This report summarizes work done under the Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) project titled "Incorporating physical constraints into Gaussian process surrogate models?' In this project, we explored a variety of strategies for constraint implementations. We considered bound constraints, monotonicity and related convexity constraints, Gaussian processes which are constrained to satisfy linear operator constraints which represent physical laws expressed as partial differential equations, and intrinsic boundary condition constraints. We wrote three papers and are currently finishing two others. We developed initial software implementations for some approaches. This report summarizes the work done under this LDRD.
This report documents a statistical method for the "real-time" characterization of partially observed epidemics. Observations consist of daily counts of symptomatic patients, diagnosed with the disease. Characterization, in this context, refers to estimation of epidemiological parameters that can be used to provide short-term forecasts of the ongoing epidemic, as well as to provide gross information for the time-dependent infection rate. The characterization problem is formulated as a Bayesian inverse problem, and is predicated on a model for the distribution of the incubation period. The model parameters are estimated as distributions using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method, thus quantifying the uncertainty in the estimates. The method is applied to the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, using data at the country, provincial (e.g., states) and regional (e.g. county) levels. The epidemiological model includes a stochastic component due to uncertainties in the incubation period. This model-form uncertainty is accommodated by a pseudo-marginal Metropolis-Hastings MCMC sampler, which produces posterior distributions that reflect this uncertainty. We approximate the discrepancy between the data and the epidemiological model using Gaussian and negative binomial error models; the latter was motivated by the over-dispersed count data. For small daily counts we find the performance of the calibrated models to be similar for the two error models. For large daily counts the negative-binomial approximation is numerically unstable unlike the Gaussian error model. Application of the model at the country level (for the United States, Germany, Italy, etc.) generally provided accurate forecasts, as the data consisted of large counts which suppressed the day-to-day variations in the observations. Further, the bulk of the data is sourced over the duration before the relaxation of the curbs on population mixing, and is not confounded by any discernible country-wide second wave of infections. At the state-level, where reporting was poor or which evinced few infections (e.g., New Mexico), the variance in the data posed some, though not insurmountable, difficulties, and forecasts were able to capture the data with large uncertainty bounds. The method was found to be sufficiently sensitive to discern the flattening of the infection and epidemic curve due to shelter-in-place orders after around 90% quantile for the incubation distribution (about 10 days for COVID-19). The proposed model was also used at a regional level to compare the forecasts for the central and north-west regions of New Mexico. Modeling the data for these regions illustrated different disease spread dynamics captured by the model. While in the central region the daily counts peaked in the late April, in the north-west region the ramp-up continued for approximately three more weeks.
Sandia National Laboratories currently has 27 COVID-related Laboratory Directed Research & Development (LDRD) projects focused on helping the nation during the pandemic. These LDRD projects cross many disciplines including bioscience, computing & information sciences, engineering science, materials science, nanodevices & microsystems, and radiation effects & high energy density science.
This study explores a Bayesian calibration framework for the RAMPAGE alloy potential model for Cu-Ni and Cu-Zr systems, respectively. In RAMPAGE potentials, it is proposed that once calibrated potentials for individual elements are available, the inter-species interactions can be described by fitting a Morse potential for pair interactions with three parameters, while densities for the embedding function can be scaled by two parameters from the elemental densities. Global sensitivity analysis tools were employed to understand the impact each parameter has on the MD simulation results. A transitional Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm was used to generate samples from the multimodal posterior distribution consistent with the discrepancy between MD simulation results and DFT data. For the Cu-Ni system the posterior predictive tests indicate that the fitted interatomic potential model agrees well with the DFT data, justifying the basic RAMPAGE assumptions. For the Cu-Zr system, where the phase diagram suggests more complicated atomic interactions than in the case of Cu-Ni, the RAMPAGE potential captured only a subset of the DFT data. The resulting posterior distribution for the 5 model parameters exhibited several modes, with each mode corresponding to specific simulation data and a suboptimal agreement with the DFT results.
