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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 19 records

FPGA-Based Spill Regulation System for the Muon Delivery Ring at Fermilab

The Muon to Electron Experiment (Mu2e) requires a uniform beam profile from the Muon Delivery Ring to meet their experimental needs. A specialized Spill Regulation System (SRS) has been developed to help achieve consistent spill uniformity. The system is based on a custom-designed carrier board featuring an Arria 10 SoC, capable of executing real-time feedback control. The FPGA processes beam pulses of approximately 200 ns every 1.695 $μ$s, allowing for continuous monitoring of the extracted spill intensity through fast bunch integration. The system directly controls three quadrupole magnets, which work in conjunction with sextupole magnets to achieve third-order resonant extraction. Furthermore, the board interfaces with Fermilab's Accelerator Control Network (ACNET), enabling operators to modify spill regulation settings in real-time via the control network while providing diagnostic waveforms. These waveforms help operators monitor the process and fine-tune the feedback mechanisms. This paper presents an overview of the board's architecture and its initial progress toward regulating beam extraction. This initial version of the regulation system aims to evaluate baseline performance to inform future system improvements.

Berlioz, J. R. [Fermilab]↗

FPGA-Based Spill Regulation System for the Muon Delivery Ring at Fermilab

The Muon to Electron Experiment (\acrshort{Mu2e}) requires a uniform beam profile from the Muon Delivery Ring to meet their experimental needs. A specialized Spill Regulation System (\acrshort{SRS}) has been developed to help achieve consistent spill uniformity. The system is based on a custom-designed carrier board featuring an Arria 10 SoC, capable of executing real-time feedback control. The FPGA processes beam pulses of approximately 200 ns every 1.695 microseconds, allowing for continuous monitoring of the extracted spill intensity through fast bunch integration. The system directly controls three quadrupole magnets, which work in conjunction with sextupole magnets to achieve third-order resonant extraction. Furthermore, the board interfaces with Fermilab s Accelerator Control Network (ACNET), enabling operators to modify spill regulation settings in real-time via the control network while providing diagnostic waveforms. These waveforms help operators monitor the process and fine-tune the feedback mechanisms. This paper presents an overview of the board's architecture and its initial progress toward regulating beam extraction. This initial version of the regulation system aims to evaluate baseline performance to inform future system improvements.

Berlioz, Jose Rene [Fermilab]↗

Cost Benefit Analyses through Integrated Online Monitoring and Diagnostics (Final Report)

The objective of this research is to improve the economic competitiveness of advanced reactors through the optimization of cost and plant performance, which can be achieved by coupling intelligent online monitoring with asset management decision-making. As advanced reactors are early in the development life-cycle, online monitoring systems and associated sensor networks can be incorporated directly into the design without constraints related to retrofitting and system upgrades

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Development of a Cloud-based Application to Enable a Scalable Risk-informed Predictive Maintenance Strategy at Nuclear Power Plants

Light-water reactor operations and maintenance (O&M) costs are prohibitively high, thus contributing to the premature decommissioning of nuclear power plants (NPPs). This is partly due to how the equipment is monitored. In recent years, cloud computing has emerged as a dominant technology by virtue of its low costs, computing and storage adaptability, and ability to host applications over numerous types of virtual infrastructures. Cloud computing can be a cost-effective alternative to onsite storage and diagnostics. This paper conducts a techno-economic assessment of a provisional cloud deployment architecture for a NPP predictive monitoring (PdM) system. The cloud-based monitoring system would enable maintenance and diagnostics (M&D) analysts and other authorized plant users to remotely monitor equipment functionality so as to enable PdM practices and early detection of faults. The Microsoft Azure cloud platform is included in the proposed cloud architecture to provide data processing and storage, sensor device networking, and database management; however, this analysis could be extended to other cloud computing service providers as well. For the techno-economic assessment, technical feasibility is measured in terms of network performance metrics such as response time, latency, and throughput, whereas economic feasibility is measured in terms of operational costs and capital expenditures. Finally, this report covers certain regulatory and security aspects that may concern licensees looking to implement cloud computing. The report focuses on the integration of sensor database storage, the application of cloud resources to PdM, and the identification of technological and economic hurdles associated with moving to a cloud-computing-based architecture.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Machine-Learning-Based Rotating Detonation Engine Diagnostics: Evaluation for Application in Experimental Facilities

