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Post-processing V&V level II ASC milestone (2360) results

Moreland, Kenneth D.; Chavez, Elmer A.; Weirs, Vincent G.; Brunner, Thomas A.; Trucano, Timothy G.; Karelitz, David B.

The 9/30/2007 ASC Level 2 Post-Processing V&V Milestone (Milestone 2360) contains functionality required by the user community for certain verification and validation tasks. These capabilities include loading of edge and face data on an Exodus mesh, run-time computation of an exact solution to a verification problem, delivery of results data from the server to the client, computation of an integral-based error metric, simultaneous loading of simulation and test data, and comparison of that data using visual and quantitative methods. The capabilities were tested extensively by performing a typical ALEGRA HEDP verification task. In addition, a number of stretch criteria were met including completion of a verification task on a 13 million element mesh.

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TYPE SAND Report YEAR 2007
DOIOSTI

"Bait vehicle" technologies and motor vehicle theft along the southwest border

Aldridge, Chris D.

In 2005, over 33% of all the vehicles reported stolen in the United States occurred in the four southwestern border states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, which all have very high vehicle theft rates in comparison to the national average. This report describes the utilization of 'bait vehicles' and associated technologies in the context of motor vehicle theft along the southwest border of the U.S. More than 100 bait vehicles are estimated to be in use by individual agencies and auto theft task forces in the southwestern border states. The communications, tracking, mapping, and remote control technologies associated with bait vehicles provide law enforcement with an effective tool to obtain arrests in vehicle theft 'hot spots'. Recorded audio and video from inside the vehicle expedite judicial proceedings as offenders rarely contest the evidence presented. At the same time, law enforcement is very interested in upgrading bait vehicle technology through the use of live streaming video for enhanced officer safety and improved situational awareness. Bait vehicle effectiveness could be enhanced by dynamic analysis of motor theft trends through exploitation of geospatial, timeline, and other analytical tools to better inform very near-term operational decisions, including the selection of particular vehicle types. This 'information-led' capability would especially benefit from more precise and timely information on the location of vehicles stolen in the United States and found in Mexico. Introducing Automated License Plate Reading (ALPR) technology to collect information associated with stolen motor vehicles driven into Mexico could enhance bait vehicle effectiveness.

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TYPE SAND Report YEAR 2007
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Sonar atlas of caverns comprising the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Volume 4, West Hackberry site, Louisiana

Rautman, Christopher A.; Lord, Anna S.

Downhole sonar surveys from the four active U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve sites have been modeled and used to generate a four-volume sonar atlas, showing the three-dimensional geometry of each cavern. This volume 4 focuses on the West Hackberry SPR site, located in southwestern Louisiana. Volumes 1, 2, and 3, respectively, present images for the Bayou Choctaw SPR site, Louisiana, the Big Hill SPR site, Texas, and the Bryan Mound SPR site, Texas. The atlas uses a consistent presentation format throughout. The basic geometric measurements provided by the down-cavern surveys have also been used to generate a number of geometric attributes, the values of which have been mapped onto the geometric form of each cavern using a color-shading scheme. The intent of the various geometrical attributes is to highlight deviations of the cavern shape from the idealized cylindrical form of a carefully leached underground storage cavern in salt. The atlas format does not allow interpretation of such geometric deviations and anomalies. However, significant geometric anomalies, not directly related to the leaching history of the cavern, may provide insight into the internal structure of the relevant salt dome.

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TYPE SAND Report YEAR 2007
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Coordinated machine learning and decision support for situation awareness

Draelos, Timothy J.; Brannon, Nathan B.; Conrad, Gregory N.; Zhang, Pengchu Z.

For applications such as force protection, an effective decision maker needs to maintain an unambiguous grasp of the environment. Opportunities exist to leverage computational mechanisms for the adaptive fusion of diverse information sources. The current research employs neural networks and Markov chains to process information from sources including sensors, weather data, and law enforcement. Furthermore, the system operator's input is used as a point of reference for the machine learning algorithms. More detailed features of the approach are provided, along with an example force protection scenario.

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TYPE SAND Report YEAR 2007
DOIOSTI

Arsenic pilot plant operation and results : Anthony, New Mexico

Cappelle, Malynda A.; Kottenstette, Richard K.; Everett, Randy L.; Holub, William E.; Siegel, Malcolm D.; Wright, Jerome L.; Aragon, Alicia R.; Dwyer, Brian P.

Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) is conducting pilot scale evaluations of the performance and cost of innovative water treatment technologies aimed at meeting the recently revised arsenic maximum contaminant level (MCL) for drinking water. The standard of 10 {micro}g/L (10 ppb) is effective as of January 2006. The pilot tests have been conducted in New Mexico where over 90 sites that exceed the new MCL have been identified by the New Mexico Environment Department. The pilot test described in this report was conducted in Anthony, New Mexico between August 2005 and December 2006 at Desert Sands Mutual Domestic Water Consumers Association (MDWCA) (Desert Sands) Well No.3. The pilot demonstrations are a part of the Arsenic Water Technology Partnership program, a partnership between the American Water Works Association Research Foundation (AwwaRF), SNL and WERC (A Consortium for Environmental Education and Technology Development). The Sandia National Laboratories pilot demonstration at the Desert Sands site obtained arsenic removal performance data for fourteen different adsorptive media under intermittent flow conditions. Well water at Desert Sands has approximately 20 ppb arsenic in the unoxidized (arsenite-As(III)) redox state with moderately high total dissolved solids (TDS), mainly due to high sulfate, chloride, and varying concentrations of iron. The water is slightly alkaline with a pH near 8. The study provides estimates of the capacity (bed volumes until breakthrough at 10 ppb arsenic) of adsorptive media in the same chlorinated water. Adsorptive media were compared side-by-side in ambient pH water with intermittent flow operation. This pilot is broken down into four phases, which occurred sequentially, however the phases overlapped in most cases.

