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Sandia National Laboratories Strategic Context Workshop Series 2017: National Security Futures for Strategic Thinking

Keller, Elizabeth; Roll, Elizabeth; Aamir, Munaf S.; Bull, Diana L.; Deland, Sharon M.; Haddal, Chad; Passell, Howard; Foley, John T.; Harwell, Amber S.; Otis, Monique; Backus, George A.; Jones, Wendell; Bawden, Michael G.S.; Craft, Richard L.; Kistin, David; Martin, Jeffrey B.; Mcnicol, Bradley R.; Vannoni, Michael; Trost, Lawrence; Tsao, Jeffrey Y.; Weaver, Karla

In August 2017, Sandia convened five workshops to explore the future of advanced technologies and global peace and security through the lenses of deterrence, information, innovation, nonproliferation, and population and Earth systems.

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2018 Annual Terrestrial Sampling Plan for Sandia National Laboratories/New Mexico on Kirtland Air Force Base

Griffith, Stacy

The 2018 Annual Terrestrial Sampling Plan for Sandia National Laboratories/New Mexico on Kirtland Air Force Base has been prepared in accordance with the “Letter of Agreement Between Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, Sandia Field Office (DOE/NNSA/SFO) and 377th Air Base Wing (ABW), Kirtland Air Force Base (KAFB) for Terrestrial Sampling” (signed January 2017), Sandia National Laboratories, New Mexico (SNL/NM). The Letter of Agreement requires submittal of an annual terrestrial sampling plan.

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Trans Atlantic Infrasound Payload (TAIP) Operation Plan

Bowman, Daniel; Lees, Jonathan M.

The Carolina Infrasound package, added as a piggyback to the 2016 ULDB ight, recorded unique acoustic signals such as the ocean microbarom and a large meteor. These data both yielded unique insights into the acoustic energy transfer from the lower to the upper atmosphere as well as highlighted the vast array of signals whose origins remain unknown. Now, the opportunity to y a payload across the north Atlantic offers an opportunity to sample one of the most active ocean microbarom sources on Earth. Improvements in payload capabilities should result in characterization of the higher frequency range of the stratospheric infrasound spectrum as well. Finally, numerous large mining and munitions disposal explosions in the region may provide \ground truth" events for assessing the detection capability of infrasound microphones in the stratosphere. The flight will include three different types of infrasound sensors. One type is a pair of polarity reversed InfraBSU microphones (standard for high altitude flights since 2016), another is a highly sensitive Chaparral 60 modified for a very low corner period, and the final sensor is a lightweight, low power Gem infrasound package. By evaluating these configurations against each other on the same flight, we will be able to optimize future campaigns with different sensitivity and mass constraints.

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SPARC: Demonstrate burst-buffer-based checkpoint/restart on ATS-1

Oldfield, Ron; Ulmer, Craig; Widener, Patrick; Ward, Harry L.

Recent high-performance computing (HPC) platforms such as the Trinity Advanced Technology System (ATS-1) feature burst buffer resources that can have a dramatic impact on an application’s I/O performance. While these non-volatile memory (NVM) resources provide a new tier in the storage hierarchy, developers must find the right way to incorporate the technology into their applications in order to reap the benefits. Similar to other laboratories, Sandia is actively investigating ways in which these resources can be incorporated into our existing libraries and workflows without burdening our application developers with excessive, platform-specific details. This FY18Q1 milestone summaries our progress in adapting the Sandia Parallel Aerodynamics and Reentry Code (SPARC) in Sandia’s ATDM program to leverage Trinity’s burst buffers for checkpoint/restart operations. We investigated four different approaches with varying tradeoffs in this work: (1) simply updating job script to use stage-in/stage out burst buffer directives, (2) modifying SPARC to use LANL’s hierarchical I/O (HIO) library to store/retrieve checkpoints, (3) updating Sandia’s IOSS library to incorporate the burst buffer in all meshing I/O operations, and (4) modifying SPARC to use our Kelpie distributed memory library to store/retrieve checkpoints. Team members were successful in generating initial implementation for all four approaches, but were unable to obtain performance numbers in time for this report (reasons: initial problem sizes were not large enough to stress I/O, and SPARC refactor will require changes to our code). When we presented our work to the SPARC team, they expressed the most interest in the second and third approaches. The HIO work was favored because it is lightweight, unobtrusive, and should be portable to ATS-2. The IOSS work is seen as a long-term solution, and is favored because all I/O work (including checkpoints) can be deferred to a single library.