Real-time monitoring of combustion behavior is a crucial step toward actively controlled rotating detonation engine (RDE) operation in laboratory and industrial environments. Various machine learning methods have been developed to advance diagnostic efficiencies from conventional postprocessing efforts to real-time methods. Here this work evaluates and compares conventional techniques alongside convolutional neural network (CNN) architectures trained in previous studies, including image classification, object detection, and time series classification, according to metrics affecting diagnostic feasibility, external applicability, and performance. Real-time, capable diagnostics are deployed and evaluated using an altered experimental setup. Image-based CNNs are applied to externally provided images to approximate dataset restrictions. Image classification using high-speed chemiluminescence images and time series classification using high-speed flame ionization and pressure measurements achieve classification speeds enabling real-time diagnostic capabilities, averaging laboratory-deployed diagnostic feedback rates of 4–5 Hz. Object detection achieves the most refined resolution of 20 μs in postprocessing. Image and time series classification require the additional correlation of sensor data, extending their time-step resolutions to 80 ms. Comparisons show that no single diagnostic approach outperforms its competitors across all metrics. This finding justifies the need for a machine learning portfolio containing a host of networks to address specific needs throughout the RDE research community.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗

A Systems Engineering Analysis of National Ignition Facility Industrial Controls Systems and Safety Interlock Systems Remote Input/Output Networking Migration from ControlNet to EtherNet/IP

The ControlNet industrial communications protocol and modules used in the Industrial Control System (ICS) and Safety Interlock System (SIS) at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) are no longer necessary and the ICS and SIS would be better served by migrating the communications structure to use EtherNet/Industrial Protocol (IP) and EtherNet bridge modules instead. By the admission of the vendor of ControlNet hardware, Rockwell Automation, in literature by Bill Petro [1], “Moving forward, customers will be able to optimize their asset utilization better using EtherNet/IP protocol than with ControlNet.” The NIF is one of the key elements of the Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC). The NIF contains the systems and provides the operational capacity to perform ICF, high energy density (HED), and discovery science experiments utilizing 192 individual beamlines, a host of diagnostics, and all the industrial systems required to facilitate these beamlines and diagnostics. The industrial systems are governed by the ICS and SIS, with the ICS providing control and the SIS providing monitoring and permissives. Construction on the NIF began in 1997 and was certified complete in 2009 and, as a result, the ICS and SIS were developed during this time using the tools that were available then. This includes the communications structure and protocols for these systems, much of which was, and still is, ControlNet. ControlNet, particularly during the time that the ICS and SIS were being built, has several attractive features. ControlNet hardware is exclusive to Rockwell Automation, which was the automation hardware chosen for the ICS and SIS. One feature that could be considered an advantage or a disadvantage depending on the communication needs of the system is that ControlNet also utilizes no active network components, excluding repeaters which are not always necessary. According to the architect of the ICS system at the NIF, Gordon Lau, one of the most attractive features of the ControlNet protocol during development of the ICS and SIS was that it is deterministic, providing timing of data transfer that is executed exactly as it is defined by the developer.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Artificial intelligence-based predictive modeling for imaging neutral particle analyzers on the DIII-D tokamak

The Imaging Neutral Particle Analyzer (INPA) at DIII-D is a diagnostic system used to accurately resolve the energy and spatial distributions of fast ions in fusion plasmas. A novel artificial intelligence (AI) technique named INPA-net is based on Reservoir Computing Networks and developed here to predict active and passive signals produced by charge-exchange reactions from injected and edge-cold neutrals, respectively, in magnetically confined fusion plasmas. This model is trained using a set of 21 time domain signals between 0 s to 3.35 s that includes injected beam and thermal plasma information, and 6444 real 2D experimental images of the INPA in 12 plasma discharges at DIII-D. The trained neural network is able to forecast experimental images in real-time. The model achieves an R-squared value of 0.91, which is higher than the 0.83 value achieved by a simple linear regression model. This improvement highlights the model's enhanced predictive accuracy for measured images from the validation set. This AI approach is valuable due to its rapid response times and potential for integration into real-time plasma control systems. A version of this model capable of generating syntehic images would be useful for the real-time monitoring of fast-ion transport. A comprehensive sensitivity study reveals that INPA-net maintains high performance even with variations in the input parameters, indicating the model's robustness and reliability. While developed for the INPA, the underlying architecture is adaptable and may be applied to various 2D imaging diagnostics in fusion research.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

