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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 73 records · Page 4
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2022

Reduced order modeling for flow and transport problems with Barlow Twins self-supervised learning

Abstract We propose a unified data-driven reduced order model (ROM) that bridges the performance gap between linear and nonlinear manifold approaches. Deep learning ROM (DL-ROM) using deep-convolutional autoencoders (DC–AE) has been shown to capture nonlinear solution manifolds but fails to perform adequately when linear subspace approaches such as proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) would be optimal. Besides, most DL-ROM models rely on convolutional layers, which might limit its application to only a structured mesh. The proposed framework in this study relies on the combination of an autoencoder (AE) and Barlow Twins (BT) self-supervised learning, where BT maximizes the information content of the embedding with the latent space through a joint embedding architecture. Through a series of benchmark problems of natural convection in porous media, BT–AE performs better than the previous DL-ROM framework by providing comparable results to POD-based approaches for problems where the solution lies within a linear subspace as well as DL-ROM autoencoder-based techniques where the solution lies on a nonlinear manifold; consequently, bridges the gap between linear and nonlinear reduced manifolds. We illustrate that a proficient construction of the latent space is key to achieving these results, enabling us to map these latent spaces using regression models. The proposed framework achieves a relative error of 2% on average and 12% in the worst-case scenario (i.e., the training data is small, but the parameter space is large.). We also show that our framework provides a speed-up of $$7 \times 10^{6}$$ 7 × 10 6 times, in the best case, and $$7 \times 10^{3}$$ 7 × 10 3 times on average compared to a finite element solver. Furthermore, this BT–AE framework can operate on unstructured meshes, which provides flexibility in its application to standard numerical solvers, on-site measurements, experimental data, or a combination of these sources.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2025

Generative learning of densities on manifolds

A generative modeling framework is proposed that combines diffusion models and manifold learning to efficiently sample data densities on manifolds. The approach utilizes Diffusion Maps to uncover possible low-dimensional underlying (latent) spaces in the high-dimensional data (ambient) space. Two approaches for sampling from the latent data density are described. The first is a score-based diffusion model, which is trained to map a standard normal distribution to the latent data distribution using a neural network. The second one involves solving an Itô stochastic differential equation in the latent space. Additional realizations of the data are generated by lifting the samples back to the ambient space using Double Diffusion Maps , a recently introduced technique typically employed in studying dynamical system reduction; here the focus lies in sampling densities rather than system dynamics. The proposed approaches enable sampling high dimensional data densities restricted to low-dimensional, a priori unknown manifolds. The efficacy of the proposed framework is demonstrated through a benchmark problem and a material with multiscale structure.

Double diffusion maps↗
DOE OSTI2022

Learning two-phase microstructure evolution using neural operators and autoencoder architectures

Abstract Phase-field modeling is an effective but computationally expensive method for capturing the mesoscale morphological and microstructure evolution in materials. Hence, fast and generalizable surrogate models are needed to alleviate the cost of computationally taxing processes such as in optimization and design of materials. The intrinsic discontinuous nature of the physical phenomena incurred by the presence of sharp phase boundaries makes the training of the surrogate model cumbersome. We develop a framework that integrates a convolutional autoencoder architecture with a deep neural operator (DeepONet) to learn the dynamic evolution of a two-phase mixture and accelerate time-to-solution in predicting the microstructure evolution. We utilize the convolutional autoencoder to provide a compact representation of the microstructure data in a low-dimensional latent space. After DeepONet is trained in the latent space, it can be used to replace the high-fidelity phase-field numerical solver in interpolation tasks or to accelerate the numerical solver in extrapolation tasks.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2023

Oracle-Preserving Latent Flows

A fundamental task in data science is the discovery, description, and identification of any symmetries present in the data. We developed a deep learning methodology for the simultaneous discovery of multiple non-trivial continuous symmetries across an entire labeled dataset. The symmetry transformations and the corresponding generators are modeled with fully connected neural networks trained with a specially constructed loss function, ensuring the desired symmetry properties. The two new elements in this work are the use of a reduced-dimensionality latent space and the generalization to invariant transformations with respect to high-dimensional oracles. The method is demonstrated with several examples on the MNIST digit dataset, where the oracle is provided by the 10-dimensional vector of logits of a trained classifier. We find classes of symmetries that transform each image from the dataset into new synthetic images while conserving the values of the logits. We illustrate these transformations as lines of equal probability (“flows”) in the reduced latent space. These results show that symmetries in the data can be successfully searched for and identified as interpretable non-trivial transformations in the equivalent latent space.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2024