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Uncertainty Analysis of Consequence Management (CM) Data Products

Hunt, Brian D.; Eckert, Aubrey; Cochran, Lainy D.; Kraus, Terry; Fournier, Sean D.; Allen, Mark B.; Schetnan, Richard R.; Simpson, Matthew D.; Okada, Colin E.; Bingham, Avery A.

The goal of this project is to develop and execute methods for characterizing uncertainty in data products that are deve loped and distributed by the DOE Consequence Management (CM) Program. A global approach to this problem is necessary because multiple sources of error and uncertainty from across the CM skill sets contribute to the ultimate p roduction of CM data products. This report presents the methods used to develop a probabilistic framework to characterize this uncertainty and provides results for an uncertainty analysis for a study scenario analyzed using this framework.

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High-pressure-assisted X-ray-induced damage as a new route for materials synthesis

Nature

Evlyukhin, Egor; Kim, Eunja; Goldberger, David; Cifligu, Petrika; Weck, Philippe F.; Pravica, Michael

X-ray radiation induced damage has been known for decades and has largely been viewed as a tremendous nuisance; e.g., most X-ray-related studies of organic and inorganic materials suffer X-ray damage to varying degrees. Although, recent theoretical and experimental investigation of the response of simple chemical systems to X-rays offered better understanding of the mechanistic details of X-ray induced damage, the question about useful applicability of this technique is still unclear. Furthermore we experimentally demonstrate that by tuning pressure and X-ray energy, the radiation induced damage can be controlled and used for synthesis of novel materials.

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Unsupervised Learning Through Randomized Algorithms for High-Volume High-Velocity Data (ULTRA-HV)

Pinar, Ali P.; Kolda, Tamara G.; Carlberg, Kevin T.; Ballard, Grey; Mahoney, Michael

Through long-term investments in computing, algorithms, facilities, and instrumentation, DOE is an established leader in massive-scale, high-fidelity simulations, as well as science-leading experimentation. In both cases, DOE is generating more data than it can analyze and the problem is intensifying quickly. The need for advanced algorithms that can automatically convert the abundance of data into a wealth of useful information by discovering hidden structures is well recognized. Such efforts however, are hindered by the massive volume of the data and its high velocity. Here, the challenge is developing unsupervised learning methods to discover hidden structure in high-volume, high-velocity data.

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Optimization of Zero Emission Hydrogen Fuel Cell Ferry Design, With Comparisons to the SF-BREEZE

Pratt, Joseph W.; Klebanoff, Leonard E.

Zero emission hydrogen fuel cell technology has the potential to drastically reduce total “well-to-waves” maritime emissions. Through realistic design studies of five commercially-relevant passenger vessels, this study examines the most cost-effective entry points in the US fleet for deploying today’s available technology, and includes analysis of resulting well-to-waves emission profiles. The results show that per-passenger mile vessel energy use is directly correlated to increased emissions, capital costs, and operating costs. As a consequence, low speed, large capacity vessels offer a cost-effective starting place today. Increases in vessel efficiency through such measures as hull design and light-weighting can have large impacts in reducing cost and emissions of these systems. Overall this work showed all five vessel types to be feasible with today’s hydrogen fuel cell technology and presents more options to fleets that are committed to reducing maritime emissions in cost effective ways.

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Transuranic waste management at Sandia National Laboratories

Bland, Jesse J.; Humphrey, Betty J.

This paper documents the history of the TRU program at Sandia, previous and current activities associated with TRU material and waste, interfaces with other TRU waste generator sites and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plan (WIPP), and paths forward for TRU material and waste. This document is a snapshot in time of the TRU program and should be updated as necessary, or when significant changes have occurred in the Sandia TRU program or in the TRU regulatory environment. This paper should serve as a roadmap to capture past TRU work so that efforts are not repeated and ground is not lost due to future inactivity and personnel changes.

