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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

Support system, excavation arrangement, and process of supporting an object

A support system, an excavation arrangement, and a process of supporting an object are disclosed. The support system includes a weight-bearing device and a camming mechanism positioned below the weight-bearing device. A downward force on the weight-bearing device at least partially secures the camming mechanism to opposing surfaces. The excavation arrangement includes a borehole, a support system positioned within and secured to the borehole, and an object positioned on and supported by the support system. The process includes positioning and securing the support system and positioning the object on the weight-bearing device.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Design and implementation of wireless dose logger network for radiological emergency decision support system

A decision support system (DSS) is implemented in Radiological Safety Division, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research for providing guidance for emergency decision making in case of an inadvertent nuclear accident. Real time gamma dose rate measurement around the stack is used for estimating the radioactive release rate (source term) by using inverse calculation. Wireless gamma dose logging network is designed, implemented, and installed around the Madras Atomic Power Station reactor stack to continuously acquire the environmental gamma dose rate and the details are presented in the paper. The network uses XBee–Pro wireless modules and PSoC controller for wireless interfacing, and the data are logged at the base station. A LabView based program is developed to receive the data, display it on the Google Map, plot the data over the time scale, and register the data in a file to share with DSS software. The DSS at the base station evaluates the real time source term to assess radiation impact.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Human Factors and Technical Considerations for a Computerized Operator Support System Prototype

A prototype computerized operator support system (COSS) has been developed in order to demonstrate the concept and provide a test bed for further research. The prototype is based on four underlying elements consisting of a digital alarm system, computer-based procedures, PI&D system representations, and a recommender module for mitigation actions. At this point, the prototype simulates an interface to a sensor validation module and a fault diagnosis module. These two modules will be fully integrated in the next version of the prototype. The initial version of the prototype is now operational at the Idaho National Laboratory using the U.S. Department of Energy’s Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) Human Systems Simulation Laboratory (HSSL). The HSSL is a full-scope, full-scale glass top simulator capable of simulating existing and future nuclear power plant main control rooms. The COSS is interfaced to the Generic Pressurized Water Reactor (gPWR) simulator with industry-typical control board layouts. The glass top panels display realistic images of the control boards that can be operated by touch gestures. A section of the simulated control board was dedicated to the COSS human-system interface (HSI), which resulted in a seamless integration of the COSS into the normal control room environment. A COSS demonstration scenario has been developed for the prototype involving the Chemical & Volume Control System (CVCS) of the PWR simulator. It involves a primary coolant leak outside of containment that would require tripping the reactor if not mitigated in a very short timeframe. The COSS prototype presents a series of operator screens that provide the needed information and soft controls to successfully mitigate the event.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

Operator-in-the-Loop Study for a Computerized Operator Support System (COSS) – Cross-System and System-Independent Evaluations

The Computerized Operator Support System (COSS) is an operator assistive technology funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy and developed at Idaho National Laboratory. The project works in collaboration with an advanced prognostics system called PRO-AID developed at Argonne National Laboratory. The COSS provides a human-machine interface to help operators maintain situation awareness and detect faults earlier than would be possible using conventional control room technologies at nuclear power plants. This report represents a status report outlining third-year efforts to develop and validate the COSS. The COSS has now been implemented as a prototype system, with multiple interaction design concepts on multiple plant systems in the simulator from a commercial nuclear power plant. Two studies involving three licensed reactor crews were conducted to evaluate the COSS. This report captures insights into the development of COSS as well as operator feedback and future development guidance derived from the operator-in-the-loop simulator studies.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

AI-Guided Reasoning-Based Operator Support System for the Nuclear Power Plant Management

The Decision-making process in the Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) control room faces some challenges: operator incomplete knowledge, insufficient time for responding to the highly dynamic events, and a large number of indicators to monitor. Because of the complexity of the NPP system, it is hard to pre-plan all the failures/mitigative actions. An intelligent operator support system is vital to mitigate these shortcomings. In this paper, an AI declarative approach (Answer Set Programming (ASP)) is employed to represent our knowledge of the nuclear power plant in the form of logic rules. This represented knowledge is structured to form a reasoning-based operator support system. When an incident occurs, this ASP-based reasoning support system is demonstrated to be capable of fault identification (diagnosis), informing the operator of different scenarios and consequences, and generating the control options (decision making).