CO 2 storage site characterization using ensemble-based approaches with deep generative models

Estimating spatially distributed properties such as permeability from available sparse measurements is a great challenge in efficient subsurface CO 2 storage operations. In this paper, a deep generative model that can accurately capture complex subsurface structure is tested with an ensemble-based inversion method for accurate and accelerated characterization of CO 2 storage sites. We chose Wasserstein Generative Adversarial Network with Gradient Penalty (WGAN-GP) for its realistic reservoir property representation and Ensemble Smoother with Multiple Data Assimilation (ES-MDA) for its robust data fitting and uncertainty quantification capability. WGAN-GP are trained to generate high-dimensional permeability fields from a low-dimensional latent space and ES-MDA then updates the latent variables by assimilating available measurements. Several subsurface site characterization examples including Gaussian, channelized, and fractured reservoirs are used to evaluate the accuracy and computational efficiency of the proposed method and the main features of the unknown permeability fields are characterized accurately with reliable uncertainty quantification. Furthermore, the estimation performance is compared with a widely-used variational, i.e., optimization-based, inversion approach, and the proposed approach outperforms the variational inversion method in several benchmark cases. We explain such superior performance by visualizing the objective function in the latent space: because of nonlinear and aggressive dimension reduction via generative modeling, the objective function surface becomes extremely complex while the ensemble approximation can smooth out the multi-modal surface during the minimization. This suggests that the ensemble-based approach works well over the variational approach when combined with deep generative models at the cost of forward model runs unless convergence-ensuring modifications are implemented in the variational inversion.

42 ENGINEERING↗
NASA NTRS1999

Reactivation of Latent Viruses in Space

Reactivation of latent viruses is an important health risk for people working and living in physically isolated extreme environments such as Antarctica and space. Preflight quarantine does not significantly reduce the risk associated with latent viruses, however, pharmaceutical countermeasures are available for some viruses. The molecular basis of latency is not fully understood, but physical and psychosocial stresses are known to initiate the reactivation of latent viruses. Presumably, stress induced changes in selected hormones lead to alterations in the cell- mediated immune (CMI) response resulting in increased shedding of latent viruses. Limited access to space makes the use of ground-based analogs essential. The Australian Antarctic stations serve as a good stress model and simulate many aspects of space flight. Closed environmental chambers have been used to simulate space flight since the Skylab missions and have also proven to be a valuable analog of selected aspects of space flight.

Pierson, D. L.↗
DOE OSTI2024

Deep kernel methods learn better: from cards to process optimization

Abstract The ability of deep learning methods to perform classification and regression tasks relies heavily on their capacity to uncover manifolds in high-dimensional data spaces and project them into low-dimensional representation spaces. In this study, we investigate the structure and character of the manifolds generated by classical variational autoencoder (VAE) approaches and deep kernel learning (DKL). In the former case, the structure of the latent space is determined by the properties of the input data alone, while in the latter, the latent manifold forms as a result of an active learning process that balances the data distribution and target functionalities. We show that DKL with active learning can produce a more compact and smooth latent space which is more conducive to optimization compared to previously reported methods, such as the VAE. We demonstrate this behavior using a simple cards dataset and extend it to the optimization of domain-generated trajectories in physical systems. Our findings suggest that latent manifolds constructed through active learning have a more beneficial structure for optimization problems, especially in feature-rich target-poor scenarios that are common in domain sciences, such as materials synthesis, energy storage, and molecular discovery. The Jupyter Notebooks that encapsulate the complete analysis accompany the article.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2022

A deep learning-based direct forecasting of CO 2 plume migration

Accurate and timely forecasts of CO 2 plume evolution in geological reservoirs are crucial for CO 2 migration detection, leakage risk assessment, and operation decision support. Conventional forecasting usually adopts a two-step strategy, first calibrating reservoir model parameters against observations using iterative inverse modeling (or history matching) and then applying the calibrated model for predictions. This method impedes real-time forecasts due to the heavy computational demand in inverse modeling and may suffer from poor prediction accuracy because of the limited observation data. In this work, we propose a deep learning-based latent space mapping framework to forecast CO 2 plume migration directly by avoiding the inverse modeling. We first use the convolutional autoencoder to map the high-dimensional complex plume extents onto low-dimensional latent space. Next, we use neural networks to learn the relationship between the observation variables and the prediction latent variables. And then for given observation data, we infer the prediction values directly. This one-step direct forecasting is computationally efficient which requires a few number of parallelizable reservoir simulations and it can provide accurate predictions with limited observations by learning the observation-prediction relationship in the reduced dimension. Therefore, our proposed method enables an in-time forecast of dynamic CO 2 plume distributions. In this work, we demonstrate the effectiveness and accuracy of our method in predicting the CO 2 plume migration using four metrics such as plume area, centroid movement distance, and plume spreading in the primary and secondary directions. And the spatio-temporal evolution patterns of plume migration under diverse geological complexities are also accurately quantified.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Denoising diffusion algorithm for inverse design of microstructures with fine-tuned nonlinear material properties

