As Sandia National Laboratories serves its mission to provide support for the security-related interests of the United States, it is faced with considering the behavioral responses that drive problems, mitigate interventions, or lead to unintended consequences. The effort described here expands earlier works in using healthcare simulation to develop behavior-aware decision support systems. This report focuses on using qualitative choice techniques and enhancing two analysis models developed in a sister project.
This is the final report for a LDRD effort to address human behavior in decision support systems. One sister LDRD effort reports the extension of this work to include actual human choices and additional simulation analyses. Another provides the background for this effort and the programmatic directions for future work. This specific effort considered the feasibility of five aspects of model development required for analysis viability. To avoid the use of classified information, healthcare decisions and the system embedding them became the illustrative example for assessment.
Automatic differentiation (AD) is useful in transient sensitivity analysis of a computational simulation of a bipolar junction transistor subject to radiation damage. We used forward-mode AD, implemented in a new Trilinos package called Sacado, to compute analytic derivatives for implicit time integration and forward sensitivity analysis. Sacado addresses element-based simulation codes written in C++ and works well with forward sensitivity analysis as implemented in the Trilinos time-integration package Rythmos. The forward sensitivity calculation is significantly more efficient and robust than finite differencing.
Jacobs, Benjamin W.; Ayres, Virginia M.; Stallcup, Richard E.; Hartman, Alan; Tupta, Mary A.; Baczewski, Andrew D.; Crimp, Martin A.; Halpern, Joshua B.; He, Maoqi; Shaw, Harry C.
Two-point and four-point probe electrical measurements of a biphasic gallium nitride nanowire and current–voltage characteristics of a gallium nitride nanowire based field effect transistor are reported. The biphasic gallium nitride nanowires have a crystalline homostructure consisting of wurtzite and zinc-blende phases that grow simultaneously in the longitudinal direction. There is a sharp transition of one to a few atomic layers between each phase. Here, all measurements showed high current densities. Evidence of single-phase current transport in the biphasic nanowire structure is discussed.
The Predictive Capability Maturity Model (PCMM) is a new model that can be used to assess the level of maturity of computational modeling and simulation (M&S) efforts. The development of the model is based on both the authors experience and their analysis of similar investigations in the past. The perspective taken in this report is one of judging the usefulness of a predictive capability that relies on the numerical solution to partial differential equations to better inform and improve decision making. The review of past investigations, such as the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model Integration and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Department of Defense Technology Readiness Levels, indicates that a more restricted, more interpretable method is needed to assess the maturity of an M&S effort. The PCMM addresses six contributing elements to M&S: (1) representation and geometric fidelity, (2) physics and material model fidelity, (3) code verification, (4) solution verification, (5) model validation, and (6) uncertainty quantification and sensitivity analysis. For each of these elements, attributes are identified that characterize four increasing levels of maturity. Importantly, the PCMM is a structured method for assessing the maturity of an M&S effort that is directed toward an engineering application of interest. The PCMM does not assess whether the M&S effort, the accuracy of the predictions, or the performance of the engineering system satisfies or does not satisfy specified application requirements.
This report is a collection of documents written as part of the Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) project A Mathematical Framework for Multiscale Science and Engineering: The Variational Multiscale Method and Interscale Transfer Operators. We present developments in two categories of multiscale mathematics and analysis. The first, continuum-to-continuum (CtC) multiscale, includes problems that allow application of the same continuum model at all scales with the primary barrier to simulation being computing resources. The second, atomistic-to-continuum (AtC) multiscale, represents applications where detailed physics at the atomistic or molecular level must be simulated to resolve the small scales, but the effect on and coupling to the continuum level is frequently unclear.
Wide baseline matching is the state of the art for object recognition and image registration problems in computer vision. Though effective, the computational expense of these algorithms limits their application to many real-world problems. The performance of wide baseline matching algorithms may be improved by using a graphical processing unit as a fast multithreaded co-processor. In this paper, we present an implementation of the difference of Gaussian feature extractor, based on the CUDA system of GPU programming developed by NVIDIA, and implemented on their hardware. For a 2000x2000 pixel image, the GPU-based method executes nearly thirteen times faster than a comparable CPU-based method, with no significant loss of accuracy.
