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At least 181 records · Page 10

Intelligent Sampling for Surrogate Modeling, Hyperparameter Optimization, and Data Analysis

Sampling techniques are used in many fields, including design of experiments, image processing, and graphics. The techniques in each field are designed to meet the constraints specific to that field such as uniform coverage of the range of each dimension or random samples that are at least a certain distance apart from each other. When an application imposes new constraints, for example, by requiring samples in a non-rectangular domain or the addition of new samples to an existing set, a common solution is to modify the algorithm currently in use, often with less than satisfactory results. As an alternative, we propose the concept of intelligent sampling, where we devise algorithms specifically tailored to meet our sampling needs, either by creating new algorithms or by modifying suitable algorithms from other fields. Surprisingly, both qualitative and quantitative comparisons indicate that some relatively simple algorithms can be easily modified to meet the many sampling requirements of surrogate modeling, hyperparameter optimization, and data analysis; these algorithms outperform their more sophisticated counterparts currently in use, resulting in better use of time and computer resources.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Data-Driven Surrogate Modeling with Microstructure-Sensitivity of Viscoplastic Creep in Grade 91 Steel

Abstract To support the development of advanced steel alloys tailored to withstand extreme conditions, it is imperative to account for the mechanical performance of components, while considering the influence of local microstructure on the macroscopic response. To this end, this study focuses on the development of microstructure-sensitive constitutive models for the mechanical response of Grade 91 steel exposed to extreme thermo-mechanical environments. Polynomial chaos expansion (PCE) surrogates are used to emulate high-fidelity polycrystal simulations of the viscoplastic response of Grade 91 steel as a function of the microstructure fingerprint (e.g., dislocations and precipitates). To cover a wide temperature–stress domain, two separate PCE surrogates—one that captures softening and the other that captures hardening behavior—are combined using another (sparse) Gaussian process regression model. The resulting constitutive creep surrogate model is integrated within the MOOSE finite element framework to simulate the intricate effects of microstructure, in particular MX-phase precipitates, on a component with a graded microstructure. Surrogate sensitivity analysis is applied to quantify the relevant impact of spatially varying microstructure on the creep response in a test-case involving a Grade 91 alloy with a prototypical weld.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Creep and Creep Fracture Modeling with Surrogate Creep Models and the Extended Finite Element Method

Alloy components in advanced nuclear reactors will be subjected to environmental conditions that could include high temperatures, irradiation, and exposure to corrosive salts. These conditions could lead to the formation of crack-like defects, which could grow over time in a mechanism known as creep crack growth (CCG). Predicting growth rates of these defects is important for assessing the safe operating life of advanced reactors. This project documents progress toward developing and testing next-generation data-driven constitutive models for deformation creep. It also documents the application of the extended finite element method in conjunction with surrogate creep models to predict CCG parameters under a variety of conditions. These important incremental developments contribute to the longer-term objective of developing microstructure-aware constitutive models that can be used for predicting creep deformation and CCG at the component scale with improved accuracy.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Materials Informatics at NASA GRC: Machine Learning Surrogate Modeling, Data Management, and Integrated Toolsets for Establishing/Maintaining the Digital Thread

Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) has recently received widespread attention due to its promises in reducing dependence on physical testing for engineering design by relying on simulation, reducing both time and cost to market for various applications. ICME however requires validated multiscale material models, which heavily depend on available test data with full material and test pedigree, including material processing, test and measurement equipment, raw data collection, and analysis methodology and results that is findable and usable, along with integrated, efficient toolsets for effectively passing information across various length and time scales across such models. At the NASA Glenn Research Center under the Transformational Tools and Technologies Project, significant recent efforts have been directed towards establishing the required cyberinfrastructure to enable optimized ICME processes and the design of “fit-for-purpose” materials to achieve the goals outlined in the NASA Vision 2040 report. Such efforts include development of multiscale physics-based material models, which can be used to train highly efficient surrogate machine learning models, development of best practices and infrastructure for effective, traceable materials information management, and development of toolsets that integrate with physics-based codes, machine learning models, and an information management system to enable high throughput of materials data collection and analysis, establishment of digital twins and the digital thread, and automation of the ICME design process for material optimization.

Machine Learning↗

Experimental and fuel-surrogates modeling study of the high-pressure pyrolysis of specialty cetane number fuels: implications for fall-off in ethylene unimolecular dissociation