AI-driven Neutrino Beam Diagnostics for Next-Generation Neutrino Experiments

The accelerator-driven beam uncertainty limits oscillation measurements in long-baseline neutrino experiments. Spill-resolved beam diagnostics and real-time inference are necessary to address these neutrino flux systematics. As such, we present a machine-learning-based beam monitoring framework developed and validated using data from the T2K experiment. Our approach uses downstream, spill-by-spill muon monitor observables to predict upstream parameters such as proton beam position and width. We achieve high predictive accuracy on nominal runs, demonstrating robust baseline performance whether the model is trained on stable runs or systematically varied conditions. The framework is designed to be robust against domain shifts, allowing the neural network architectures and inference strategies developed with T2K data to be retrained and validated using LBNF simulations, with the goal of eventual deployment under real LBNF/DUNE operating conditions. This scalable approach to real-time beam inference offers a pathway toward reducing flux systematics for next-generation neutrino experiments such as DUNE.

Aney, Noah [Fermilab; U. Chicago (main)]↗

Data-Driven Approaches for Bead Geometry Prediction Via Melt Pool Monitoring

In the realm of additive manufacturing, the selection of process parameters to avoid over and under deposition entails a time-consuming and resource-intensive trial-and-error approach. Given the distinct characteristics of each part geometry, there is a pressing need for advancing real-time process monitoring and control to ensure consistent and reliable part dimensional accuracy. Here, this research shows that support vector regression (SVR) and convolutional neural network (CNN) models offer a promising solution for real-time process control due to the models’ abilities to recognize complex, non-linear patterns with high accuracy. A novel experiment was designed to compare the performance of SVR and CNN models to indirectly detect bead height from a coaxial image of a melt pool from a single-layer, single bead build. The study showed that both SVR and CNN models trained on melt pool data collected from a coaxial optical camera can accurately predict the bead height with a mean absolute percentage error of 3.67% and 3.68%, respectively.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Data Quality Monitoring for the Hadron Calorimeters Using Transfer Learning for Anomaly Detection

The proliferation of sensors brings an immense volume of spatio-temporal (ST) data in many domains, including monitoring, diagnostics, and prognostics applications. Data curation is a time-consuming process for a large volume of data, making it challenging and expensive to deploy data analytics platforms in new environments. Transfer learning (TL) mechanisms promise to mitigate data sparsity and model complexity by utilizing pre-trained models for a new task. Despite the triumph of TL in fields like computer vision and natural language processing, efforts on complex ST models for anomaly detection (AD) applications are limited. In this study, we present the potential of TL within the context of high-dimensional ST AD with a hybrid autoencoder architecture, incorporating convolutional, graph, and recurrent neural networks. Motivated by the need for improved model accuracy and robustness, particularly in scenarios with limited training data on systems with thousands of sensors, this research investigates the transferability of models trained on different sections of the Hadron Calorimeter of the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at CERN. The key contributions of the study include exploring TL’s potential and limitations within the context of encoder and decoder networks, revealing insights into model initialization and training configurations that enhance performance while substantially reducing trainable parameters and mitigating data contamination effects.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

The git based ATLAS data acquisition configuration service in LHC Run 3

The ATLAS experiment at the LHC at CERN uses a large, distributed trigger and data acquisition system composed of many computing nodes, networks, and hardware modules. Its configuration service is used to provide descriptions of control, monitoring, diagnostic, recovery, dataflow and data quality configurations, interconnections, and parameters for modules, chips, and channels of various online systems, detectors, and the whole ATLAS experiment. Those descriptions have historically been stored in more than one thousand interconnected XML files, which are updated by various experts many times per day. Maintaining error-free and consistent sets of such files and providing reliable and fast access to current and historical configurations is a major challenge. This paper gives details of the configuration service upgrade on the modern Git version control system backend for LHC Run 3 and its exploitation experience. It may be interesting for developers using human-readable file formats, where consistency of the files, performance, access control, traceability of modifications, and effective archiving are key requirements.

