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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
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2018

The impact of carbonation on bulk and ITZ porosity in microconcrete materials with fly ash replacement

Scanning electron microscopy was used to evaluate the porosity patterns found in microconcrete materials to better understand the gaseous diffusion pathways and reaction of CO{sub 2} within the bulk cement paste and interfacial transition zone (ITZ) of microconcrete materials containing different fly ash replacement types. Image segmentation was applied to evaluate the porosity as a function of distance from an exposed surface in the bulk cement paste and from aggregate boundaries in the ITZ in both carbonated and non-carbonated microconcrete materials. The ITZ region remained more porous compared to the bulk cement paste for all microconcrete types after carbonation despite a change in the porosity profile across the ITZ region. Results indicate that both the carbonation reaction capacity and porosity before carbonation impact the decrease in porosity observed as a result of carbonation in the ITZ and bulk cement paste regions.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Surface Modified Fly Ash for Value Added Products (SuMo Fly Ash)

The objective of this project is to develop a technology to encapsulate coal fly ash particles in sulfurized vegetable oil, enhancing physical and mechanical properties of the fly ash as a filler material when applied in commercial products. This project significantly advances the knowledge base and technology for synthesizing coated fly ash particles for application in different polymer matrices to increase cross-linking, compatibility, air-entrainment and to decrease the leaching potential of metals of concern. Specifically, the project focuses on (a) collection, and characterization of fly ash material from coal power plants; (b) development of Sulfurized Vegetable Oil (SVO) modified (SuMo) fly ash and their detailed characterization; (c) evaluation of the mechanical properties of the SuMo fly ash incorporated plastic and rubber composites for potential replacement of CaCO 3 or carbon black as filler materials with SuMo fly ash in plastic and rubber composites; (d) leaching potential of SuMo fly ash and SuMo fly ash-incorporated plastic and rubber composites to determine the rate of release of trace metals. The major findings of this project are: i) Sulfurized Vegetable Oil coated fly ash (SuMo fly ash) was successfully prepared with a particle size of ≤ 45 micron which exhibited hydrophobicity of contact angle > 90°; ii) the coating reduces leaching of metals (e.g., B, Cr) from fly ash when exposed to water; iii) incorporation of SuMo fly ash increases thermal stability and yield strength of plastics; iv) SuMo coating helps disperse fly ash particles into cured rubbers, natural rubber; (v) SuMo fly ash-incorporated plastic/cured rubbers compounds protects against leaching of toxic elements.

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2018

Effect of fly ash microsphere on the rheology and microstructure of alkali-activated fly ash/slag pastes

Highlights: • Fly ash microsphere is collected from fly ash with electrostatic adsorption classification. • Fly ash microsphere acts as 'ball-bearings' in alkali-activated cements. • Fly ash microsphere works as inorganic dispersing agent to improve workability. • Fly ash microsphere exhibits a good compatibility in alkali-activated cements. - Abstract: The highly viscous property of alkali silicate-activated cements is one of the critical challenges that hinder their wide application. The present study focuses on ameliorating the rheological performance of sodium silicate-activated fly ash/slag pastes by using fly ash microsphere (FAM), which are highly spherical particles collected from fly ash with electrostatic adsorption classification technology. The FAM particles work as 'ball-bearings' in the pastes to reduce the internal friction between fly ash and slag grains, and meanwhile mitigate the agglomeration of flocs and fragmentation to release the locked water. The interrelationship between the FAM particle geometry and plastic viscosity of the paste is well described by the Krieger-Dougherty equation, which supports the proposed mechanisms of 'ball-bearings' effects. FAM can work as an inorganic dispersing agent to improve the workability of alkali-activated cement products for a variety of application aspects.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2022

A Unified Protocol for CRISPR/Cas9-Mediated Gene Knockout in Tephritid Fruit Flies Led to the Recreation of White Eye and White Puparium Phenotypes in the Melon Fly

Abstract Tephritid fruit flies are among the most invasive and destructive agricultural pests worldwide. Over recent years, many studies have implemented the CRISPR/Cas9 genome-editing technology to dissect gene functions in tephritids and create new strains to facilitate their genetics, management, and control. This growing literature allows us to compare diverse strategies for delivering CRISPR/Cas9 components into tephritid embryos, optimize procedures, and advance the technology to systems outside the most thoroughly studied species within the family. Here, we revisit five years of CRISPR research in Tephritidae and propose a unified protocol for candidate gene knockout in fruit flies using CRISPR/Cas9. We demonstrated the efficiency of our protocol by disrupting the eye pigmentation gene white eye (we) in the melon fly, Zeugodacus cucurbitae (Coquillett) (Diptera: Tephritidae). High rates of somatic and germline mutagenesis were induced by microinjecting pre-assembled Cas9-sgRNA complexes through the chorion of embryos at early embryogenesis, leading to the rapid development of new mutant lines. We achieved comparable results when targeting the we orthologue in the oriental fruit fly, Bactrocera dorsalis (Hendel) (Diptera: Tephritidae), illustrating the reliability of our methods when transferred to other related species. Finally, we functionally validated the recently discovered white pupae (wp) loci in the melon fly, successfully recreating the white puparium phenotype used in suppression programs of this and other major economically important tephritids. This is the first demonstration of CRISPR-based genome-editing in the genus Zeugodacus, and we anticipate that the procedures described here will contribute to advancing genome-editing in other non-model tephritid fruit flies.