Here we introduce a denoising diffusion algorithm to discover microstructures with nonlinear fine-tuned properties. Denoising diffusion probabilistic models are generative models that use diffusion-based dynamics to gradually denoise images and generate realistic synthetic samples. By learning the reverse of a Markov diffusion process, we design an artificial intelligence to efficiently manipulate the topology of microstructures to generate a massive number of prototypes that exhibit constitutive responses sufficiently close to designated nonlinear constitutive behaviors. To identify the subset of microcstructures with sufficiently precise fine-tuned properties, a convolutional neural network surrogate is trained to replace high-fidelity finite element simulations to filter out prototypes outside the admissible range. Results of this study indicate that the denoising diffusion process is capable of creating microstructures of fine-tuned nonlinear material properties within the latent space of the training data. More importantly, this denoising diffusion algorithm can be easily extended to incorporate additional topological and geometric modifications by introducing high-dimensional structures embedded in the latent space. Numerical experiments are conducted on the open-source mechanical MNIST data set (Lejeune, 2020). Consequently, this algorithm is not only capable of performing inverse design of nonlinear effective media, but also learns the nonlinear structure–property map to quantitatively understand the multiscale interplay among the geometry, topology, and their effective macroscopic properties.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2024

Deep Koopman Neural Network for Analyzing High-Energy-Density Simulations of Electrical Wire Explosions

Megaampere-scale electrical wire experiments (EWEs) provide a platform for studying magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instability growth in magneto-inertial fusion (MIF) devices. Even when nonlinear simulations of these experiments can digitally reproduce much of the experimentally observed instability growth, interpreting the results and understanding mode growth and evolution can be non-trivial. As a first step toward providing better interpretation of these simulation features, this work investigates the use of a deep neural network that uses Koopman operator theory to analyze the dynamics of pulsed-power-driven explosions of EWEs. This deep neural network is trained on 1-D resistive MHD simulations of EWEs. This neural network learns to transform the nonlinear data into a lower-dimensional representation where the time dynamics are linear. Layers of this neural network are shown to learn features of the simulations, including the locations of shock waves and different physical regimes of the simulation. Using the learned features, the network can compress a time state of the simulation consisting of 5120 data point into a 36-parameter lower-dimensional latent space embedding. Furthermore, these embeddings are shown to be clustered in the latent space by initial radius and time state.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Forward sensitivity analysis and mode dependent control for closure modeling of Galerkin systems

Model reduction by projection-based approaches is often associated with losing some of the important features that contribute towards the dynamics of the retained scales. As a result, a mismatch occurs between the predicted trajectories of the original system and the truncated one. We put forth a framework to apply a continuous time control signal in the latent space of the reduced order model (ROM) to account for the effect of truncation. We set the control input using parameterized models by following energy transfer principles. Our methodology relies on observing the system behavior in the physical space and using the projection operator to restrict the feedback signal into the latent space. Then, we leverage the forward sensitivity method (FSM) to derive relationships between the feedback and the desired mode-dependent control. We test the performance of the proposed approach using two test cases, corresponding to viscous Burgers and vortex merger problems at high Reynolds number. Results show that the ROM trajectory with the applied FSM control closely matches its target values in both the data-dense and data-sparse regimes.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2026

Latent Twins

Over the past decade, scientific machine learning has transformed the development of mathematical and computational frameworks for analyzing, modeling, and predicting complex systems. From inverse problems to numerical partial differential equations (PDEs), dynamical systems, and model reduction, these advances have pushed the boundaries of what can be simulated. Yet they have often progressed in parallel, with representation learning and algorithmic solution methods evolving largely as separate pipelines. With Latent Twins, we propose a unifying mathematical framework that creates a hidden surrogate in latent space for the underlying equations. Whereas digital twins mirror physical systems in the digital world, Latent Twins mirror mathematical systems in a learned latent space governed by operators. Through this lens, classical modeling, inversion, model reduction, and operator approximation all emerge as special cases of a single principle. We establish the fundamental approximation properties of Latent Twins for both ordinary differential equations (ODEs) and PDEs and demonstrate the framework across three representative settings: (i) canonical ODEs, capturing diverse dynamical regimes; (ii) a PDE benchmark using the shallow-water equations, contrasting Latent Twin simulations with deep operator network and forecasts with a four-dimensional variational method baseline; and (iii) a challenging real-data geopotential reanalysis dataset, reconstructing and forecasting from sparse, noisy observations. Latent Twins provide a compact, interpretable surrogate for solution operators that evaluate across arbitrary time gaps in a single-shot, while remaining compatible with scientific pipelines such as assimilation, control, and uncertainty quantification. Looking forward, this framework offers scalable, theory-grounded surrogates that bridge data-driven representation learning and classical scientific modeling across disciplines.