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NSRD-15:Computational Capability to Substantiate DOE-HDBK-3010 Data

Foulk, James W.; Bignell, John; Dingreville, Remi P.M.; Zepper, Ethan T.; Brien, Michael J.'.; Busch, Robert D.; Skinner, Corey

Safety basis analysts throughout the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) complex rely heavily on the information provided in the DOE Handbook, DOE-HDBK-3010, Airborne Release Fractions/Rates and Respirable Fractions for Nonreactor Nuclear Facilities, to determine radionuclide source terms from postulated accident scenarios. In calculating source terms, analysts tend to use the DOE Handbook’s bounding values on airborne release fractions (ARFs) and respirable fractions (RFs) for various categories of insults (representing potential accident release categories). This is typically due to both time constraints and the avoidance of regulatory critique. Unfortunately, these bounding ARFs/RFs represent extremely conservative values. Moreover, they were derived from very limited small-scale bench/laboratory experiments and/or from engineered judgment. Thus, the basis for the data may not be representative of the actual unique accident conditions and configurations being evaluated. The goal of this research is to develop a more accurate and defensible method to determine bounding values for the DOE Handbook using state-of-art multi-physics-based computer codes.

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CA Air Resource Board's On-Road Diesel Regulation: TRUCRS Reporting for CY2017

Jadhav, Pradnya A.

Diesel on-road vehicles with a Gross Vehicle Weight Rating (GVWR) greater than 14,000 pounds that operate in California are subject to the On-Road Diesel-Vehicle Regulation. SNL/CA operates eight diesel vehicles that are subject to this regulation; four of the vehicles are classified as low-use vehicles and four of the vehicles have Particulate Matter Filters installed as original equipment. This regulation requires that all fleets using flexibility options, such as the low-use exemption, report annually by January 31 in order to extend the exemption for that year. CA ARB encourages facilities to complete the reporting requirements using the TRUCRS on-line reporting tool.

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Rail-Cask Tests: Normal-Conditionsof- Transport Tests of Surrogate PWR Fuel Assemblies in an ENSA ENUN 32P Cask

Mcconnell, Paul E.; Ross, Steven; Grey, Carissa A.; Uncapher, William L.; Arviso, Michael; Garmendia, Rafael; Fernandez Perez, Ismael; Palacio, Alejandro; Calleja, Guillermo; Garrido, David; Rodriguez Casas, Ana; Gonzalez Garcia, Luis; Chilton, Lyman W.; Ammerman, Douglas; Walz, Jacob W.; Gershon, Sabina; Saltzstein, Sylvia J.; Sorenson, Ken; Klymyshyn, Nicholas; Hanson, Brady; Pena, Ruben; Walker, Russell

This report describes tests conducted using a full-size rail cask, the ENSA ENUN 32P, involving handling of the cask and transport of the cask via truck, ships, and rail. The purpose of the tests was to measure strains and accelerations on surrogate pressurized water reactor fuel rods when the fuel assemblies were subjected to Normal Conditions of Transport within the rail cask. In addition, accelerations were measured on the transport platform, the cask cradle, the cask, and the basket within the cask holding the assemblies. These tests were an international collaboration that included Equipos Nucleares S.A., Sandia National Laboratories, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Coordinadora Internacional de Cargas S.A., the Transportation Technology Center, Inc., the Korea Radioactive Waste Agency, and the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute. All test results in this report are PRELIMINARY – complete analyses of test data will be completed and reported in FY18. However, preliminarily: The strains were exceedingly low on the surrogate fuel rods during the rail-cask tests for all the transport and handling modes. The test results provide a compelling technical basis for the safe transport of spent fuel.

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Sociocultural Behavior Influence Modelling & Assessment: Current Work and Research Frontiers

Bernard, Michael

A common problem associated with the effort to better assess potential behaviors of various individuals within different countries is the shear difficulty in comprehending the dynamic nature of populations, particularly over time and considering feedback effects. This paper discusses a theory-based analytical capability designed to enable analysts to better assess the influence of events on individuals interacting within a country or region. These events can include changes in policy, man-made or natural disasters, migration, war, or other changes in environmental/economic conditions. In addition, this paper describes potential extensions of this type of research to enable more timely and accurate assessments.

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Report for MaRIE Drivers Workshop on needs for energetic material's studies

Specht, Paul E.