Single pulse shock tube experiments were conducted at 50 atm nominal pressure and 4 ms nominal reaction time over a temperature range of 900–1800 K, to study the pyrolysis speciation of a multi-component jet fuel, F-24, and six cetane number (CN) specialty fuels - CN30, CN35, CN40, CN45, CN50, and CN55. Gas chromatography (GC) was used to qualitatively and quantitatively analyze the post shock gases. The relationship between the formation of key pyrolysis species and the chemically controlled combustion propensity as reflected by the cetane number of each fuel was examined. A surrogate-based mechanism from the CRECK Modelling Group and chemical-functional group based optimized surrogates (CFGO) were used to simulate the pyrolysis speciation results. The model was able to capture the chemistry of most species except two important pyrolysis intermediates – ethylene and acetylene. Chemical kinetic analyses were performed to identify the important reactions which affect the chemistry of these species; however, the rate parameters of critical reactions were found to be unsuitable for simulating the present high-pressure studies. Here, to address this unsuitability, a theory-based fall-off analysis for three reactions representing the decomposition of ethylene and subsequent formation of acetylene was performed, and these are included in an updated version of the CRECK mechanism. This update resolves discrepancies between the experimental results and simulations for ethylene and acetylene. Reaction flux analyses using the updated surrogate model were also performed to identify the important reaction pathways responsible for the formation of crucial species and to provide an analysis of the chemistry of complex multi-component fuel systems. The fundamental reactions responsible for driving pyrolysis chemistry were greatly influenced by the chemical functional groups present in these fuels. In addition to updating the rate parameters of specific reactions to improve modeling, this study also emphasizes the effectiveness of the fuel-surrogate approach, where surrogates representing the chemical functional group composition of the parent fuel serve as a valuable tool for predicting the combustion chemistry of novel fuels.

Chemical Kinetics↗

Manifold Learning-Based Polynomial Chaos Expansions for High-Dimensional Surrogate Models

In this work we introduce a manifold learning-based method for uncertainty quantification (UQ) in systems describing complex spatiotemporal processes. Our first objective is to identify the embedding of a set of high-dimensional data representing quantities of interest of the computational or analytical model. For this purpose, we employ Grassmannian diffusion maps, a two-step nonlinear dimension reduction technique which allows us to reduce the dimensionality of the data and identify meaningful geometric descriptions in a parsimonious and inexpensive manner. Polynomial chaos expansion is then used to construct a mapping between the stochastic input parameters and the diffusion coordinates of the reduced space. An adaptive clustering technique is proposed to identify an optimal number of clusters of points in the latent space. The similarity of points allows us to construct a number of geometric harmonic emulators which are finally utilized as a set of inexpensive pretrained models to perform an inverse map of realizations of latent features to the ambient space and thus perform accurate out-of-sample predictions. Thus, the proposed method acts as an encoder-decoder system which is able to automatically handle very high-dimensional data while simultaneously operating successfully in the small-data regime. The method is demonstrated on two benchmark problems and on a system of advection-diffusion-reaction equations which model a first-order chemical reaction between two species. In all test cases, the proposed method is able to achieve highly accurate approximations which ultimately lead to the significant acceleration of UQ tasks.

42 ENGINEERING↗

PyApprox: A software package for sensitivity analysis, Bayesian inference, optimal experimental design, and multi-fidelity uncertainty quantification and surrogate modeling

PyApprox is a Python-based one-stop-shop for probabilistic analysis of numerical models such as those used in the earth, environmental and engineering sciences. Easy to use and extendable tools are provided for constructing surrogates, sensitivity analysis, Bayesian inference, experimental design, and forward uncertainty quantification. The algorithms implemented represent a wide range of methods for model analysis developed over the past two decades, including recent advances in multi-fidelity approaches that use multiple model discretizations and/or simplified physics to significantly reduce the computational cost of various types of analyses. An extensive set of Benchmarks from the literature is also provided to facilitate the easy comparison of new or existing algorithms for a wide range of model analyses. Here, this paper introduces PyApprox and its various features, and presents results demonstrating the utility of PyApprox on a benchmark problem modeling the advection of a tracer in groundwater.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Dynamic PRA-Based Estimation of PWR Coping Time Using a Surrogate Model for Accident Tolerant Fuel

In this study, we propose an interpolation-based response surface surrogate methodology to manage a large number of scenarios in dynamic probabilistic risk assessment. It adopts the shape Dynamic Time Warping algorithm to cluster the interpolation neighborhood from time series sample data. The interpolation method was adapted from Taylor Kriging to allow a reduced-order model of the Taylor series. In order to demonstrate its applicability to complex issues in risk assessment for nuclear engineering, an example risk response surface to estimate emergency core cooling system (ECCS) criteria for triplex silicon carbide (SiC) accident-tolerant fuel was constructed. The response surface was exploited to estimate the cumulative failure probability of the fuel cladding structure due to the uncertainties in operator actions and safety systems. The functional failures were assessed based on a combination of individual layer failures computed by coupling Risk Analysis Virtual Environment software with a pressurized water reactor 1000-MW(electric) RELAP5 model and the in-house fuel performance assessment module. Results showed that SiC cladding failure probability spiked less than 1 min after a large-break loss-of- coolant accident whenever the current ECCS criteria for Zircaloy-4 (Zr-4) cladding was used. However, it still provides an increased safety margin of three orders of magnitude compared to Zr-4. This positive margin could be utilized to relax active ECCS requirements by allowing deviations of up to 450 s in its actuation time. The proposed surrogate methodology generated a response surface of SiC cladding failure probability reasonably well, with a significant savings of computation time. This methodology is expected to be useful in the analysis of system response with complex uncertainty sources.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Adaptive Data-Driven Deep-Learning Surrogate Model for Frontal Polymerization in Dicyclopentadiene