Increasing penetration levels of renewables have transformed how power systems are operated. High levels of uncertainty in production make it increasingly difficulty to guarantee operational feasibility; instead, constraints may only be satisfied with high probability. We present a chance-constrained economic dispatch model that efficiently integrates energy storage and high renewable penetration to satisfy renewable portfolio requirements. Specifically, we require that wind energy contribute at least a prespecified proportion of the total demand and that the scheduled wind energy is deliverable with high probability. We develop an approximate partial sample average approximation (PSAA) framework to enable efficient solution of large-scale chance-constrained economic dispatch problems. Computational experiments on the IEEE-24 bus system show that the proposed PSAA approach is more accurate, closer to the prescribed satisfaction tolerance, and approximately 100 times faster than standard sample average approximation. Finally, the improved efficiency of our PSAA approach enables solution of a larger WECC-240 test system in minutes.
The development of scramjet engines is an important research area for advancing hypersonic and orbital flights. Progress toward optimal engine designs requires accurate flow simulations together with uncertainty quantification. However, performing uncertainty quantification for scramjet simulations is challenging due to the large number of uncertainparameters involvedandthe high computational costofflow simulations. These difficulties are addressedin this paper by developing practical uncertainty quantification algorithms and computational methods, and deploying themin the current studyto large-eddy simulations ofajet incrossflow inside a simplified HIFiRE Direct Connect Rig scramjet combustor. First, global sensitivity analysis is conducted to identify influential uncertain input parameters, which can help reduce the system's stochastic dimension. Second, because models of different fidelity are used in the overall uncertainty quantification assessment, a framework for quantifying and propagating the uncertainty due to model error is presented. These methods are demonstrated on a nonreacting jet-in-crossflow test problem in a simplified scramjet geometry, with parameter space up to 24 dimensions, using static and dynamic treatments of the turbulence subgrid model, and with two-dimensional and three-dimensional geometries.
The development of scramjet engines is an important research area for advancing hypersonic and orbital flights. Progress towards optimal engine designs requires accurate and computationally affordable flow simulations, as well as uncertainty quantification (UQ). While traditional UQ techniques can become prohibitive under expensive simulations and high-dimensional parameter spaces, polynomial chaos (PC) surrogate modeling is a useful tool for alleviating some of the computational burden. However, non-intrusive quadrature-based constructions of PC expansions relying on a single high-fidelity model can still be quite expensive. We thus introduce a two-stage numerical procedure for constructing PC surrogates while making use of multiple models of different fidelity. The first stage involves an initial dimension reduction through global sensitivity analysis using compressive sensing. The second stage utilizes adaptive sparse quadrature on a multifidelity expansion to compute PC surrogate coefficients in the reduced parameter space where quadrature methods can be more effective. The overall method is used to produce accurate surrogates and to propagate uncertainty induced by uncertain boundary conditions and turbulence model parameters, for performance quantities of interest from large eddy simulations of supersonic reactive flows inside a scramjet engine.
The development of scramjet engines is an important research area for advancing hypersonic and orbital flights. Progress toward optimal engine designs requires accurate flow simulations together with uncertainty quantification. However, performing uncertainty quantification for scramjet simulations is challenging due to the large number of uncertainparameters involvedandthe high computational costofflow simulations. These difficulties are addressedin this paper by developing practical uncertainty quantification algorithms and computational methods, and deploying themin the current studyto large-eddy simulations ofajet incrossflow inside a simplified HIFiRE Direct Connect Rig scramjet combustor. First, global sensitivity analysis is conducted to identify influential uncertain input parameters, which can help reduce the system's stochastic dimension. Second, because models of different fidelity are used in the overall uncertainty quantification assessment, a framework for quantifying and propagating the uncertainty due to model error is presented. These methods are demonstrated on a nonreacting jet-in-crossflow test problem in a simplified scramjet geometry, with parameter space up to 24 dimensions, using static and dynamic treatments of the turbulence subgrid model, and with two-dimensional and three-dimensional geometries.