Soloviev, Igor [Univ. of California, Irvine, CA (U↗

Controller area network decoder (CAN-D)

A system and method for decoding an unknown automotive controller area network (“CAN”) message definitions. CAN data vehicle signal mappings are typically held in secret and varied by automotive model and year. Without knowledge of the mappings, the wealth of real-time vehicle data hidden in the automotive CAN packets is uninterpretable—impeding research, after-market tuning, efficiency and performance monitoring, fault diagnosis, and privacy-related technologies. This technology can ascertain the CAN signals' boundaries (start bit and length), endianness (byte ordering), signedness (binary-to-integer encoding) from raw CAN data. This allows conversion of CAN data to time series. Interpreting the translated CAN data's physical meaning and finding a linear mapping to standard units (e.g., knowing the signal is speed and scaling values to represent units of miles per hour) can be achieved for many signals by leveraging diagnostic standards to obtain real-time measurements of in-vehicle systems. The system and method can be integrated into lightweight hardware enabling an OBD-II plugin for real-time in-vehicle CAN decoding or run on standard computers. The system can output a standard DBC file with the signal definition information.

Verma, Kiren E.↗

System for controller area network payload decoding

A system for decoding an unknown automotive controller area network (“CAN”) message definitions. CAN data vehicle signal mappings are typically held in secret and varied by automotive model and year. Without knowledge of the mappings, the wealth of real-time vehicle data hidden in the automotive CAN packets is uninterpretable—impeding research, after-market tuning, efficiency and performance monitoring, fault diagnosis, and privacy-related technologies. This system can ascertain the CAN signals' boundaries (start bit and length), endianness (byte ordering), signedness (binary-to-integer encoding) from raw CAN data. This allows conversion of CAN data to time series. Interpreting the translated CAN data's physical meaning and finding a linear mapping to standard units (e.g., knowing the signal is speed and scaling values to represent units of miles per hour) can be achieved for many signals by leveraging diagnostic standards to obtain real-time measurements of in-vehicle systems. The system can be integrated into lightweight hardware enabling an OBD-II plugin for real-time in-vehicle CAN decoding or run on standard computers. The system can output a standard DBC file with the signal definition information.

Verma, Kiren E.↗

Automatic Calibration and Health Monitoring of Infrastructure Sensors

Smart transportation infrastructure relies on networks of heterogeneous sensors - cameras, radars, and lidars - continuously monitoring traffic conditions. However, executing the initial spatial calibration of multiple sensors and the subsequent health monitoring presents significant operational challenges. Environmental factors, mechanical vibrations, and gradual drift cause spatial misalignment, degrading fusion performance and tracking accuracy. Traditional calibration approaches require manual intervention with specialized targets or survey equipment, resulting in service interruptions and high maintenance costs. This work presents an automated framework for initial calibration and continuous health monitoring without human intervention or service disruption. Our approach addresses two critical problems: (1) detecting when sensors become miscalibrated during operation, and (2) automatically re-establishing spatial alignment using only operational traffic data. The health monitoring component analyzes measurement innovations - differences between sensor observations and predicted object states - to detect systematic biases indicative of calibration drift. By computing bias magnitude, directional consistency, and rejection rates, the system identifies miscalibrations as small as 0.5 meters. Unlike traditional methods requiring known calibration targets, our diagnostic operates continuously on live traffic observations, enabling early detection before fusion quality degrades. The automatic recalibration algorithm leverages overlapping sensor fields-of-view and temporal correlation of vehicle observations. Using graph-based optimization, the system automatically discovers which sensor pairs observe common regions, estimates pairwise spatial transformations using RANSAC-based robust estimation, and jointly optimizes all sensor poses through bundle adjustment. The framework handles practical deployment challenges, including different sensor sampling rates (1-10 Hz), varying installation positions, unknown orientations, and limited overlap regions (>10%). When approximate sensor positions are available from installation surveys (+/-1m accuracy), the algorithm additionally estimates sensor orientations, refining both position and rotation to sub-meter and sub-degree accuracy. We validate the framework on multi-hour traffic datasets from six heterogeneous sensors with sampling rates ranging from 1 Hz to 10 Hz. Results demonstrate successful calibration even with sparse overlap (<20%) and automatic detection of miscalibrations exceeding 0.8 meters. This work enables a "deploy-and-forget" sensor infrastructure that maintains calibration autonomously, reducing maintenance costs while improving tracking accuracy. The techniques generalize beyond transportation to any multi-sensor monitoring application requiring robust spatial alignment, including smart cities, industrial monitoring, and surveillance systems.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

