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GP Cosmology Surrogate v1.0

GP Cosmology Surrogate is a Python library for building and training a generalized multi-output Gaussian process (GP) framework of @takhtaganov2021cosmic. In this approach, the surrogate is constructed sequentially, guided by a Bayesian optimization acquisition function that targets reduction of emulation error in the regions most consistent with the observational data. This adaptive design concentrates computational resources where they have the greatest impact on inference accuracy. The library supports efficient training for separable GP kernels, which allows the use of Kronecker algebra to handle high-dimensional input spaces and large numbers of correlated outputs. This makes it well suited for applications such as modeling cosmological power spectra, large-scale physical simulations, and multi-output hyperparameter tuning. By combining scalable multi-output GP modeling with data-driven adaptive sampling, GPsurrogate enables parameter inference and optimization with substantially fewer simulations than conventional space-filling designs.

Lukic, Zarija [Lawrence Berkeley National Laborato↗

Passive Earth Entry Vehicle Landing Test

Two full-scale passive Earth Entry Vehicles (EEV) with realistic structure, surrogate sample container, and surrogate Thermal Protection System (TPS) were built at NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) and tested at the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR). The main test objective was to demonstrate structural integrity and investigate possible impact response deviations of the realistic vehicle as compared to rigid penetrometer responses. With the exception of the surrogate TPS and minor structural differences in the back shell construction, the two test vehicles were identical in geometry and both utilized the Integrated Composite Stiffener Structure (ICoSS) structural concept in the forward shell. The ICoSS concept is a lightweight and highly adaptable composite concept developed at NASA LaRC specifically for entry vehicle TPS carrier structures. The instrumented test vehicles were released from a helicopter approximately 400 m above ground. The drop height was selected such that at least 98% of the vehicles terminal velocity would be achieved. While drop tests of spherical penetrometers and a low fidelity aerodynamic EEV model were conducted at UTTR in 1998 and 2000, this was the first time a passive EEV with flight-like structure, surrogate TPS, and sample container was tested at UTTR for the purpose of complete structural system validation. Test results showed that at a landing vertical speed of approximately 30 m/s, the test vehicle maintained structural integrity and enough rigidity to penetrate the sandy clay surface thus attenuating the landing load, as measured at the vehicle CG, to less than 600 g. This measured deceleration was found to be in family with rigid penetrometer test data from the 1998 and 2000 test campaigns. Design implications of vehicle structure/soil interaction with respect to sample container and sample survivability are briefly discussed.

Kellas, Sotiris↗

Radiation Source Localization Using Surrogate Models Constructed from 3-D Monte Carlo Transport Physics Simulations

Recent research has focused on the development of surrogate models for radiation source localization in a simulated urban domain. We employ the Monte Carlo N-Particle (MCNP) code to provide high- delity simulations of radiation transport within an urban domain. The model is constructed to employ a source location (x, y, z) as input and return the estimated count rate for a set of speci ed detector locations. Because MCNP simulations are computationally expensive, we develop e cient and accurate surrogate models of the detector responses. We construct surrogate models using Gaussian processes (GP) and neural networks (NN) that we train and verify using the MCNP simulations. The trained surrogate models provide an e cient framework for Bayesian inference and experimental design. We employ Delayed Rejection Adaptive Metropolis (DRAM), a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm, to infer the location and intensity of an unknown source. The DRAM results yield a posterior probability distribution for the source's location conditioned on the observed detector count rates. The posterior distribution exhibits regions of high and low probability within the simulated environment identifying potential source locations. In this manner, we can quantify the source location to within at least one of these regions of high probability in the considered cases. Employing these methods, we are able to reduce the space of potential source locations by at least 60%.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