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

Nuclear reactor core support system providing radial and axial support

A nuclear reactor core mechanical support bracket is disclosed. The support bracket includes a housing, a spring disposed internally within the housing, a shaft slidingly disposed within the housing, a shaft travel pin, and a flange. The shaft is configured to engage the spring to compress and decompress the spring as the shaft travels in and out of the housing. The shaft travel pin controls the travel of the shaft. The flange is configured to mount the nuclear reactor core mechanical support bracket to a canister of a nuclear reactor. The shaft includes an inset configured to interface with a nuclear reactor core component.

Aleshin, Yuriy↗

Review of Power System Support Functions for Inverter-Based Distributed Energy Resources - Standards, Control Algorithms, and Trends

Penetration of renewable energy in power systems has been increasing in the past decades in response to increased global electricity demand and concerns for the environment. Distributed energy resources (DERs) based on renewables have experienced rapid growth thanks to the incentive programs and broad-based participation. With the growing prevalence of DERs, the risk of grid instability and vulnerability increases due to the intermittent nature of renewable energy. At the same time, the voltage and frequency deviation problems emerge more often when the reverse power flow occurs under supply-demand imbalance in distributed power systems. Standards and grid codes have been issued for DER inverters to interconnect with the distribution grid. The updated standard and grid codes expect DERs to provide a variety of power system support functions in order to incorporate higher DER penetration and to maximize DER value to the grid. This paper provides an overview of the power system support functions from renewable DER inverters, which are categorized as: voltage regulation by active/reactive power control, frequency regulation by active power control, voltage ride-through, and frequency ride-through. The benefits and drawbacks of each algorithm are presented and compared with its predecessor, manifesting the logic in the evolution of the algorithms.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

A Universal Velocity Dispersion Profile for Pressure Supported Systems: Evidence for MONDian Gravity across Seven Orders of Magnitude in Mass

For any MONDian extended theory of gravity where the rotation curves of spiral galaxies are explained through a change in physics rather than the hypothesis of dark matter, a generic dynamical behavior is expected for pressure supported systems: an outer flattening of the velocity dispersion profile occurring at a characteristic radius, where both the amplitude of this flat velocity dispersion and the radius at which it appears are predicted to show distinct scalings with the total mass of the system. By carefully analyzing the dynamics of globular clusters and elliptical galaxies, we are able to significantly extend the astronomical diversity of objects in which MONDian gravity has been tested, from spiral galaxies to the much larger mass range covered by pressure supported systems. We show that a universal projected velocity dispersion profile accurately describes various classes of pressure supported systems, and further, that the expectations of extended gravity are met across seven orders of magnitude in mass. These observed scalings are not expected under dark matter cosmology, and would require particular explanations tuned at the scales of each distinct astrophysical system.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Components of aircraft life support systems interact with each other and the user

The life support system in a tactical aircraft provides necessary supplemental oxygen to the aircrew. However, interactions among its various components may generate unexpected breathing loads. We focus here on the interactions between a regulator and breathing mask commonly used together in the U.S. Navy, the CRU-103 regulator and MBU 23/P mask, and some effects of the interactions on the user. The data reported were collected during a larger research effort examining potential physiological and cognitive effects of low regulator inlet pressures. Seventeen participants completed a series of tasks under mild exercise while breathing 40% O 2 (balance N 2 ) from an MBU-23/P mask supplied by a CRU-103 regulator with supply pressures 10, 6, 4, and 2 psig (CRU-103 specifications are for inlet pressures from 5 to 120 psig). Variables measured included flow to the mask and pressures at the regulator supply, in the hose to the mask, and in the mask. In addition to restricting inspiratory flow, low inlet pressure to the CRU-103 caused a counterintuitive overshoot in gas delivery pressure at end-inspiration, a mean increase of 1.5 cm H 2 O between the 10- and 2 psig conditions. The added pressure to the exhalation valve increased the expiratory threshold, the pressure to start expiratory flow, by approximately 2 cm H 2 O, increasing the effort needed to exhale.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Final Report for File System Support for Burst Buffers on HPC Systems

Distributed burst buffers are a promising storage architecture for handling I/O workloads for exascale computing. As they are being deployed on more supercomputers, a file system that efficiently manages these burst buffers for fast I/O operations carries great consequence. Over the past year, FSU team has undertaken several efforts to design, prototype and evaluate distributed file systems for burst buffers on HPC systems. These include MetaKV: a Key-Value Store for Metadata Management of Distributed Burst Buffers, a user-level file system with multiple backends, and a specialized file system for large datasets of deep neural networks. Our progress for these respective efforts are elaborated further in this report.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Dynamic, risk informed decision support systems and methods

The present disclosure is directed to a decision support system or tool based on a Bayesian Network (BN) framework. The diagnostic support tool is created by using advanced Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) method(s) to construct Bayesian Networks (BNs) that form a Bayesian Decision Support Process (BDSP) to provide science-based decision support for understanding and managing events in complex systems. In an embodiment, the PRA method(s) may include Discrete Dynamic Event Trees (DDETs) and simulations.