Energetic materials (i.e. explosives, propellants, and pyrotechnics) have complex mesoscale features that influence their dynamic response. Direct measurement of the complex mechanical, thermal, and chemical response of energetic materials is critical for improving computational models and enabling predictive capabilities. Many of the physical phenomena of interest in energetic materials cover time and length scales spanning several orders of magnitude. Examples include chemical interactions in the reaction zone, the distribution and evolution of temperature fields, mesoscale deformation in heterogeneous systems, and phase transitions. This is particularly true for spontaneous phenomena, like thermal cook-off. The ability for MaRIE to capture multiple length scales and stochastic phenomena can significantly advance our understanding of energetic materials and yield more realistic, predictive models.

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Informing hazardous zones for on-board maritime hydrogen liquid and gas systems

Blaylock, Myra L.; Pratt, Joseph W.; Bran Anleu, Gabriela A.; Proctor, Camron

The significantly higher buoyancy of hydrogen compared to natural gas means that hazardous zones defined in the IGF code may be inaccurate if applied to hydrogen. This could place undue burden on ship design or could lead to situations that are unknowingly unsafe. We present dispersion analyses to examine three vessel case studies: (1) abnormal external vents of full blowdown of a liquid hydrogen tank due to a failed relief device in still air and with crosswind; (2) vents due to naturally-occurring boil-off of liquid within the tank; and (3) a leak from the pipes leading into the fuel cell room. The size of the hydrogen plumes resulting from a blowdown of the tank depend greatly on the wind conditions. It was also found that for normal operations releasing a small amount of "boil- off" gas to regulate the pressure in the tank does not create flammable concentrations.

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Slycat™ User Manual

Crossno, Patricia J.; Gittinger, Jaxon M.; Hunt, Warren L.; Letter, Matthew; Martin, Shawn; Sielicki, Milosz

Slycat™ is a web-based system for performing data analysis and visualization of potentially large quantities of remote, high-dimensional data. Slycat™ specializes in working with ensemble data. An ensemble is a group of related data sets, which typically consists of a set of simulation runs exploring the same problem space. An ensemble can be thought of as a set of samples within a multi-variate domain, where each sample is a vector whose value defines a point in high-dimensional space. To understand and describe the underlying problem being modeled in the simulations, ensemble analysis looks for shared behaviors and common features across the group of runs. Additionally, ensemble analysis tries to quantify differences found in any members that deviate from the rest of the group. The Slycat™ system integrates data management, scalable analysis, and visualization. Results are viewed remotely on a user’s desktop via commodity web clients using a multi-tiered hierarchy of computation and data storage, as shown in Figure 1. Our goal is to operate on data as close to the source as possible, thereby reducing time and storage costs associated with data movement. Consequently, we are working to develop parallel analysis capabilities that operate on High Performance Computing (HPC) platforms, to explore approaches for reducing data size, and to implement strategies for staging computation across the Slycat™ hierarchy. Within Slycat™, data and visual analysis are organized around projects, which are shared by a project team. Project members are explicitly added, each with a designated set of permissions. Although users sign-in to access Slycat™, individual accounts are not maintained. Instead, authentication is used to determine project access. Within projects, Slycat™ models capture analysis results and enable data exploration through various visual representations. Although for scientists each simulation run is a model of real-world phenomena given certain conditions, we use the term model to refer to our modeling of the ensemble data, not the physics. Different model types often provide complementary perspectives on data features when analyzing the same data set. Each model visualizes data at several levels of abstraction, allowing the user to range from viewing the ensemble holistically to accessing numeric parameter values for a single run. Bookmarks provide a mechanism for sharing results, enabling interesting model states to be labeled and saved.

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HyRAM V1.1 User Guide

Sena, Ethan A.; Ehrhart, Brian D.; Muna, Alice B.; Groth, Katrina M.; Zumwalt, Hannah R.; Clark, Andrew J.

Hydrogen Risk Assessment Models (HyRAM) is a software toolkit that provides a basis for quantitative risk assessment and consequence modeling for hydrogen infrastructure and transportation systems. HyRAM integrates validated, analytical models of hydrogen behavior, statistics, and a standardized QRA approach to generate useful, repeatable data for the safety analysis of various hydrogen systems. HyRAM is a software developed by Sandia National Laboratories for the U.S. Department of Energy. This document demonstrates how to use HyRAM to recreate a hydrogen system and obtain relevant data regarding potential risk. Specific examples are utilized throughout this document, providing detailed tutorials of HyRAM features with respect to hydrogen system safety analysis and risk assessment.