MPEX AI Digital Twins

All magnetically confined plasma fusion power plant concepts (Tokamak, Spherical Tokamak, Stellarator, Mirror, ...) must exhaust the heat and plasma from the core confinement region to the material walls. The primary channel for this exhaust is through a plasma divertor which directs plasma along open magnetic field lines to a material target. The Material Plasma Exposure eXperiment (MPEX) illustrated in Figure 1, is a high-power, steady-state linear plasma device designed to produce the plasma material interaction (PMI) conditions of the divertor of future magnetic confinement fusion power plants: energy flux 20MW/m 2 , ion fluence 1031/m 2 , pulse duration 106 sec. These goals of plasma exposure in MPEX are well beyond those achieved in magnetic fusion experimental devices. Successfully achieving these high power steady state conditions for long pulses requires operational control of the heating and particle sources and the plasma flux to the walls and target. The MPEX AI Hot Spot Controller, proposed in this project, will help achieve the operational milestones of MPEX. The MPEX device will begin commissioning at the end of FY26. A smaller proto-MPEX was operated for 14,666 plasma discharges and will resume operation in September of 2025 as proto-MPEX-lite, with reduced capability, to test a new window for the Helicon plasma source. The proto-MPEX data has undergone surrogate modeling with machine learning methods (R. Archibald, 2022 IEEE International Conference on Big Data). This proto-MPEX data will be used to begin development of the AI digital twins described in this white paper. The scientific mission of MPEX is to qualify materials of different composition for use in the high energy and plasma flux conditions of a fusion power plant. The materials exposed in MPEX will in some cases be exposed to high neutron fluxes at other ORNL facilities to measure the changes to their PMI properties. The targets exposed in MPEX will be transported under vacuum to a Surface Analysis Station (SAS). The SAS will be equipped with the following diagnostics: Focused Ion Beam (FIB) for trench milling, 100-400 angstrom resolution scanning electron microscope (SEM), surface mapping x-ray spectrometer, high resolution camera, and a future upgrade to a laser induced breakdown spectroscopy quadruple mass spectrometer (LIBS-QMS). The MPEX experiments will generate diverse pre- and post-exposure measurement data of detailed material properties down to the crystal grain level in 3D for post-exposure assessment of PMI damage (e.g. cracking, melting, erosion and redeposition of the material). Physics models for the PMI, and how the material composition and manufacturing impact its performance under high energy plasma exposure, need to be validated with MPEX data to guide the selection of new candidate materials. Our vision for the MPEX AI Digital Twins project is to supply experimental and physics model simulation data to train Artificial Intelligence (AI) models for data processing, analysis, operational control, PMI and materials simulation to maximize the scientific output of the MPEX device. Ultimately, an AI digital twin of MPEX material assessment metrics for tested and synthetic material types with simulated PMI will be trained by the AI Modeling Teams on the experimental and physics simulation data submitted to the American Science Cloud by this project. A purely empirical search for the best material is inefficient given the finite number of samples that can be tested on MPEX. In order to expand the material properties database for training the MPEX Material Assessment AI Digital Twin, and to gain physics understanding of the PMI processes, physics models of the material properties and PMI processes are required. The physics simulations provide detailed simulation data, like impact angles for plasma ions, sputtering yields, transport of the ionized sputtered target material in the plasma, and redeposition locations. This simulation data expands the measurement data for deeper physics understanding. The experimental data is essential to validate the PMI and material structure simulation models. The validated models can then be used to generate new simulation data of MPEX material assessments for synthetic material compositions that have not been exposed in MPEX. These predictive simulations, plus the whole experimental dataset, will be used to train the MPEX Material Assessment AI Digital Twin allowing a rapid generative AI search for new materials with reduced PMI damage by interpolating the domain of the training set. These new optimum materials can be simulated with the physics codes and/or tested in MPEX. The ability of AI neural networks to interpolate multi-dimensional parameter spaces and generate virtual data is exploited for a more efficient search for optimum materials. The advent of the Transformational AI Models Consortium (TAIMC) is an opportunity to engage with state of the art private and public AI developers to achieve the goals of the AI digital twins and AI accelerated physics models proposed in this project. Our partners at ORNL from the Advance Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) organization will collaborate in accelerating the integrated plasma material interaction simulation framework. This simulation framework will provide a platform for generating simulation data across a range of physical fidelities, including hybrid methods that produce multi-fidelity results. This data will be leveraged for AI model development, both for generation of surrogates and the automation of simulation campaigns. A part of the research below will include collaborative efforts with the TAIMC to (i) adapt data storage approaches to ensure AI-readiness, (ii) provide a protypical exemplar to inform and exercise constructed workflows, and (iii) generate and share data, using the TAIMC unified AI data standard, for foundational models that will be trained from multiple sources across the DOE complex. We will also collaborate with the TAIMC, as well as the planned AI modeling teams, to develop approaches for reducing the cost of data generation. These include tailored multi-fidelity approaches as well as fine-tuning strategies to augment general, large-scale foundational models.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Data-driven wind turbine wake modeling via probabilistic machine learning