Entomology↗
NASA NTRS1982

Flight crew performance when pilot-flying and pilot-not-flying duties are exchanged

This study compares reports from the ASRS database depicting operational anomalies related to flight crew performance when pilot-flying and pilot-not-flying duties were exchanged. A greater number of near midair collisions, takeoff anomalies, and crossing altitude deviations were reported when the Captain was flying. More altitude deviations, near midair collisions during approach, and landing incidents occurred when the First Officer was flying. There were differences in monitoring effectiveness and in the type and distribution of information transfer problems associated with the anomalies. In addition, a number of crew performance factors were noted that were not affected by the exchange of duties. Several of these were deemed important enough to be included as matter of general interest.

Orlady, H. W.↗
DOE OSTI2019

Direct in-situ observation of early age void evolution in sustainable cement paste containing fly ash or limestone

This paper uses fast X-ray Computed Tomography (fCT) to study the change in air-filled voids during hydration of portland cement pastes of different water to cement ratios and with fly ash and limestone additives between 30 min and 12 h of hydration with deionized and de-aired water. For the deionized samples, the total volume of the air-filled voids increased during the induction period and decreased as the acceleration period began and finally stayed constant. The samples with 20% replacement of fly ash and 20% replacement of limestone showed the same trends as the OPC samples but with a reduction in the observed air-filled void formation. The air-filled void distribution in these samples changed from a limited number of large voids at the beginning of the measurements to a system with a significantly greater number of uniformly distributed smaller voids. The changes in the air-filled voids were not significant in pastes made with 50% fly ash or with de-aired water in the same testing condition. This might be explained by differences in pore solution chemistry and a reduced amount of dissolved air in the mixing water. A mechanism is proposed for a change in ionic concentration in solution to cause release of the dissolved air within the mixing water.

Cement hydration↗
DOE OSTI2026

FLYING SERVING: On-the-Fly Parallelism Switching for Large Language Model Serving

Production LLM serving must simultaneously deliver high throughput, low latency, and sufficient context capacity under non-stationary traffic and mixed request requirements. Data parallelism (DP) maximizes throughput by running independent replicas, while tensor parallelism (TP) reduces per-request latency and pools memory for long-context inference. However, existing serving stacks typically commit to a static parallelism configuration at deployment; adapting to bursts, priorities, or long-context requests is often disruptive and slow. We present Flying Serving, a vLLM-based system that enables online DP-TP switching without restarting engine workers. Flying Serving makes reconfiguration practical by virtualizing the state that would otherwise force data movement: (i) a zero-copy Model Weights Manager that exposes TP shard views on demand, (ii) a KV Cache Adaptor that preserves request KV state across DP/TP layouts, (iii) an eagerly initialized Communicator Pool to amortize collective setup, and (iv) a deadlock-free scheduler that coordinates safe transitions under execution skew. Across three popular LLMs and realistic serving scenarios, Flying Serving improves performance by up to 4.79 × under high load and 3.47 × under low load while supporting latency- and memory-driven requests.

Gao, Shouwei [ORNL]↗
DOE OSTI2025

Probing the Critical Element Chemistry of Coal-Combustion Fly Ash: Examination of Zircon and Associated Minerals from a Beneficiated Kentucky Fly Ash

Along with the principal rare earth (REE) minerals such as monazite, xenotime, and bastnasite, Y-and REE-bearing zircon and associated minerals survive the combustion process and are found in coal-combustion fly ash. Beneficiated fly ash from a power plant burning an eastern-Kentucky-sourced coal blend was found to have zircon (ZrSiO4), baddeleyite (ZrO2), fergusonite (YNbO4), yttriaite (Y2O3), and xenotime (YPO4). Previous studies of the same fly had also identified monazite with a broad REE suite. Scanning electron microscopy–electron dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM)–EDS as well as other TEM-based techniques revealed a variety of zircon associations, including heavy-REE suites with Y, Nb, and Hf. Hafnium is a common accessory element in zircons and the Y and Nb may be present as fergusonite (YNbO4) intermixed with zircon.