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Time and Frequency Domain Methods for Basis Selection in Random Linear Dynamical Systems

International Journal for Uncertainty Quantification

Jakeman, John D.; Pulch, Roland

Polynomial chaos methods have been extensively used to analyze systems in uncertainty quantification. Furthermore, several approaches exist to determine a low-dimensional approximation (or sparse approximation) for some quantity of interest in a model, where just a few orthogonal basis polynomials are required. In this work, we consider linear dynamical systems consisting of ordinary differential equations with random variables. The aim of this paper is to explore methods for producing low-dimensional approximations of the quantity of interest further. We investigate two numerical techniques to compute a low-dimensional representation, which both fit the approximation to a set of samples in the time domain. On the one hand, a frequency domain analysis of a stochastic Galerkin system yields the selection of the basis polynomials. It follows a linear least squares problem. On the other hand, a sparse minimization yields the choice of the basis polynomials by information from the time domain only. An orthogonal matching pursuit produces an approximate solution of the minimization problem. Finally, we compare the two approaches using a test example from a mechanical application.

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WSEAT Shock Testing Margin Assessment Using Energy Spectra Final Report

Sisemore, Carl; Babuska, Vit; Booher, Jason

Several programs at Sandia National Laboratories have adopted energy spectra as a metric to relate the severity of mechanical insults to structural capacity. The purpose being to gain insight into the system's capability, reliability, and to quantify the ultimate margin between the normal operating envelope and the likely system failure point -- a system margin assessment. The fundamental concern with the use of energy metrics was that the applicability domain and implementation details were not completely defined for many problems of interest. The goal of this WSEAT project was to examine that domain of applicability and work out the necessary implementation details. The goal of this project was to provide experimental validation for the energy spectra based methods in the context of margin assessment as they relate to shock environments. The extensive test results concluded that failure predictions using energy methods did not agree with failure predictions using S-N data. As a result, a modification to the energy methods was developed following the form of Basquin's equation to incorporate the power law exponent for fatigue damage. This update to the energy-based framework brings the energy based metrics into agreement with experimental data and historical S-N data.

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Utilizing Adjoint-Based Error Estimates for Surrogate Models to Accurately Predict Probabilities of Events

International Journal for Uncertainty Quantification

Wildey, Timothy; Butler, Troy

In thist study, we develop a procedure to utilize error estimates for samples of a surrogate model to compute robust upper and lower bounds on estimates of probabilities of events. We show that these error estimates can also be used in an adaptive algorithm to simultaneously reduce the computational cost and increase the accuracy in estimating probabilities of events using computationally expensive high-fidelity models. Specifically, we introduce the notion of reliability of a sample of a surrogate model, and we prove that utilizing the surrogate model for the reliable samples and the high-fidelity model for the unreliable samples gives precisely the same estimate of the probability of the output event as would be obtained by evaluation of the original model for each sample. The adaptive algorithm uses the additional evaluations of the high-fidelity model for the unreliable samples to locally improve the surrogate model near the limit state, which significantly reduces the number of high-fidelity model evaluations as the limit state is resolved. Numerical results based on a recently developed adjoint-based approach for estimating the error in samples of a surrogate are provided to demonstrate (1) the robustness of the bounds on the probability of an event, and (2) that the adaptive enhancement algorithm provides a more accurate estimate of the probability of the QoI event than standard response surface approximation methods at a lower computational cost.

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Density Fluctuation in Aqueous Solutions and Molecular Origin of Salting-Out Effect for CO2

Journal of Physical Chemistry B

Ho, Tuan A.; Ilgen, Anastasia G.

Using molecular dynamics simulation, we studied the density fluctuations and cavity formation probabilities in aqueous solutions and their effect on the hydration of CO2. With increasing salt concentration, we report an increased probability of observing a larger than the average number of species in the probe volume. Our energetic analyses indicate that the van der Waals and electrostatic interactions between CO2 and aqueous solutions become more favorable with increasing salt concentration, favoring the solubility of CO2 (salting in). However, due to the decreasing number of cavities forming when salt concentration is increased, the solubility of CO2 decreases. The formation of cavities was found to be the primary control on the dissolution of gas, and is responsible for the observed CO2 salting-out effect. Our results provide the fundamental understanding of the density fluctuation in aqueous solutions and the molecular origin of the salting-out effect for real gas.