Wind farm design primarily depends on the variability of the wind turbine wake flows to the atmospheric wind conditions and the interaction between wakes. Physics-based models that capture the wake flow field with high-fidelity are computationally very expensive to perform layout optimization of wind farms, and, thus, data-driven reduced-order models can represent an efficient alternative for simulating wind farms. In this work, we use real-world light detection and ranging (LiDAR) measurements of wind-turbine wakes to construct predictive surrogate models using machine learning. Specifically, we first demonstrate the use of deep autoencoders to find a low-dimensional latent space that gives a computationally tractable approximation of the wake LiDAR measurements. Then, we learn the mapping between the parameter space and the (latent space) wake flow fields using a deep neural network. Additionally, we also demonstrate the use of a probabilistic machine learning technique, namely, Gaussian process modeling, to learn the parameter-space-latent-space mapping in addition to the epistemic and aleatoric uncertainty in the data. Finally, to cope with training large datasets, we demonstrate the use of variational Gaussian process models that provide a tractable alternative to the conventional Gaussian process models for large datasets. Furthermore, we introduce the use of active learning to adaptively build and improve a conventional Gaussian process model predictive capability. Overall, we find that our approach provides accurate approximations of the wind-turbine wake flow field that can be queried at an orders-of-magnitude cheaper cost than those generated with high-fidelity physics-based simulations.

Deep neural networks↗

Surrogate modeling for efficiently, accurately and conservatively estimating measures of risk

We present a surrogate modeling framework for conservatively estimating measures of risk from limited realizations of an expensive physical experiment or computational simulation. Risk measures combine objective probabilities with the subjective values of a decision maker to quantify anticipated outcomes. Given a set of samples, we construct a surrogate model that produces estimates of risk measures that are always greater than their empirical approximations obtained from the training data. These surrogate models limit over-confidence in reliability and safety assessments and produce estimates of risk measures that converge much faster to the true value than purely sample-based estimates. We first detail the construction of conservative surrogate models that can be tailored to a stakeholder’s risk preferences and then present an approach, based on stochastic orders, for constructing surrogate models that are conservative with respect to families of risk measures. Our surrogate models include biases that permit them to conservatively estimate the target risk measures. We provide theoretical results that show that these biases decay at the same rate as the L 2 error in the surrogate model. Numerical demonstrations confirm that risk-adapted surrogate models do indeed overestimate the target risk measures while converging at the expected rate.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Probabilistic Damage Characterization Using the Computationally-Efficient Bayesian Approach

This work presents a computationally-ecient approach for damage determination that quanti es uncertainty in the provided diagnosis. Given strain sensor data that are polluted with measurement errors, Bayesian inference is used to estimate the location, size, and orientation of damage. This approach uses Bayes' Theorem to combine any prior knowledge an analyst may have about the nature of the damage with information provided implicitly by the strain sensor data to form a posterior probability distribution over possible damage states. The unknown damage parameters are then estimated based on samples drawn numerically from this distribution using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling algorithm. Several modi cations are made to the traditional Bayesian inference approach to provide signi cant computational speedup. First, an ecient surrogate model is constructed using sparse grid interpolation to replace a costly nite element model that must otherwise be evaluated for each sample drawn with MCMC. Next, the standard Bayesian posterior distribution is modi ed using a weighted likelihood formulation, which is shown to improve the convergence of the sampling process. Finally, a robust MCMC algorithm, Delayed Rejection Adaptive Metropolis (DRAM), is adopted to sample the probability distribution more eciently. Numerical examples demonstrate that the proposed framework e ectively provides damage estimates with uncertainty quanti cation and can yield orders of magnitude speedup over standard Bayesian approaches.