Latent Twins↗
DOE OSTI2026

Identifying Anomalous DESI Galaxy Spectra with a Variational Autoencoder

The tens of millions of spectra being captured by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) provide tremendous discovery potential. In this work we show how Machine Learning, in particular Variational Autoencoders (VAE), can detect anomalies in a sample of approximately 200,000 DESI spectra comprising galaxies, quasars and stars. We demonstrate that the VAE can compress the dimensionality of a spectrum by a factor of 100, while still retaining enough information to accurately reconstruct spectral features. We then detect anomalous spectra as those with high reconstruction error and those which are isolated in the VAE latent representation. The anomalies identified fall into two categories: spectra with artefacts and spectra with unique physical features. Awareness of the former can help to improve the DESI spectroscopic pipeline; whilst the latter can lead to the identification of new and unusual objects. To further curate the list of outliers, we use the Astronomaly package which employs Active Learning to provide personalised outlier recommendations for visual inspection. In this work we also explore the VAE latent space, finding that different object classes and subclasses are separated despite being unlabelled. We demonstrate the interpretability of this latent space by identifying tracks within it that correspond to various spectral characteristics. For example, we find tracks that correspond to increasing star formation and increase in broad emission lines along the Balmer series. In upcoming work we hope to apply the methods presented here to search for both systematics and astrophysically interesting objects in much larger datasets of DESI spectra.

Nicolaou, C. [University Coll. London] (ORCID:0000↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Loss of Control Detection for Commercial Transport Aircraft Using Conditional Variational Autoencoders

This work describes a detector for the loss of control condition of a commercial transport in flight. The detector has a belief state defined by the latent variable stochastic modeling of a conditional variational autoencoder (CVAE) constructed with bidirectional recurrent layers. In 2000, the Boeing Company and the NASA Langley Research Center jointly developed a quantitative set of metrics for defining loss-of-control (LOC) for a commercial transport. We use the thresholds for these quantitative metrics to define a condition vector for training the CVAE. First, we demonstrate through experimentation that reconstruction probability is an accurate indicator that the vehicle has shifted to an LOC state. Second, we introduce a technique for inferring that the vehicle is approaching a flight state change by measuring a shift in the sampling distributions of the CVAE latent space. The sampling distributions for flight observations that are approaching envelope limits are localized to external areas of the latent space. We provide an analysis of its applicability to flight data from NASA’s dynamically-scaled generic transport model (GTM) aircraft.

Loss of control↗
DOE OSTI2025

Physics-constrained superresolution diffusion for six-dimensional phase space diagnostics

Adaptive physics-constrained superresolution diffusion is developed for noninvasive virtual diagnostics of the six-dimensional (6D) phase space density of charged particle beams. An adaptive variational autoencoder embeds initial beam condition images and scalar measurements to a low-dimensional latent space from which a 32 6 pixel 6D tensor representation of the beam's 6D phase space density is generated. Projecting from a 6D tensor generates physically consistent two-dimensional projections. Physics-guided superresolution diffusion transforms low-resolution images of the 6D density to high resolution 256 × 256 pixel images. Unsupervised adaptive latent space tuning enables tracking of time-varying beams without knowledge of time-varying initial conditions. The method is demonstrated with experimental data and multiparticle simulations at the HiRES UED. The general approach is applicable to a wide range of complex dynamic systems evolving in high-dimensional phase space. The method is shown to be robust to distribution shift without retraining. Published by the American Physical Society 2025

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2024

An explainable variational autoencoder model for three-dimensional acoustic emission source localization in hollow cylindrical structures