Groth, Katrina↗

Decision support system for outage management and automated crew dispatch

A decision support system is provided for utility operations to assist with crew dispatch and restoration activities following the occurrence of a disturbance in a multiphase power distribution network, by providing a real-time visualization of possible location(s). The system covers faults that occur on fuse-protected laterals. The system uses real-time data from intelligent electronics devices coupled with other data sources such as static feeder maps to provide a complete picture of the disturbance event, guiding the utility crew to the most probable location(s). This information is provided in real-time, reducing restoration time and avoiding more costly and laborious fault location finding practices.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

A Cloud-Based Decision Support System Framework for Hydropower Biological Evaluation

Hydropower has become one of the most important energy sources: it accounts for more than 80% of the world’s renewable energy and about 16% of all the energy in the world. Significantly more hydropower capacity is planned to be developed. However, hydro-structures, including powered dams, may have adverse biological effects on fishes, especially on migrating fish. For instance, fish can be injured or even killed when they pass through turbines. This is why biological evaluations on hydro-structures are greatly needed to estimate fish injury and mortality rates. The Hydropower Biological Evaluation Toolset (HBET) is an integrated suite of science-based desktop tools designed to evaluate whether the hydraulic conditions of hydropower structures are fish friendly by analyzing collected data and providing estimated injury and mortality rates. Sensor Fish, a small, autonomous sensor package, is used by HBET to record data describing the conditions that live fish passing through a hydropower structure will face. In this paper, we incorporated cloud computing into HBET, and migrated it into a cloud-based decision support system framework for hydropower biological evaluation. This will make the evaluation systems more scalable and flexible; however, this also introduces a significant challenge: how to maintain the security while retaining scalability and flexibility. We discuss the technical methodologies and algorithms implemented in the proposed framework, and analyze the countermeasures implemented therein.

Decision Support System, Hydropower, Dam, Fish Inj↗

ADDS-EVS: An agent-based deployment decision-support system for electric vehicle services

Rapid and sustainable development of the electric vehicle (EV) industry places the requirement for the plan of EV deployment. For public EV, existing models mainly focus on the charging facility design and fail to capture the multi-modal scenarios. In this work, we develop an agent-based decision-support system for multi-modal electric transits to locate the optimal combinations of key parameters, including the fleet size, the transit schedule, the charging facility design, and the routing strategy. We demonstrate the utilities of our system by simulating public EV services deployed to serve travel needs related to a transportation hub in New York City. To support the decision of the fleet size, we summarize system-level performances including the total satisfied demand, passengers' waiting time, vehicle idling time. The spatial and temporal patterns are extracted to serve a deeper understanding of system dynamics and service quality. Finally, we investigate the interaction between the fleet size design and the routing strategy. The results suggest a necessity of integrating the operation strategies into the planning phase.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Computerized operator support system and human performance in the control room - 262

An operator aid technology to assist nuclear plant operators maintain situation awareness and detect faults earlier than would be possible using conventional control room technologies is described. Coined the Computerized Operator Support System (COSS), this technology is aimed at the human-machine interface. The COSS has been implemented as a prototype system operating in the control room environment of a full-scale simulator for a commercial nuclear power plant. A human factors assessment that involved two licensed reactor crews was performed to evaluate crew performance. This paper describes the development of the COSS, the underlying fault-detection architecture, and feedback received based on operator-in-the-loop studies. (authors)

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Two-Stage Adaptive Restoration Decision Support System for a Self-Healing Power Grid

Power outages cost American industries and businesses billions of dollars and jeopardize the lives of hospital patients. The losses can be greatly reduced with a fast, reliable, and flexible self-healing tool. This paper is aimed to tackle the challenging task of developing an adaptive restoration decision support system (RDSS). The proposed RDSS determines restoration actions both in planning and real-time phases and adapts to constantly changing system conditions. The comprehensive formulation encompasses practical constraints including ac power flow, dynamic reserve, and load modeling. Here, the combinatorial problem is decomposed into a two-stage formulation solved by an integer L-shaped algorithm. The two stages are then executed online in the RDSS framework employing a sliding window method. The IEEE 39-bus system has been studied under normal and contingency conditions to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed online RDSS.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