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Spin-triplet supercurrent in Josephson junctions containing a synthetic antiferromagnet with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy

Physical Review B

Glick, Joseph A.; Edwards, Samuel; Korucu, Demet; Aguilar, Victor; Niedzielski, Bethany M.; Loloee, Reza; Pratt, W.P.; Birge, Norman O.; Kotula, Paul G.; Missert, Nancy

We present measurements of Josephson junctions containing three magnetic layers with noncollinear magnetizations. The junctions are of the form S/F′/N/F/N/F″/S, where S is superconducting Nb, F′ is either a thin Ni or Permalloy layer with in-plane magnetization, N is the normal metal Cu, F is a synthetic antiferromagnet with magnetization perpendicular to the plane, composed of Pd/Co multilayers on either side of a thin Ru spacer, and F″ is a thin Ni layer with in-plane magnetization. The supercurrent in these junctions decays more slowly as a function of the F-layer thickness than for similar spin-singlet junctions not containing the F′ and F″ layers. The slower decay is the prime signature that the supercurrent in the central part of these junctions is carried by spin-triplet pairs. The junctions containing F′= Permalloy are suitable for future experiments where either the amplitude of the critical current or the ground-state phase difference across the junction is controlled by changing the relative orientations of the magnetizations of the F′ and F″ layers.

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Direct Electrical Detection of Iodine Gas by a Novel Metal-Organic-Framework-Based Sensor

ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces

Nenoff, Tina M.; Small, Leo J.

High-fidelity detection of iodine species is of utmost importance to the safety of the population in cases of nuclear accidents or advanced nuclear fuel reprocessing. Herein, we describe the success at using impedance spectroscopy to directly detect the real-time adsorption of I2 by a metal-organic framework zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF)-8-based sensor. Methanolic suspensions of ZIF-8 were dropcast onto platinum interdigitated electrodes, dried, and exposed to gaseous I2 at 25, 40, or 70 °C. Using an unoptimized sensor geometry, I2 was readily detected at 25 °C in air within 720 s of exposure. The specific response is attributed to the chemical selectivity of the ZIF-8 toward I2. Furthermore, equivalent circuit modeling of the impedance data indicates a >105× decrease in ZIF-8 resistance when 116 wt % I2 is adsorbed by ZIF-8 at 70 °C in air. This irreversible decrease in resistance is accompanied by an irreversible loss in the long-range crystallinity, as evidenced by X-ray diffraction and infrared spectroscopy. Air, argon, methanol, and water were found to produce minimal changes in ZIF-8 impedance. This report demonstrates how selective I2 adsorption by ZIF-8 can be leveraged to create a highly selective sensor using >105× changes in impedance response to enable the direct electrical detection of environmentally relevant gaseous toxins.

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A Tale of Two Systems: Using Containers to Deploy HPC Applications on Supercomputers and Clouds

Proceedings of the International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science, CloudCom

Younge, Andrew J.; Foulk, James W.; Grant, Ryan; Brightwell, Ronald B.

Containerization, or OS-level virtualization has taken root within the computing industry. However, container utilization and its impact on performance and functionality within High Performance Computing (HPC) is still relatively undefined. This paper investigates the use of containers with advanced supercomputing and HPC system software. With this, we define a model for parallel MPI application DevOps and deployment using containers to enhance development effort and provide container portability from laptop to clouds or supercomputers. In this endeavor, we extend the use of Sin- gularity containers to a Cray XC-series supercomputer. We use the HPCG and IMB benchmarks to investigate potential points of overhead and scalability with containers on a Cray XC30 testbed system. Furthermore, we also deploy the same containers with Docker on Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), and compare against our Cray supercomputer testbed. Our results indicate that Singularity containers operate at native performance when dynamically linking Cray's MPI libraries on a Cray supercomputer testbed, and that while Amazon EC2 may be useful for initial DevOps and testing, scaling HPC applications better fits supercomputing resources like a Cray.

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LED lighting efficacy: Status and directions

Comptes Rendus. Physique

Pattison, Paul M.; Hansen, Monica; Tsao, Jeffrey Y.