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TYPE SAND Report YEAR 2007
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Sonar atlas of caverns comprising the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Volume 3, Bryan Mound Site, Texas

Rautman, Christopher A.; Lord, Anna S.

Downhole sonar surveys from the four active U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve sites have been modeled and used to generate a four-volume sonar atlas, showing the three-dimensional geometry of each cavern. This volume 3 focuses on the Bryan Mound SPR site, located in southeastern Texas. Volumes 1, 2, and 4, respectively, present images for the Bayou Choctaw SPR site, Louisiana, the Big Hill SPR site, Texas, and the West Hackberry SPR site, Louisiana. The atlas uses a consistent presentation format throughout. The basic geometric measurements provided by the down-cavern surveys have also been used to generate a number of geometric attributes, the values of which have been mapped onto the geometric form of each cavern using a color-shading scheme. The intent of the various geometrical attributes is to highlight deviations of the cavern shape from the idealized cylindrical form of a carefully leached underground storage cavern in salt. The atlas format does not allow interpretation of such geometric deviations and anomalies. However, significant geometric anomalies, not directly related to the leaching history of the cavern, may provide insight into the internal structure of the relevant salt dome.

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TYPE SAND Report YEAR 2007
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Reliability of materials in MEMS : residual stress and adhesion in a micro power generation system

Moody, Neville R.

The reliability of thin film systems is important to the continued development of microelectronic and micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). The reliability of these systems is often tied to the ability of the films to remain adhered to its substrate. By measuring the amount of energy to separate the film from the substrate, researchers can predicts film lifetimes. Recent work has resulted in several different testing techniques to measure this energy including spontaneous buckling, indentation induced delamination and four point bending. This report focuses on developing quantifiable adhesion measurements for multiple thin film systems used in MEMS and other thin film systems of interest to Sandia programs. First, methods of accurately assessing interfacial toughness using stressed overlayer methods are demonstrated using both the W/Si and Au/Si systems. For systems where fracture only occurs along the interface, such as Au/Si, the calculated fracture energies between different tests are identical if the energy put into the system is kept near the needed strain energy to cause delamination. When the energy in the system is greater than needed to cause delamination, calculated adhesion energies can increase by a factor of three due to plastic deformation. Dependence of calculated adhesion energies on applied energy in the system was also shown when comparisons of four point bending and stressed overlayer test methods were completed on Pt/Si systems. The fracture energies of Pt/Ti/SiO{sub 2} were studied using four-point bending and compressive overlayers. Varying the thickness of the Ti film from 2 to 17 nm in a Pt/Ti/SiO{sub 2} system, both test methods showed an increase of adhesion energy until the nominal Ti thickness was 12nm. Then the adhesion energy began to decrease. While the trends in toughness are similar, the magnitude of the toughness values measured between the test methods is not the same, demonstrating the difficulty in extracting mode I toughness as mixed mode loading approaches mode II conditions.

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TYPE SAND Report YEAR 2007
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Strengthening the foundations of proliferation assessment tools

Saltiel, David H.; Rochau, Gary E.; Rexroth, Paul E.; Cleary, Virginia D.

Robust and reliable quantitative proliferation assessment tools have the potential to contribute significantly to a strengthened nonproliferation regime and to the future deployment of nuclear fuel cycle technologies. Efforts to quantify proliferation resistance have thus far met with limited success due to the inherent subjectivity of the problem and interdependencies between attributes that lead to proliferation resistance. We suggest that these limitations flow substantially from weaknesses in the foundations of existing methodologies--the initial data inputs. In most existing methodologies, little consideration has been given to the utilization of varying types of inputs--particularly the mixing of subjective and objective data--or to identifying, understanding, and untangling relationships and dependencies between inputs. To address these concerns, a model set of inputs is suggested that could potentially be employed in multiple approaches. We present an input classification scheme and the initial results of testing for relationships between these inputs. We will discuss how classifying and testing the relationship between these inputs can help strengthen tools to assess the proliferation risk of nuclear fuel cycle processes, systems, and facilities.

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TYPE SAND Report YEAR 2007
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Improving human effectiveness for extreme-scale problem solving : final report (assessing the effectiveness of electronic brainstorming in an industrial setting)

Davidson, George S.; Dornburg, Courtney S.; Adams, Susan S.; Hendrickson, Stacey M.; Bauer, Travis L.; Forsythe, James C.

An experiment was conducted comparing the effectiveness of individual versus group electronic brainstorming in order to address difficult, real world challenges. While industrial reliance on electronic communications has become ubiquitous, empirical and theoretical understanding of the bounds of its effectiveness have been limited. Previous research using short-term, laboratory experiments have engaged small groups of students in answering questions irrelevant to an industrial setting. The current experiment extends current findings beyond the laboratory to larger groups of real-world employees addressing organization-relevant challenges over the course of four days. Findings are twofold. First, the data demonstrate that (for this design) individuals perform at least as well as groups in producing quantity of electronic ideas, regardless of brainstorming duration. However, when judged with respect to quality along three dimensions (originality, feasibility, and effectiveness), the individuals significantly (p<0.05) out performed the group working together. The theoretical and applied (e.g., cost effectiveness) implications of this finding are discussed. Second, the current experiment yielded several viable solutions to the wickedly difficult problem that was posed.

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TYPE SAND Report YEAR 2007
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Results 78701–78800 of 96,771
Results 78701–78800 of 96,771