Warner, James E.↗

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↗

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↗

Polynomial chaos expansions on principal geodesic Grassmannian submanifolds for surrogate modeling and uncertainty quantification

In this work we introduce a manifold learning-based surrogate modeling framework for uncertainty quantification in high-dimensional stochastic systems. Our first goal is to perform data mining on the available simulation data to identify a set of low-dimensional (latent) descriptors that efficiently parameterize the response of the high-dimensional computational model. To this end, we employ Principal Geodesic Analysis on the Grassmann manifold of the response to identify a set of disjoint principal geodesic submanifolds, of possibly different dimension, that captures the variation in the data. Since operations on the Grassmann require the data to be concentrated, we propose an adaptive algorithm based on Riemannian K-means and the minimization of the sample Fréchet variance on the Grassmann manifold to identify “local” principal geodesic submanifolds that represent different system behavior across the parameter space. Polynomial chaos expansion is then used to construct a mapping between the random input parameters and the projection of the response on these local principal geodesic submanifolds. Here, the method is demonstrated on four test cases, a toy-example that involves points on a hypersphere, a Lotka-Volterra dynamical system, a continuous-flow stirred-tank chemical reactor system, and a two-dimensional Rayleigh-Bénard convection problem.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Projection pursuit adaptation on polynomial chaos expansions

Here, the present work addresses the issue of accurate stochastic approximations in high-dimensional parametric space using tools from uncertainty quantification (UQ). The basis adaptation method and its accelerated algorithm in polynomial chaos expansions (PCE) were recently proposed to construct low-dimensional approximations adapted to specific quantities of interest (QoI). The present paper addresses one difficulty with these adaptations, namely their reliance on quadrature point sampling, which limits the reusability of potentially expensive samples. Projection pursuit (PP) is a statistical tool to find the “interesting” projections in high-dimensional data and thus bypass the curse-of-dimensionality. In the present work, we combine the fundamental ideas of basis adaptation and projection pursuit regression (PPR) to propose a novel method to simultaneously learn the optimal low-dimensional spaces and PCE representation from given data. While this projection pursuit adaptation (PPA) can be entirely data-driven, the constructed approximation exhibits mean-square convergence to the solution of an underlying governing equation and thus captures the supports and probability distributions associated with the physics constraints. The proposed approach is demonstrated on a borehole problem and a structural dynamics problem, demonstrating the versatility of the method and its ability to discover low-dimensional manifolds with high accuracy with limited data. In addition, the method can learn surrogate models for different quantities of interest while reusing the same data set.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Probabilistic Modeling of a Three-Stage Human Landing System Architecture

Unmitigated uncertainties are known to have previously led to failed development programs; in order to combat these uncertainties, risks and their impacts must be understood and handled to ensure program success. In this paper, a probabilistic methodology to handle uncertainties is demonstrated on a three-element Human Landing System (HLS) concept, which allows tracking of current best estimates of the vehicle’s performance and assessment of its robustness against uncertainties. This methodology has two key parts: first, the creation of a dynamic architecture model of a three-element HLS concept; and second, its use with surrogate modeling and range estimating techniques to capture and propagate uncertainties. The DYnamic Rocket EQuation Tool (DYREQT), a space systems synthesis and sizing framework used by NASA, was used as to model the HLS architecture. For the probabilistic analysis, uncertainties of interest within the HLS concept were enumerated and represented as parameters within the DYREQT model as inputs for vehicle stages or mission profile events. Range estimating — a probabilistic method that combines Monte Carlo sampling, focus on critical parameters, and heuristics to assess risk and opportunities — is then adapted with operational parameters as well as vehicle parameters in the DYREQT model to capture mission uncertainty alongside vehicle uncertainty. To perform the range estimation portion of this methodology, the DYREQT model was sampled using a Design of Experiments (DoE) to efficiently explore the architecture design space with respect to the set of uncertainty parameters. Then, the results were used to create surrogate models, multivariate regressions that can visualize hypercube trends in the design space, of the architecture with respect to the uncertainty parameters. Using a correlation matrix constructed for the uncertainty parameters, previously independent samples were transformed to perform a Correlated Monte Carlo on the surrogate models. This probabilistic methodology was proved to provide insight into the underlying uncertainties of the three-element HLS architecture.