Berti, Debora (ORCID:0000000311237794)↗
NASA NTRS1983

Orbiter operations in close proximity to free-flying satellites or formation flying in space

The seventh orbital flight of the Space Shuttle had as one of its primary objectives the testing of the vehicle's capability for proximity operations (defined as anytime the Orbiter is within 1000 feet of another satellite). The goals of these tests were to obtain flight data on different techniques for separation from, stationkeeping with, and approach and capture of a free-flying satellite. This included the acquisition of data on technique evaluation as to propellant usage, time required, crew workload, plume disturbance to the payload by the reaction control system, and jet plume impingement. The tests were also to provide data on the rendezvous radar and optical sighting devices performance in this environment. It is concluded that the Orbiter proved to be a very responsive vehicle that ws straightforward to fly in the vicinity of another satellite given the proper experience base with ground simulations.

Crippen, R. L.↗
NASA NTRS2001

Flying wings / flying fuselages

The present paper has documented the historical relationships between various classes of all lifting vehicles, which includes the flying wing, all wing, tailless, lifting body, and lifting fuselage. The diversity in vehicle focus was to ensure that all vehicle types that map have contributed to or been influenced by the development of the classical flying wing concept was investigated. The paper has provided context and perspective for present and future aircraft design studies that may employ the all lifting vehicle concept. The paper also demonstrated the benefit of developing an understanding of the past in order to obtain the required knowledge to create future concepts with significantly improved aerodynamic performance.

Wood, Richard M.↗
DOE OSTI2020

Flying Blind, or Just Flying Under the Radar? The Underappreciated Power of De Novo Methods of Mass Spectrometric Peptide Identification

Mass spectrometry-based proteomics is a popular and powerful method for precise and highly multiplexed protein identification. The most common method of analyzing untargeted proteomics data is called database searching, where the database is simply a collection of protein sequences from the target organism, derived from genome sequencing. Experimental peptide tandem mass spectra are compared to simplified models of theoretical spectra calculated from the translated genomic sequences. However, in several interesting application areas, such as forensics, archaeology, venomics and others, a genome sequence may not be available, or the correct genome sequence to use is not known. In these cases, de novo peptide identification can play an important role. De novo peptide identification infers peptide sequence directly from the tandem mass spectrum without reference to a sequence database, usually using graph-based or machine learning algorithms. In this review, we provide a basic overview of de novo peptide identification methods and applications, briefly covering de novo algorithms and tools, and focusing in more depth on recent applications from venomics, metaproteomics, forensics, and characterization of antibody drugs.

proteomics, mass spectrometry, forensics, de novo ↗
NASA NTRS2004

Proceedings from the 2nd International Symposium on Formation Flying Missions and Technologies

Topics discussed include: The Stellar Imager (SI) "Vision Mission"; First Formation Flying Demonstration Mission Including on Flight Nulling; Formation Flying X-ray Telescope in L2 Orbit; SPECS: The Kilometer-baseline Far-IR Interferometer in NASA's Space Science Roadmap Presentation; A Tight Formation for Along-track SAR Interferometry; Realization of the Solar Power Satellite using the Formation Flying Solar Reflector; SIMBOL-X : Formation Flying for High-Energy Astrophysics; High Precision Optical Metrology for DARWIN; Close Formation Flight of Micro-Satellites for SAR Interferometry; Station-Keeping Requirements for Astronomical Imaging with Constellations of Free-Flying Collectors; Closed-Loop Control of Formation Flying Satellites; Formation Control for the MAXIM Mission; Precision Formation Keeping at L2 Using the Autonomous Formation Flying Sensor; Robust Control of Multiple Spacecraft Formation Flying; Virtual Rigid Body (VRB) Satellite Formation Control: Stable Mode-Switching and Cross-Coupling; Electromagnetic Formation Flight (EMFF) System Design, Mission Capabilities, and Testbed Development; Navigation Algorithms for Formation Flying Missions; Use of Formation Flying Small Satellites Incorporating OISL's in a Tandem Cluster Mission; Semimajor Axis Estimation Strategies; Relative Attitude Determination of Earth Orbiting Formations Using GPS Receivers; Analysis of Formation Flying in Eccentric Orbits Using Linearized Equations of Relative Motion; Conservative Analytical Collision Probabilities for Orbital Formation Flying; Equations of Motion and Stability of Two Spacecraft in Formation at the Earth/Moon Triangular Libration Points; Formations Near the Libration Points: Design Strategies Using Natural and Non-Natural Ares; An Overview of the Formation and Attitude Control System for the Terrestrial Planet Finder Formation Flying Interferometer; GVE-Based Dynamics and Control for Formation Flying Spacecraft; GNC System Design for a New Concept of X-Ray Distributed Telescope; GNC System for the Deployment and Fine Control of the DARWIN Free-Flying Interferometer; Formation Algorithm and Simulation Testbed; and PLATFORM: A Formation Flying, RvD and Robotic Validation Test-bench.

Source record↗