A monumental shift from conventional lighting technologies (incandescent, fluorescent, high intensity discharge) to LED lighting is currently transpiring. The primary driver for this shift has been energy and associated cost savings. LED lighting is now more efficacious than any of the conventional lighting technologies with room to still improve. Near term, phosphor converted LED packages have the potential for efficacy improvement from 160 lm/W to 255 lm/W. Longer term, color-mixed LED packages have the potential for efficacy levels conceivably as high as 330 lm/W, though reaching these performance levels requires breakthroughs in green and amber LED efficiency. LED package efficacy sets the upper limit to luminaire efficacy, with the luminaire containing its own efficacy loss channels. In this paper, based on analyses performed through the U.S. Department of Energy Solid State Lighting Program, various LED and luminaire loss channels are elucidated, and critical areas for improvement identified. Beyond massive energy savings, LED technology enables a host of new applications and added value not possible or economical with previous lighting technologies. These include connected lighting, lighting tailored for human physiological responses, horticultural lighting, and ecologically conscious lighting. Finally, none of these new applications would be viable if not for the high efficacies that have been achieved, and are themselves just the beginning of what LED lighting can do.

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A Survey of WEC Reliability, Survival and Design Practices

Energies

Coe, Ryan G.; Yu, Yi-Hsiang; Van Rij, Jennifer

A wave energy converter must be designed to survive and function efficiently, often in highly energetic ocean environments. This represents a challenging engineering problem, comprising systematic failure mode analysis, environmental characterization, modeling, experimental testing, fatigue and extreme response analysis. While, when compared with other ocean systems such as ships and offshore platforms, there is relatively little experience in wave energy converter design, a great deal of recent work has been done within these various areas. Here, this article summarizes the general stages and workflow for wave energy converter design, relying on supporting articles to provide insight. By surveying published work on wave energy converter survival and design response analyses, this paper seeks to provide the reader with an understanding of the different components of this process and the range of methodologies that can be brought to bear. In this way, the reader is provided with a large set of tools to perform design response analyses on wave energy converters.

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Proton irradiation effects on minority carrier diffusion length and defect introduction in homoepitaxial and heteroepitaxial n-GaN

Journal of Applied Physics

Talin, Albert A.; Celio, Kimberlee C.; Leonard, Francois; Allerman, A.A.; Armstrong, Andrew A.; Van Deusen, Stuart B.

Inherent advantages of wide bandgap materials make GaN-based devices attractive for power electronics and applications in radiation environments. Recent advances in the availability of wafer-scale, bulk GaN substrates have enabled the production of high quality, low defect density GaN devices, but fundamental studies of carrier transport and radiation hardness in such devices are lacking. Here, we report measurements of the hole diffusion length in low threading dislocation density (TDD), homoepitaxial n-GaN, and high TDD heteroepitaxial n-GaN Schottky diodes before and after irradiation with 2.5 MeV protons at fluences of 4-6 × 1013 protons/cm2. We also characterize the specimens before and after irradiation using electron beam-induced-current (EBIC) imaging, cathodoluminescence, deep level optical spectroscopy (DLOS), steady-state photocapacitance, and lighted capacitance-voltage (LCV) techniques. We observe a substantial reduction in the hole diffusion length following irradiation (50%-55%) and the introduction of electrically active defects which could be attributed to gallium vacancies and associated complexes (VGa-related), carbon impurities (C-related), and gallium interstitials (Gai). EBIC imaging suggests long-range migration and clustering of radiation-induced point defects over distances of ∼500 nm, which suggests mobile Gai. Following irradiation, DLOS and LCV reveal the introduction of a prominent optical energy level at 1.9 eV below the conduction band edge, consistent with the introduction of Gai.

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Deploy production sliding mesh capability with linear solver benchmarking (ECP Milestone Report, Ver. 1.0)

Domino, Stefan P.; Barone, Matthew F.; Williams, Alan B.; Knaus, Robert C.; Overfelt, James R.