Stephanie Y Zhu↗

Probabilistic Modeling of a Three-Stage Human Landing System Architecture

Unmitigated uncertainties are known to have previously led to failed development programs; in order to combat these uncertainties, risks and their impacts must be understood and handled to ensure program success. In this paper, a probabilistic methodology to handle uncertainties is demonstrated on a three-element Human Landing System (HLS) concept, which allows tracking of current best estimates of the vehicle’s performance and assessment of its robustness against uncertainties. This methodology has two key parts: first, the creation of a dynamic architecture model of a three-element HLS concept; and second, its use with surrogate modeling and range estimating techniques to capture and propagate uncertainties. The DYnamic Rocket EQuation Tool (DYREQT), a space systems synthesis and sizing framework used by NASA, was used as to model the HLS architecture. For the probabilistic analysis, uncertainties of interest within the HLS concept were enumerated and represented as parameters within the DYREQT model as inputs for vehicle stages or mission profile events. Range estimating — a probabilistic method that combines Monte Carlo sampling, focus on critical parameters, and heuristics to assess risk and opportunities — is then adapted with operational parameters as well as vehicle parameters in the DYREQT model to capture mission uncertainty alongside vehicle uncertainty. To perform the range estimation portion of this methodology, the DYREQT model was sampled using a Design of Experiments (DoE) to efficiently explore the architecture design space with respect to the set of uncertainty parameters. Then, the results were used to create surrogate models, multivariate regressions that can visualize hypercube trends in the design space, of the architecture with respect to the uncertainty parameters. Using a correlation matrix constructed for the uncertainty parameters, previously independent samples were transformed to perform a Correlated Monte Carlo on the surrogate models. This probabilistic methodology was proved to provide insight into the underlying uncertainties of the three-element HLS architecture.

Stephanie Y. Zhu↗

Multi-Source Machine Learning and Thermoplastics Enhanced Aerostructure Manufacturing (mTEAM)