A non-intrusive framework using acoustic signals and deep learning for boiling diagnostics in visual-limited environments

Accurate monitoring of boiling heat transfer is critical for safeguarding high-power systems operating in environments where conventional optical diagnostics are hindered by radiation fields or restricted visual accessibility. This study presents a non-intrusive framework that integrates hydroacoustic sensing with deep learning to infer near-wall boiling characteristics and enable predictive thermal assessment without visual access. In a prototypical subcooled flow-boiling facility representative of the Isotope Production Facility (IPF) at Los Alamos, hydrophones capture boiling-induced acoustic emissions that are transformed into background-removed Short-Time Fourier Transform (STFT) spectrograms. A convolutional neural network (CNN) then regresses heat flux, wall superheat, and key bubble parameters directly from these spectrograms. The CNN achieved predictive accuracy under nominal conditions and demonstrated robustness and generalization under acoustic noise for Signal-to-Noise Ratios (SNRs) down to approximately 0 dB. When integrated into an ANSYS CFX wall-boiling model, the acoustically inferred parameters reproduced boiling curve and critical heat flux (CHF) values consistent with image-based benchmarks. Furthermore, the model retained reliable performance under moderate variations in bulk temperature, flow rate, and hydrophone placement, confirming its generalizability across practical boundary conditions. These results demonstrate the feasibility of hydroacoustic-based deep learning as a viable path toward real-time, radiation-tolerant boiling diagnostics and predictive thermal safety assessment in inaccessible systems such as the IPF.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Transfer learning for probabilistic localization of hidden cracks in concrete structures

Abstract The utility of discriminative supervised learning models built using multiple training-data sources is investigated for hidden crack localization in concrete. Feed-forward neural network (FFNN) is chosen as the model architecture, and transfer learning is used to assimilate the information obtained from different sources (computational physics simulations and laboratory experiments). The labeled training data consists of values of a damage index and the known locations of hidden cracks. The classification models need to learn how the presence of damage (hidden cracks) affects the damage index at different sensors for different test conditions. To this end, diagnostic FFNN models are built by sequentially adding and training new hidden layers to assimilate labeled information from computer models (different model geometries, test conditions, crack lengths, crack locations) and laboratory experiments on a plain cement slab. These transfer learning-based models are then used to localize damage in concrete specimens that reflect real-world conditions (i.e., specimens with steel reinforcement and randomly distributed aggregate). The actual damage state in these specimens is determined by extracting cores and performing petrographic studies on the extracted cores. The damage probability estimated by transfer learning-based models is compared with the petrographic damage rating index (DRI) to identify the most suitable approach to train the diagnostic models. The transfer learning-based diagnostic methodology shows promise and could be used in various structural health monitoring applications, where sufficient labeled data are typically not available from a single data source.

Miele, S.↗

Development of Short-Term Forecasting Models Using Plant Asset Data and Feature Selection

Nuclear power plants collect and store large volumes of heterogeneous data from various components and systems. With recent advances in machine learning (ML) techniques, these data can be leveraged to develop diagnostic and short-term forecasting models to better predict future equipment condition. Maintenance operations can then be planned in advance whenever degraded performance is predicted, thus resulting in fewer unplanned outages and the optimization of maintenance activities. This enables lower maintenance costs and improves the overall economics of nuclear power. This paper focuses on developing a short-term forecasting process that leverages a feature selection process to distill large volumes of heterogeneous data and predict specific equipment parameters. A variety of feature selection methods, including Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP) and variance inflation factor (VIF), were used to select the optimal features as inputs for three ML methods: long short-term memory (LSTM) networks, support vector regression (SVR), and random forest (RF). Each combination of model and input features was used to predict a pump bearing temperature both 1 and 24 hours in advance, based on actual plant system data. The optimal inputs for the LSTM and SVR were selected using the SHAP values, while the optimal input for the RF consisted solely of the response variable itself. Each model produced similar 1-hour-ahead predictions, with root mean square errors (RMSEs) of roughly 0.006. For the 24-hour-ahead predictions, differences could be seen between LSTM, SVR, and RF, as reflected by model performances of 0.036 +- 0.014, 0.0026 +- 0, and 0.063 +- 0.004 RMSE, respectively. As big data and continuous online monitoring become more widely available, the proposed feature selection process can be used for many applications beyond the prediction of process parameters within nuclear infrastructure.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