Wind applications require the ability to simulate rotating blades. To support this use-case, a novel design-order sliding mesh algorithm has been developed and deployed. The hybrid method combines the control volume finite element methodology (CVFEM) with concepts found within a discontinuous Galerkin (DG) finite element method (FEM) to manage a sliding mesh. The method has been demonstrated to be design-order for the tested polynomial basis (P=1 and P=2) and has been deployed to provide production simulation capability for a Vestas V27 (225 kW) wind turbine. Other stationary and canonical rotating flow simulations are also presented. As the majority of wind-energy applications are driving extensive usage of hybrid meshes, a foundational study that outlines near-wall numerical behavior for a variety of element topologies is presented. Results indicate that the proposed nonlinear stabilization operator (NSO) is an effective stabilization methodology to control Gibbs phenomena at large cell Peclet numbers. The study also provides practical mesh resolution guidelines for future analysis efforts. Application-driven performance and algorithmic improvements have been carried out to increase robustness of the scheme on hybrid production wind energy meshes. Specifically, the Kokkos-based Nalu Kernel construct outlined in the FY17/Q4 ExaWind milestone has been transitioned to the hybrid mesh regime. This code base is exercised within a full V27 production run. Simulation timings for parallel search and custom ghosting are presented. As the low-Mach application space requires implicit matrix solves, the cost of matrix reinitialization has been evaluated on a variety of production meshes. Results indicate that at low element counts, i.e., fewer than 100 million elements, matrix graph initialization and preconditioner setup times are small. However, as mesh sizes increase, e.g., 500 million elements, simulation time associated with "setup-up" costs can increase to nearly 50% of overall simulation time when using the full Tpetra solver stack and nearly 35% when using a mixed Tpetra- Hypre-based solver stack. The report also highlights the project achievement of surpassing the 1 billion element mesh scale for a production V27 hybrid mesh. A detailed timing breakdown is presented that again suggests work to be done in the setup events associated with the linear system. In order to mitigate these initialization costs, several application paths have been explored, all of which are designed to reduce the frequency of matrix reinitialization. Methods such as removing Jacobian entries on the dynamic matrix columns (in concert with increased inner equation iterations), and lagging of Jacobian entries have reduced setup times at the cost of numerical stability. Artificially increasing, or bloating, the matrix stencil to ensure that full Jacobians are included is developed with results suggesting that this methodology is useful in decreasing reinitialization events without loss of matrix contributions. With the above foundational advances in computational capability, the project is well positioned to begin scientific inquiry on a variety of wind-farm physics such as turbine/turbine wake interactions.

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Near-zero power accelerometer wakeup system

Proceedings of IEEE Sensors

Reger, Robert W.; Barney, Bryson; Yen, Sean; Satches, Michael R.; Wiwi, Michael; Young, Andrew I.; Delaney, Matthew A.; Griffin, Benjamin

The defense community desires low-power sensors deployed around critical assets for intrusion detection. A piezoelectric microelectromechanical accelerometer is coupled with a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor comparator to create a near-zero power wakeup system. The accelerometer is designed to operate at resonance and employs aluminum nitride for piezoelectric transduction. At a target frequency of 160 Hz, the accelerometer achieves sensitivities as large as 26 V/g. The system is shown to require only 5.4 nW of power before and after latching. The combined system is shown to wake up to a target frequency signature of a generator while rejecting background noise as well as non-target frequency signatures.

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Constructing probabilistic scenarios for wide-area solar power generation

Solar Energy

Watson, Jean-Paul; Woodruff, David L.; Deride Silva, Julio A.; Slevogt, Gerrit; Silva-Monroy, Cesar

Optimizing thermal generation commitments and dispatch in the presence of high penetrations of renewable resources such as solar energy requires a characterization of their stochastic properties. In this study, we describe novel methods designed to create day-ahead, wide-area probabilistic solar power scenarios based only on historical forecasts and associated observations of solar power production. Each scenario represents a possible trajectory for solar power in next-day operations with an associated probability computed by algorithms that use historical forecast errors. Scenarios are created by segmentation of historic data, fitting non-parametric error distributions using epi-splines, and then computing specific quantiles from these distributions. Additionally, we address the challenge of establishing an upper bound on solar power output. Our specific application driver is for use in stochastic variants of core power systems operations optimization problems, e.g., unit commitment and economic dispatch. These problems require as input a range of possible future realizations of renewables production. However, the utility of such probabilistic scenarios extends to other contexts, e.g., operator and trader situational awareness. Finally, we compare the performance of our approach to a recently proposed method based on quantile regression, and demonstrate that our method performs comparably to this approach in terms of two widely used methods for assessing the quality of probabilistic scenarios: the Energy score and the Variogram score.

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Results 32001–32200 of 99,299
Results 32001–32200 of 99,299