RTX Technology Research Center (RTRC), together with Collins Aerospace (Collins) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) / Machine Learning (ML) guided solution to advance the manufacturing and assembly of high performance and lightweight thermoplastic composite (TPC) aerospace products. The solution aims to lower risk, cost and lead time for induction heating based welding and consolidation processes for TPC structure. The cost and lead time of part and material specific process development for induction welding (IW) and induction consolidation will be reduced by replacing traditional empirical methods with optimization methods that merge AI/ML and physics-based process simulations and process experiments with sensing and controls. TPC-IW process development is empirical in nature, and uncertainties in material & process behavior exist near & far from the induction coil. Physics-based simulations can be leveraged directly for process optimization but can be too computationally expensive to run in high fidelity and real time to do robust process optimization. The key impact of successful TPC induction consolidation and welding is cost & lead time reduction for part & material specific consolidation and welding recipes. This is an enabler for more rapid deployment of TPC structures via joining assembly, which can reduce energy & cost intensive usage of autoclaves & ovens. The solution aimed to advance the U.S. Department of Energy’s interests in using thermoplastics and automation in composite manufacturing for improvement of products for existing markets via increased production speeds, reduced costs, and lowered use of energy. Welded TPC structures can offer significant weight & energy savings for high-value commercial aerospace & industrial applications compared to metal & thermoset composite structures assembled by mechanical fastening and/or adhesive bonding. The project was organized into two Budget Periods. Budget Period 1 (BP1) was 15 months and its goal was to perform ML process optimization framework development & deployment on lab-coupon aerostructure components. A Go/No-Go Review was performed at the end of BP1 to verify fulfilment of key tasks & milestones to justify a Go Decision to move into the next Budget Period. Budget Period 2 (BP2) was 12 months and its goal was the deployment of the ML framework for ML process optimization of pilot industrial scale aerostructure components. The overall project aim was to develop & demonstrate ML-enhanced modeling framework that learns process-property mapping from multiple data sources at different fidelities. During BP1, the team accomplished key tasks & milestones to demonstrate the concept of multi-source ML for TPC aerostructure consolidation and assembly. First, the team completed documentation of induction based TPC heating requirements including baseline metrics to compare measured results against. Next the team completed demonstration of data generation from physics-based simulations for ML surrogate model generation and demonstrated the integration of physics-based simulation data into multi-source AI/ML algorithms. In parallel, the team established the lab-coupon scale induction welding system and completed a process to label and reduce generated data from physics-based simulation and experiments for ML surrogate models to enable multi-source ML model training & testing. To complete BP1, the team integrated physics-based simulation data and experimental data into multi-source ML algorithms. This was based on the team completing ML deployment of the induction welding on a lab system at RTRC and AI/ML deployment on existing induction welding line at Collins. ORNL visited both Collins and RTRC sites to witness the TPC induction welding process. Then, ORNL designed and constructed a new version of their vision-based sensing system better adapted to acquire process signals of the TPC induction welding process for process anomaly and defect detection. In BP2, the team accomplished key tasks & milestones to scale up multi-source ML for TPC aerostructure consolidation and assembly from the lab-coupon scale to the pilot-industrial scale. In BP2, the team demonstrated real time anomaly & defect detection via experiments performed by ORNL & RTRC. The team completed ML-optimization heating trials for TPC induction consolidation at Collins, and the team confirmed pilot industrial scale experimental data from Collins was compatible with the developed ML pipeline from RTRC. The team completed sub-element scale ML process optimization demonstration at RTRC, where the team leveraged RTRC’s robotic TPC welding setup to de-risk the ML process optimization by performing ML analysis of recorded temperatures to account for complex part features. Then, the team applied its ML-derived control strategies and ML process optimization framework at Collins to the pilot-industrial scale on a demo skin-stiffener part representative of a nacelle aerostructure fan cowl section. The key innovation is the AI/ML framework enabling effective process development of high performance, lightweight, energy efficient TPCs for composite aircraft structures.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Forming Human-Robot Teams Across Time and Space

NASA pushes telerobotics to distances that span the Solar System. At this scale, time of flight for communication is limited by the speed of light, inducing long time delays, narrow bandwidth and the real risk of data disruption. NASA also supports missions where humans are in direct contact with robots during extravehicular activity (EVA), giving a range of zero to hundreds of millions of miles for NASA s definition of "tele". . Another temporal variable is mission phasing. NASA missions are now being considered that combine early robotic phases with later human arrival, then transition back to robot only operations. Robots can preposition, scout, sample or construct in advance of human teammates, transition to assistant roles when the crew are present, and then become care-takers when the crew returns to Earth. This paper will describe advances in robot safety and command interaction approaches developed to form effective human-robot teams, overcoming challenges of time delay and adapting as the team transitions from robot only to robots and crew. The work is predicated on the idea that when robots are alone in space, they are still part of a human-robot team acting as surrogates for people back on Earth or in other distant locations. Software, interaction modes and control methods will be described that can operate robots in all these conditions. A novel control mode for operating robots across time delay was developed using a graphical simulation on the human side of the communication, allowing a remote supervisor to drive and command a robot in simulation with no time delay, then monitor progress of the actual robot as data returns from the round trip to and from the robot. Since the robot must be responsible for safety out to at least the round trip time period, the authors developed a multi layer safety system able to detect and protect the robot and people in its workspace. This safety system is also running when humans are in direct contact with the robot, so it involves both internal fault detection as well as force sensing for unintended external contacts. The designs for the supervisory command mode and the redundant safety system will be described. Specific implementations were developed and test results will be reported. Experiments were conducted using terrestrial analogs for deep space missions, where time delays were artificially added to emulate the longer distances found in space.

