This report summarizes the results of a computer model that describes the behavior of pulsating heat pipes (PHP). The purpose of the project was to develop a highly efficient (as compared to the heat transfer capability of solid copper) thermal groundplane (TGP) using silicon carbide (SiC) as the substrate material and water as the working fluid. The objective of this project is to develop a multi-physics model for this complex phenomenon to assist with an understanding of how PHPs operate and to be able to understand how various parameters (geometry, fill ratio, materials, working fluid, etc.) affect its performance. The physical processes describing a PHP are highly coupled. Understanding its operation is further complicated by the non-equilibrium nature of the interplay between evaporation/condensation, bubble growth and collapse or coalescence, and the coupled response of the multiphase fluid dynamics among the different channels. A comprehensive theory of operation and design tools for PHPs is still an unrealized task. In the following we first analyze, in some detail, a simple model that has been proposed to describe PHP behavior. Although it includes fundamental features of a PHP, it also makes some assumptions to keep the model tractable. In an effort to improve on current modeling practice, we constructed a model for a PHP using some unique features available in FLOW-3D, version 9.2-3 (Flow Science, 2007). We believe that this flow modeling software retains more of the salient features of a PHP and thus, provides a closer representation of its behavior.
Global monitoring systems that have high spatial and temporal resolution, with long observational baselines, are needed to provide situational awareness of the Earth's climate system. Continuous monitoring is required for early warning of high-consequence climate change and to help anticipate and minimize the threat. Global climate has changed abruptly in the past and will almost certainly do so again, even in the absence of anthropogenic interference. It is possible that the Earth's climate could change dramatically and suddenly within a few years. An unexpected loss of climate stability would be equivalent to the failure of an engineered system on a grand scale, and would affect billions of people by causing agricultural, economic, and environmental collapses that would cascade throughout the world. The probability of such an abrupt change happening in the near future may be small, but it is nonzero. Because the consequences would be catastrophic, we argue that the problem should be treated with science-informed engineering conservatism, which focuses on various ways a system can fail and emphasizes inspection and early detection. Such an approach will require high-fidelity continuous global monitoring, informed by scientific modeling.
Gigabit Passive Optical Networks (GPON) is a networking technology which offers the potential to provide significant cost savings to Sandia National Laboratories in the area of network operations. However, a large scale GPON deployment requires a significant investment in equipment and infrastructure. Before a large scale GPON system was acquired and built, a small GPON system manufactured by Motorola was acquired and tested. The testing performed was to determine the suitability of GPON for use at SNL. This report documents that testing. This report presents test results of GPON system consisting of Motorola and Juniper equipment. The GPON system was tested in areas of data throughput, video conferencing, VOIP, security, and operations and management. The GPON system performed well in almost all areas. GPON will not meet the needs of the low percentage of users requiring a true 1-10 Gbps network connection. GPON will also most likely not meet the need of some servers requiring dedicated throughput of 1-10 Gbps. Because of that, there will be some legacy network connections that must remain. If these legacy network connections can not be reduced to a bare minimum and possibly consolidated to a few locations, any cost savings gained by switching to GPON will be negated by maintaining two networks. A contract has been recently awarded for new GPON equipment with larger buffers. This equipment should improve performance and further reduce the need for legacy network connections. Because GPON has fewer components than a typical hierarchical network, it should be easier to manage. For the system tested, the management was performed by using the AXSVison client. Access to the client must be tightly controlled, because if client/server communications are compromised, security will be an issue. As with any network, the reliability of individual components will determine overall system reliability. There were no failures with the routers, OLT, or Sun Workstation Management platform. There were however four ONTs that failed. Because of the small sample size of 64, and the fact that some of the ONTs were used units, no conclusions can be made. However, ONT reliability is an area of concern. Access to the fiber plant that GPON requires must be tightly controlled and all changes documented. The undocumented changes that were performed in the GPON test lab demonstrated the need for tight control and documentation. In summary, GPON should be able to meet the needs of most network users at Sandia National Laboratories. Because it supports voice, video, and data, it positions Sandia National Laboratories to deploy these services to the desktop. For the majority of corporate network users at Sandia National Laboratories GPON should be a suitable replacement for the legacy network.
The potential for liquid aluminum to dissolve an iridium solid is examined. Substantial uncertainties exist in material properties, and the available data for the iridium solubility and iridium diffusivity are discussed. The dissolution rate is expressed in terms of the regression velocity of the solid iridium when exposed to the solvent (aluminum). The temperature has the strongest influence in the dissolution rate. This dependence comes primarily from the solubility of iridium in aluminum and secondarily from the temperature dependence of the diffusion coefficient. This dissolution mass flux is geometry dependent and results are provided for simplified geometries at constant temperatures. For situations where there is negligible convective flow, simple time-dependent diffusion solutions are provided. Correlations for mass transfer are also given for natural convection and forced convection. These estimates suggest that dissolution of iridium can be significant for temperatures well below the melting temperature of iridium, but the uncertainties in actual rates are large because of uncertainties in the physical parameters and in the details of the relevant geometries.
The radiological transportation risk & consequence program, RADTRAN, has recently added an updated loss of lead shielding (LOS) model to it most recent version, RADTRAN 6.0. The LOS model was used to determine dose estimates to first-responders during a spent nuclear fuel transportation accident. Results varied according to the following: type of accident scenario, percent of lead slump, distance to shipment, and time spent in the area. This document presents a method of creating dose estimates for first-responders using RADTRAN with potential accident scenarios. This may be of particular interest in the event of high speed accidents or fires involving cask punctures.
As the core count of HPC machines continue to grow in size, issues such as fault tolerance and reliability are becoming limiting factors for application scalability. Current techniques to ensure progress across faults, for example coordinated checkpoint-restart, are unsuitable for machines of this scale due to their predicted high overheads. In this study, we present the design and implementation of a novel system for ensuring reliability which uses transparent, rank-level, redundant computation. Using this system, we show the overheads involved in redundant computation for a number of real-world HPC applications. Additionally, we relate the communication characteristics of an application to the overheads observed.
This report summarizes the work completed during FY2009 for the LDRD project 09-1332 'Molecule-Based Approach for Computing Chemical-Reaction Rates in Upper-Atmosphere Hypersonic Flows'. The goal of this project was to apply a recently proposed approach for the Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method to calculate chemical-reaction rates for high-temperature atmospheric species. The new DSMC model reproduces measured equilibrium reaction rates without using any macroscopic reaction-rate information. Since it uses only molecular properties, the new model is inherently able to predict reaction rates for arbitrary nonequilibrium conditions. DSMC non-equilibrium reaction rates are compared to Park's phenomenological non-equilibrium reaction-rate model, the predominant model for hypersonic-flow-field calculations. For near-equilibrium conditions, Park's model is in good agreement with the DSMC-calculated reaction rates. For far-from-equilibrium conditions, corresponding to a typical shock layer, the difference between the two models can exceed 10 orders of magnitude. The DSMC predictions are also found to be in very good agreement with measured and calculated non-equilibrium reaction rates. Extensions of the model to reactions typically found in combustion flows and ionizing reactions are also found to be in very good agreement with available measurements, offering strong evidence that this is a viable and reliable technique to predict chemical reaction rates.