We introduce an explainable variational autoencoder for three-dimensional (3D) localization of acoustic emission sources in hollow cylindrical structures, with an unsupervised approach. This research capitalizes on multi-arrival waveforms generated by helical path propagation in cylindrical geometries to enable efficient two-receiver localization. By integrating the modal characteristics of Lamb modes under multi-path conditions, we demonstrate that two sets of time-of-arrival differences and peak amplitudes extracted from one receiver can serve as effective localization features. This initial approach identifies four potential source locations, highlighting the feasibility of two-receiver source localization using traditional feature extraction methods. However, direct extraction can be challenging when mode overlaps occur, complicating the localization process. To address this, our work proposes a novel waveform-based method. This method leverages the consistent dispersion characteristics within isotropic materials, where each unique combination of mode arrival times and peak amplitudes constructs a distinct waveform. This distinctiveness overcomes the ambiguities associated with mode overlaps, significantly enhancing the method’s precision and robustness. Our approach adopts a data-driven strategy for waveform-based localization using variational autoencoder (VAE). VAE discerns waveform patterns for localization, while also addressing data uncertainties. The VAE’s encoder and decoder networks capture the localization process and the source’s influence on waveform generation, respectively, guiding latent variables to segregate waveforms by source in the latent space. The design of the learning process focuses on specific localization characteristics to enhance result explainability. Localization predictions are generated by projecting test waveforms, not included in the training set, onto a trained latent space. The prediction is determined using a nearest-neighbor approach based on the closest latent representation of a source. Validation with pencil-lead-break tests on a metallic pipe confirmed our method’s effectiveness, achieving an averaged 3D localization accuracy of 0.84.

Lee, Guan-Wei↗
DOE OSTI2024

Selecting Appropriate Model Complexity: An Example of Tracer Inversion for Thermal Prediction in Enhanced Geothermal Systems

Abstract A major challenge in the inversion of subsurface parameters is the ill‐posedness issue caused by the inherent subsurface complexities and the generally spatially sparse data. Appropriate simplifications of inversion models are thus necessary to make the inversion process tractable and meanwhile preserve the predictive ability of the inversion results. In this study, we investigate the effect of model complexity on fracture aperture inversion and thermal performance prediction in a field‐scale EGS model. Principal component analysis was used to map the aperture field to a low‐dimensional latent space. The complexity of the inversion model was quantitatively represented by the percentage of total variance in the original aperture fields preserved by the latent space. Tracer, pressure and flow rate data were used to invert for fracture aperture through an ensemble‐based inversion method, and the inferred aperture field was used to predict thermal performance. With an over‐simplified aperture model, ensemble collapse occurred. The inverted aperture models failed to resolve necessary flow and transport features, leading to a biased thermal performance prediction. A complex aperture model involved excessive features and was prone to overinterpreting the inversion data. Both the tracer/pressure/flow rate data reproduction and thermal prediction showed significant uncertainties, making it difficult to properly estimate long‐term thermal performance. Fortunately, our results indicate that there exists an appropriate model complexity which can simultaneously match inversion data and predict thermal performance with an acceptable uncertainty. The quality of the fit of tracer data appears to be a useful indicator of such an appropriate model complexity.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Understanding latent timescales in neural ordinary differential equation models of advection-dominated dynamical systems

The neural ordinary differential equation (ODE) framework has shown considerable promise in recent years in developing highly accelerated surrogate models for complex physical systems characterized by partial differential equations (PDEs). For PDE-based systems, state-of-the-art neural ODE strategies leverage a two-step procedure to achieve this acceleration: a nonlinear dimensionality reduction step provided by an autoencoder, and a time integration step provided by a neural-network based model for the resultant latent space dynamics (the neural ODE). This work explores the applicability of such autoencoder-based neural ODE strategies for PDEs in which advection terms play a critical role. More specifically, alongside predictive demonstrations, physical insight into the sources of model acceleration (i.e., how the neural ODE achieves its acceleration) is the scope of the current study. Such investigations are performed by quantifying the effects of both autoencoder and neural ODE components on latent system time-scales using eigenvalue analysis of dynamical system Jacobians. To this end, the sensitivity of various critical training parameters – de-coupled versus end-to-end training, latent space dimensionality, and the role of training trajectory length, for example – to both model accuracy and the discovered latent system timescales is quantified. Furthermore, this work specifically uncovers the key role played by the training trajectory length (the number of rollout steps in the loss function during training) on the latent system timescales: larger trajectory lengths correlate with an increase in limiting neural ODE time-scales, and optimal neural ODEs are found to recover the largest time-scales of the full-order (ground-truth) system. Demonstrations are performed across fundamentally different unsteady fluid dynamics configurations influenced by advection: (1) the Kuramoto–Sivashinsky equations (2) Hydrogen-Air channel detonations (the compressible reacting Navier–Stokes equations with detailed chemistry), and (3) 2D Atmospheric flow.

Advection-dominated dynamical systems↗