Hambuchen, Kimberly↗

Machine learning for nonintrusive model order reduction of the parametric inviscid transonic flow past an airfoil

Fluid flow in the transonic regime finds relevance in aerospace engineering, particularly in the design of commercial air transportation vehicles. Computational fluid dynamics models of transonic flow for aerospace applications are computationally expensive to solve because of the high degrees of freedom as well as the coupled nature of the conservation laws. While these issues pose a bottleneck for the use of such models in aerospace design, computational costs can be significantly minimized by constructing special, structure-preserving surrogate models called reduced-order models. In this work, we propose a machine learning method to construct reduced-order models via deep neural networks and we demonstrate its ability to preserve accuracy with a significantly lower computational cost. In addition, our machine learning methodology is physics-informed and constrained through the utilization of an interpretable encoding by way of proper orthogonal decomposition. Application to the inviscid transonic flow past the RAE2822 airfoil under varying freestream Mach numbers and angles of attack, as well as airfoil shape parameters with a deforming mesh, shows that the proposed approach adapts to high-dimensional parameter variation well. Notably, the proposed framework precludes the knowledge of numerical operators utilized in the data generation phase, thereby demonstrating its potential utility in the fast exploration of design space for diverse engineering applications. Comparison against a projection-based nonintrusive model order reduction method demonstrates that the proposed approach produces comparable accuracy and yet is orders of magnitude computationally cheap to evaluate, despite being agnostic to the physics of the problem.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Efficient Reliability Analysis using Generalized Multifidelity Modeling and Explainable Active Learning

To assess the reliability of critical technologies like nuclear plants and infrastructure systems and improve the robustness of design, engineers have to quantify the uncertainties surrounding the system behavior accurately. However, the complexity of the problem can make standard reliability analysis algorithms prohibitively expensive, primarily due to the high computational cost of estimating the system response at each iteration. This cost can be greatly reduced by using multi-fidelity modeling and machine learning to build a surrogate model to replace the expensive response function. We propose a general and robust method for building surrogates from multiple Low Fidelity (LF) models coupled with machine learning to retain accuracy. Our framework first constructs “Corrected Low Fidelity models” (CLFs) by coupling a High Fidelity (HF) model inferred Gaussian Process correction term with each of the LF models. It then uses the correction terms to assign model probabilities to each of these CLFs in an explainable way before using them to assemble the final surrogate. No assumptions are made about the type of the LF models or their correlation with the HF model. The proposed surrogate modeling framework is used within the subset simulation algorithm (a variance-reduced MCMC-based reliability analysis algorithm) for enhanced efficiency. Additionally, an active learning step is added to the algorithm to adaptively decide when the surrogate is not sufficiently accurate, at which point the HF model is called and used to refine the surrogate. Through a frame buckling example, our method is shown to be highly efficient at reducing the expensive HF model calls while accurately estimating the failure probability.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Predicting concrete compressive strength using hybrid ensembling of surrogate machine learning models

This study aims to implement a hybrid ensemble surrogate machine learning technique in predicting the compressive strength (CS) of concrete, an important parameter used for durability design and service life prediction of concrete structures in civil engineering projects. For this purpose, an experimental database consisting of 1030 records has been compiled from the machine learning repository of the University of California, Irvine. The database was used to train and validate four conventional machine learning (CML) models, namely Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Linear and Non-Linear Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS-L and MARS-C), Gaussian Process Regression (GPR), and Minimax Probability Machine Regression (MPMR). Subsequently, the predicted outputs of CML models were combined and trained using ANN to construct the Hybrid Ensemble Model (HENSM). It is observed that the proposed HENSM produces higher predictive accuracy compared to the CML models used in the present study. The predictive performance of all models for CS prediction was compared using the testing dataset and it is found that the HENSM model attained the highest predictive accuracy in both phases. Based on the experimental results, the newly constructed HENSM model is very potential to be a new alternative in handling the overfitting issues of CML models and hence, can be used to predict the concrete CS, including the design of less polluting and more sustainable concrete constructions.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