and their subfields, such as nanophotonics, nanoelectronics, and nanomechanics, have had a tremendous impact on recent advances in sensing, imaging, and communication, with notable developments, including novel transistors and processor architectures. For example, in addition to being supremely fast, optical and photonic components and devices are capable of operating across multiple orders of magnitude length, power, and spectral scales, encompassing the range from macroscopic device sizes and kW energies to atomic domains and single-photon energies. The extreme versatility of the associated electromagnetic phenomena and applications, both classical and quantum, are therefore highly appealing to the rapidly evolving computing and communication realms, where innovations in both hardware and software are necessary to meet the growing speed and memory requirements. Development of all-optical components, photonic chips, interconnects, and processors will bring the speed of light, photon coherence properties, field confinement and enhancement, information-carrying capacity, and the broad spectrum of light into the high-performance computing, the internet of things, and industries related to cloud, fog, and recently edge computing. Conversely, owing to their extraordinary properties, 0D, 1D, and 2D materials are being explored as a physical basis for the next generation of logic components and processors. Carbon nanotubes, for example, have been recently used to create a new processor beyond proof of principle. These developments, in conjunction with neuromorphic and quantum computing, are envisioned to maintain the growth of computing power beyond the projected plateau for silicon technology. We survey the qualitative figures of merit of technologies of current interest for the next generation computing with an emphasis on edge computing.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

International ACM Symposium on High Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing Conference for 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020

The 28th ACM HPDC Conference was held in Phoenix, Arizona, June 24 and 28, 2019 (hpdc.org/2019), that was colocated with ACM FCRC 2019 (fcrc.acm.org). During the conference, Prof. Geoffrey Fox, Indiana University, was given the HPDC Achievement Award for 2019. Prof gave a keynote speech entitled “Perspectives on High-Performance Computing in a Big Data World. In addition, to the keynote speakers from HPDC and FCRC conferences, the conference organized successfully five workshops and one Ph.D. forum. The ACM FCRC had a total of 2700 attendees, and HPDC had a total of 120 attendees that included 32 students. We have used the DOE sponsorship to support the conference proceedings that acknowledge the DoE support and partially supported the travel to the HPDC PC meeting, Keynote speaker accommodation, best papers, presentation and poster award.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Contributions to MoDELib SOFTWARE

The purpose of the current request is to enable LANL employees to contribute computer source code to the existing public repository of the MoDELib software package. This software implements discrete dislocation dynamics (DDD) and finite element (FEM) methods and is currently a vital component of an ongoing DR project at LANL, in collaboration with its original author and maintainer Giacomo Po. Contributions from LANL employees would aim to enhance the reliability, accuracy, and performance of MoDELib simulations using LANL's high performance computing platforms through bug fixes, algorithmic refinements, and parallelization.

Julian, Nicholas↗

Vectorization of Random Number Generation and Reproducibility of Concurrent Particle Transport Simulation

Efficient random number generation with high quality statistical properties and exact reproducibility of Monte Carlo simulations are important requirements in many areas of computational science. VecRNG is a package providing pseudo-random number generation (pRNG) in the context of a new library VecMath. This library bundles up several general-purpose mathematical utilities, data structures, and algorithms having both SIMD and SIMT (GPUs) support based on VecCore.~Several state-of-the-art RNG algorithms are implemented as kernels supporting parallel generation of random numbers in scalar, vector, and Cuda workflows. In this report, we will present design considerations, implementation details, and computing performance of parallel pRNG engines on both CPU and GPU. Reproducibility of propagating multiple particles in parallel for HEP event simulation is demonstrated, using GeantV-based examples, for both sequential and fine-grain track-level concurrent simulation wor kflows. Strategies for efficient uses of vectorized pRNG and non-overlapping streams of random number sequences in concurrent computing environments is discussed as well.

Jun, S. Y.↗