Graphs are a vital way of organizing data with complex correlations. A good visualization of a graph can fundamentally change human understanding of the data. Consequently, there is a rich body of work on graph visualization. Although there are many techniques that are effective on small to medium sized graphs (tens of thousands of nodes), there is a void in the research for visualizing massive graphs containing millions of nodes. Sandia is one of the few entities in the world that has the means and motivation to handle data on such a massive scale. For example, homeland security generates graphs from prolific media sources such as television, telephone, and the Internet. The purpose of this project is to provide the groundwork for visualizing such massive graphs. The research provides for two major feature gaps: a parallel, interactive visualization framework and scalable algorithms to make the framework usable to a practical application. Both the frameworks and algorithms are designed to run on distributed parallel computers, which are already available at Sandia. Some features are integrated into the ThreatView{trademark} application and future work will integrate further parallel algorithms.
This paper describes an elegant statistical coarse-graining of molecular dynamics at finite temperature into peridynamics, a continuum theory. Peridynamics is an efficient alternative to molecular dynamics enabling dynamics at larger length and time scales. In direct analogy with molecular dynamics, peridynamics uses a nonlocal model of force and does not employ stress/strain relationships germane to classical continuum mechanics. In contrast with classical continuum mechanics, the peridynamic representation of a system of linear springs and masses is shown to have the same dispersion relation as the original spring-mass system.
Aerospace designers seek lightweight, high-strength structures to lower launch weight while creating structures that are capable of withstanding launch loadings. Most 'light-weighting' is done through an expensive, time-consuming, iterative method requiring experience and a repeated design/test/redesign sequence until an adequate solution is obtained. Little successful work has been done in the application of generalized 3D optimization due to the difficulty of analytical solutions, the large computational requirements of computerized solutions, and the inability to manufacture many optimized structures with conventional machining processes. The Titanium Cholla LDRD team set out to create generalized 3D optimization routines, a set of analytically optimized 3D structures for testing the solutions, and a method of manufacturing these complex optimized structures. The team developed two new computer optimization solutions: Advanced Topological Optimization (ATO) and FlexFEM, an optimization package utilizing the eXtended Finite Element Method (XFEM) software for stress analysis. The team also developed several new analytically defined classes of optimized structures. Finally, the team developed a 3D capability for the Laser Engineered Net Shaping{trademark} (LENS{reg_sign}) additive manufacturing process including process planning for 3D optimized structures. This report gives individual examples as well as one generalized example showing the optimized solutions and an optimized metal part.
A code, Charon, is described which simulates the effects that neutron damage has on silicon semiconductor devices. The code uses a stabilized, finite-element discretization of the semiconductor drift-diffusion equations. The mathematical model used to simulate semiconductor devices in both normal and radiation environments will be described. Modeling of defect complexes is accomplished by adding an additional drift-diffusion equation for each of the defect species. Additionally, details are given describing how Charon can efficiently solve very large problems using modern parallel computers. Comparison between Charon and experiment will be given, as well as comparison with results from commercially-available TCAD codes.
Here, we examine the coupling of the patterned-interface-reconstruction (PIR) algorithm with the extended finite element method (X-FEM) for general multi-material problems over structured and unstructured meshes. The coupled method offers the advantages of allowing for local, element-based reconstructions of the interface, and facilitates the imposition of discrete conservation laws. Of particular note is the use of an interface representation that is volume-of-fluid based, giving rise to a segmented interface representation that is not continuous across element boundaries. In conjunction with such a representation, we employ enrichment with the ridge function for treating material interfaces and an analog to Heaviside enrichment for treating free surfaces. We examine a series of benchmark problems that quantify the convergence aspects of the coupled method and examine the sensitivity to noise in the interface reconstruction. Finally, the fidelity of a remapping strategy is also examined for a moving interface problem.
A web-based brainstorm was conducted in the summer of 2007 within the Sandia Restricted Network. This brainstorming experiment was modeled around the 'yellow sticky' brainstorms that are used in many face-to-face meetings at Sandia National Laboratories. This document discusses the implementation and makes suggestions for future implementations.