A National Collaboratory to Advance the Science of High Temperature Plasma Physics for Magnetic Fusion

This report summarizes the work of the National Fusion Collaboratory (NFC) Project to develop a persistent infrastructure to enable scientific collaboration for magnetic fusion research. The original objective of the NFC project was to develop and deploy a national FES Grid (FusionGrid) that would be a system for secure sharing of computation, visualization, and data resources over the Internet. The goal of FusionGrid was to allow scientists at remote sites to participate as fully in experiments and computational activities as if they were working on site thereby creating a unified virtual organization of the geographically dispersed U.S. fusion community. The vision for FusionGrid was that experimental and simulation data, computer codes, analysis routines, visualization tools, and remote collaboration tools are to be thought of as network services. In this model, an application service provider (ASP provides and maintains software resources as well as the necessary hardware resources. The project would create a robust, user-friendly collaborative software environment and make it available to the US FES community. This Grid's resources would be protected by a shared security infrastructure including strong authentication to identify users and authorization to allow stakeholders to control their own resources. In this environment, access to services is stressed rather than data or software portability

Distributed computing testbed for a remote experimental environment

Collaboration is increasing as physics research becomes concentrated on a few large, expensive facilities, particularly in magnetic fusion energy research, with national and international participation. These facilities are designed for steady state operation and interactive, real-time experimentation. We are developing tools to provide for the establishment of geographically distant centers for interactive operations; such centers would allow scientists to participate in experiments from their home institutions. A testbed is being developed for a Remote Experimental Environment (REE), a ``Collaboratory.`` The testbed will be used to evaluate the ability of a remotely located group of scientists to conduct research on the DIII-D Tokamak at General Atomics. The REE will serve as a testing environment for advanced control and collaboration concepts applicable to future experiments. Process-to-process communications over high speed wide area networks provide real-time synchronization and exchange of data among multiple computer networks, while the ability to conduct research is enhanced by adding audio/video communication capabilities. The Open Software Foundation`s Distributed Computing Environment is being used to test concepts in distributed control, security, naming, remote procedure calls and distributed file access using the Distributed File Services. We are exploring the technology and sociology of remotely participating in the operation of a large scale experimental facility

Collaboratories

No abstract.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/34569/1/1440360103_ftp.pd

Researchers in the Digital Age

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/168157/1/2001-Researchers_in_the_Digital_Age.pd

Manufacturing High Entropy Alloys: Pathway to Industrial Competitiveness

High entropy alloys (HEAs) provide a transformative opportunity to design materials that are custom tailored to the distinct needs of a given application, thereby shifting the paradigm from “apply the material you have” to “engineer the material you need.” HEAs will enable high-performance manufactured goods that are competitive in the international marketplace through extraordinary material properties and unique property combinations. HEAs deliver new choices to manufacturers to create alternatives to materials that are rare, hazardous, expensive, or subject to international restrictions or conflict. The potential benefits of HEAs span diverse fields and applications, and show promise to not only accelerate economic growth and domestic competitive advantage, but also address pressing societal challenges. These include solid state cooling, liquefied natural gas handling, nuclear degradation- resistant materials, corrosion-resistant heat exchangers, and efficiency gains from high temperature performance that advance national energy goals; high-performance aerospace materials and ultra- hardness ballistics that support national security; and strong, corrosion-resistant medical devices and advances in magnetic resonance imaging that are essential to national health priorities. Research advances are setting the stage to realize each of these vital areas. However, research advances made to-date to produce lab-scale prototypes do not lend themselves to manufacturing at scale. For Americans to fully benefit from HEAs, the emerging technologies must be translated into products manufactured at scale in the United States. However, manufacturers and HEA experts who are working to bridge this gap are encountering cross-cutting barriers in manufacturing processes, testing, data, and access to the necessary resources. Through strategic public- and private- sector research and investment, these barriers can be overcome. The United States has invested in both HEA research and advanced materials resources, such as material sample creation at the Ames Laboratory Materials Preparation Center, material characterization at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Neutron User Facilities, and modeling and analysis through the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Material Genome Initiative. A vast array of research and expertise has been fostered at federal laboratories and universities, yielding promising alloys, manufacturing processes, and analysis methods.National Science Foundation, Grant No. 1552534https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146747/1/Manufacturing-HEAs.pdf-1Description of Manufacturing-HEAs.pdf : Main articl