Frontal polymerization (FP) is a self-sustaining curing process that enables rapid and energy-efficient manufacturing of thermoset polymers and composites. Computational methods conventionally used to simulate the FP process are time-consuming, and repeating simulations are required for sensitivity analysis, uncertainty quantification, or optimization of the manufacturing process. Here, in this work, we develop an adaptive surrogate deep-learning model for FP of dicyclopentadiene (DCPD), which predicts the evolution of temperature and degree of cure orders of magnitude faster than the finite-element method (FEM). The adaptive algorithm provides a strategy to select training samples efficiently and save computational costs by reducing the redundancy of FEM-based training samples. The adaptive algorithm calculates the residual error of the FP governing equations using automatic differentiation of the deep neural network. A probability density function expressed in terms of the residual error is used to select training samples from the Sobol sequence space. The temperature and degree of cure evolution of each training sample are obtained by a 2D FEM simulation. The adaptive method is more efficient and has a better prediction accuracy than the random sampling method. With the well-trained surrogate neural network, the FP characteristics (front speed, shape, and temperature) can be extracted quickly from the predicted temperature and degree-of-cure fields.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Graph Neural Networks for Surrogate Modeling of Offshore Floating Platforms

Floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) present an significant opportunity to increase renewable energy generation. However, significant challenges remain before FOWTs can be widely commercialized and deployed. In particular, hydrodynamic loading on the platforms can stress the overall structure, damage the mooring systems, and impact power generation. Studying these loads is difficult and often relies on computationally expensive models or experiments. In this work, we explore the use of graph neural networks (GNNs) to construct flexible, data-driven surrogates for hydrodynamic loads on platforms. We leverage the natural graph-like structure of offshore wind platform designs to enable the GNN model to learn to approximate the loads for different wave conditions and structural designs. We demonstrate potential uses for the surrogate by performing parameter sweeps and ridge analysis on the trained model to identify the impacts of different wave and structural features on the loads.

floating offshore wind turbines↗

On-line Generation and Error Handling for Surrogate Models within Multifidelity Uncertainty Quantification

Uncertainty quantification is recognized as a fundamental task to obtain predictive numerical simulations. However, many realistic engineering applications require complex and computationally expensive high-fidelity numerical simulations for the accurate characterization of the system responses. Moreover, complex physical models and extreme operative conditions can easily lead to hundreds of uncertain parameters that need to be propagated through high-fidelity codes. Under these circumstances, a single fidelity approach, i.e. a workflow that only uses high-fidelity simulations to perform the uncertainty quantification task, is unfeasible due to the prohibitive overall computational cost. In recent years, multifidelity strategies have been introduced to overcome this issue. The core idea of this family of methods is to combine simulations with varying levels of fidelity/accuracy in order to obtain the multifidelity estimators or surrogates with the same accuracy of their single fidelity counterparts at a much lower computational cost. This goal is usually accomplished by defining a prioria sequence of discretization levels or physical modeling assumptions that can be used to decrease the complexity of a numerical realization and thus its computational cost. However ,less attention has been dedicated to low-fidelity models that can be built directly from the small number of high-fidelity simulations available. In this work we focus our attention on Reduced-Order Models that can be considered a particular class of data-driven approaches. Our main goal is to explore the combination of multifidelity uncertainty quantification and reduced-order models to obtain an efficient framework for propagating uncertainties through expensive numerical codes.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

A surrogate-model-based approach for estimating the first and second-order moments of offshore wind power

Power curve, the functional relationship that governs the process of converting a set of weather variables experienced by a wind turbine into electric power, is widely used in the wind industry to estimate power output for planning and operational purposes. Existing methods for power curve estimation have three main limitations: (i) they mostly rely on wind speed as the sole input, thus ignoring the secondary, yet possibly significant effects of other environmental factors, (ii) they largely overlook the complex marine environment in which offshore turbines operate, potentially compromising their value in offshore wind energy applications, and (ii) they solely focus on the first-order properties of wind power, with little (or null) information about the variation around the mean behavior, which is important for ensuring reliable grid integration, asset health monitoring, and energy storage, among others. In light of that, this study investigates the impact of several wind-and wave-related factors on offshore wind power variability, with the ultimate goal of accurately predicting its first two moments. Further, our approach couples OpenFAST—a multi-physics wind turbine simulator—with Gaussian Process (GP) regression to reveal the underlying relationships governing offshore weather-to-power conversion. We first find that a multi-input power curve which captures the combined impact of wind speed, direction, and air density, can provide double-digit improvements, in terms of prediction accuracy, relative to univariate methods which rely on wind speed as the sole explanatory variable (e.g. the standard method of bins). Wave-related variables are found not important for predicting the average power output, but interestingly, appear to be extremely relevant in describing the fluctuation of the offshore power around its mean. Tested on real-world data collected at the New York/New Jersey bight, our proposed multi-input models demonstrate a high explanatory power in predicting the first two moments of offshore wind generation, testifying their potential value to the offshore wind industry.

17 WIND ENERGY↗