InertialWave (United States)

CalWave Inc. (CalWave) is developing a wave energy converter (WEC) technology that can generate electricity from ocean waves. CalWave’s design offers a unique approach to wave energy conversion that operates fully submerged and can actively adjust the wave excitation. This capability gives the architecture enhanced survivability in ocean storms without adding significant costs. Prior to this project, CalWave had completed a demonstration of a fully functional WEC system in an open ocean demonstration at nominal 1:5 scale under FOA 1663. The goal of this project was the detailed design, following relevant standards and industry best-practices, of a variant of the xWave WEC technology that can safely and efficiently operate at the DOE’s PacWave South test site for a targeted deployment of up two years. The WEC design and associated review processes proceeded in two distinct project phases: a ‘Preliminary’ and a ‘Final’ design phase. The first phase of the project consisted of the systematic design of the WEC’s key features with regards to appropriate IEC standards. The work resulted in a preliminary design of the xWave hull including structural and Power Take-Off (PTO) load estimates, as well as performance estimates for all ocean conditions the WEC would operate in at PacWave South. Following the first open-water demonstration of CalWave’s small-scale “x1” device under FOA 1663, lessons learned were fed directly into a comprehensive review of the xWave design in the second design phase of this FOA project. CalWave’s work was supported by Sandia National Lab (SNL) and the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) on the holistic WEC design, and detailed feedback from specialized partners on hull design, mooring and anchoring specification, and electrical grid interconnection. Optimization of the WEC system was performed using a novel numerical optimization tool developed by Sandia and optimization trends were confirmed via an experimental model scale tank test campaign. Performance estimates for PacWave and a detailed xWave design including integration of all relevant system components were concluded. The mooring design was also concluded in the Final design phase using the most up to date sea floor characterization (CPT) data.

The 300°C Microelectromechanical system (MEMS) gyroscope project aims to contribute to DOE’s goal of increased geothermal drilling efficiency by 2025 through the development of a 300°C MEMS gyroscope for Measurement While Drilling (MWD). At the conclusion of the 2-year project, the team will develop a 300°C capable MEMS gyroscope containing GE’s patented Multi-Ring Gyroscope Transducer (MRGT) design, custom Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) based frontend and feedback control electronics, and with demonstrated functionality and lifetime beyond 1000 hours. The project is divided into two budget periods with Go/No-Go decision at the end of the first budget period. The goal for the first budget period is to establish the feasibility of the MRGT and electronics design for meeting the 300°C performance requirements. The goal for the second budget period is to integrate the MRGT with the SOI-based application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) and demonstrate capability to operate at 300°C for 1000 hours. In Budget Period 1 we met the phase 1 goal. We successfully validated the combined MRG, electronics and packaging capability entitlement to achieving 0.5 degrees azimuth uncertainty while enabling operation at significantly higher temperatures than the state-of-the-art. In Budget Period 2, we successfully completed the integration of the MRGT and ASIC with associated high temperature, high reliability packaging to demonstrate the performance and functionality of the integrated gyroscope across the temperature range from room temperature to at 300°C. Furthermore, the team demonstrated operating life of >1,000 hours at 300°C, thus providing a validation of application-relevant lifetime capability.

PtSe <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> is unique among all 2D materials by having simultaneously sizable bandgap, high carrier mobility, and air stability. Moreover, PtSe2 undergoes a semiconductor-semimetal transition when its thickness increases beyond a few atomic layers, which facilitates low-resistance contact. However, there has been a controversy in how abruptly PtSe <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> transitions from a semiconductor to a semimetal. In this work, scanning microwave microscopy was used to quantify the conductivity in two PtSe <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> layers 1.5-nm-thick and 3-nm-thick, respectively. The resulted conductivity in 3-nm-thick PtSe <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> of (1.7 ± 0.2) × 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">4</sup> S/m is consistent with that reported for bulk PtSe <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> , confirming that 3-nm-thick PtSe <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> is a semimetal. However, although the conductivity in 1.5-nm-thick PtSe <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> appears much lower, it is too close to that of TiN to be reliably quantified. To characterize low conductivity in few-layer semiconductors, the signal-to-noise ratio of scanning microwave microscopy needs to be further improved.

This paper presents a millimeter-wave code-modulated interferometric imaging system, which is a lens-less approach to realizing imagers using repurposed phased arrays. To use a phased array as an interferometer, incoming signals are code modulated using phase shifters, multiplexed using a power combiner, and processed through a shared receiver chain. An interference pattern is then obtained by a squaring operation, from which complex visibilities can be demodulated. Here, a four-element 60-GHz phased array chip is packaged with slot antennas, and a single 60-GHz output is measured using a power detector. This scalar measurement is then demodulated to obtain the interferometric visibilities. The four-element phased array is thinned to obtain a 13-pixel image and the system is demonstrated through a point-source detected at different locations.

A new technique is presented for highly accurate far-field patterns obtained from spherical measurements in the near field of electrically large antennas. The proposed technique is based on the Field Mapping Algorithm, which provides exact fields on any desired surface from near-field data measured over a planar, cylindrical, or spherical surface. This method makes it possible to calculate complete far-field patterns, including especially the backlobes for large reflector antennas.

This paper presents a modular and generic micromachined oven-control system for use with miniature micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) transducers. The micro-oven-controlled off-the-shelf commercial six-axis MEMS inertial measurement unit (IMU), Invensense MPU-6050, provides the lowest reported temperature-induced root of sum of squares bias errors of 62.71°/h and 1.920 mg from -40°C to 85°C for three-axis gyroscopes and three-axis accelerometers, respectively. The micro-oven control system provides thermal isolation from the surrounding environment using a micro-machined isolation platform, vacuum-sealing, and a metal package. In addition, a CMOS temperature sensor, a proportional-integral-derivative-based temperature control scheme, and least mean square and random forest compensation algorithms are utilized to reduce temperature-induced bias drifts of IMUs. The most stable axes achieve peak-to-peak bias drifts of 12.78°/h and 665.2 ug during a thermal-cycle test for gyroscopes and accelerometers, respectively. The oven's heater power consumption is <;125mW at the lowest temperature, -40°C. This oven-control system can be applied to a wide range of MEMS sensors to reduce performance degradation due to temperature variation.

This initial release is a preview which is stable and flight tested, but not yet ready for production use.

A simple and direct process is derived to compute the determi nant of any square matrix of high order. The approach involves successive applying the matri x order condensation algorithm. A computer program listing in MATLAB is included and examples for finding the determinant of a given 7x7 matrix are given here for illustration.

An efficient technique is developed to simplify computations in the field of vector analysis. The evaluation of vector algebraic and differential operations becomes more simple and straightforward by simply transforming the vector operations into matrix operations. The matrix operations are especially useful when there are mixed coordinate basis involved in the vector operations.