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At least 199 records · Page 11

Overview and Summary of the Second AIAA High Lift Prediction Workshop

The second AIAA CFD High-Lift Prediction Workshop was held in San Diego, California, in June 2013. The goals of the workshop continued in the tradition of the first high-lift workshop: to assess the numerical prediction capability of current-generation computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technology for swept, medium/high-aspect-ratio wings in landing/takeoff (high-lift) configurations. This workshop analyzed the flow over the DLR-F11 model in landing configuration at two different Reynolds numbers. Twenty-six participants submitted a total of 48 data sets of CFD results. A variety of grid systems (both structured and unstructured) were used. Trends due to grid density and Reynolds number were analyzed, and effects of support brackets were also included. This paper analyzes the combined results from all workshop participants. Comparisons with experimental data are made. A statistical summary of the CFD results is also included.

Rumsey, Christopher L.↗

Unstructured clinical notes within the 24 hours since admission predict short, mid & long-term mortality in adult ICU patients

Mortality prediction for intensive care unit (ICU) patients is crucial for improving outcomes and efficient utilization of resources. Accessibility of electronic health records (EHR) has enabled data-driven predictive modeling using machine learning. However, very few studies rely solely on unstructured clinical notes from the EHR for mortality prediction. In this work, we propose a framework to predict short, mid, and long-term mortality in adult ICU patients using unstructured clinical notes from the MIMIC III database, natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning (ML) models. Depending on the statistical description of the patients’ length of stay, we define the short-term as 48-hour and 4-day period, the mid-term as 7-day and 10-day period, and the long-term as 15-day and 30-day period after admission. We found that by only using clinical notes within the 24 hours of admission, our framework can achieve a high area under the receiver operating characteristics (AU-ROC) score for short, mid and long-term mortality prediction tasks. The test AU-ROC scores are 0.87, 0.83, 0.83, 0.82, 0.82, and 0.82 for 48-hour, 4-day, 7-day, 10-day, 15-day, and 30-day period mortality prediction, respectively. We also provide a comparative study among three types of feature extraction techniques from NLP: frequency-based technique, fixed embedding-based technique, and dynamic embedding-based technique. Lastly, we provide an interpretation of the NLP-based predictive models using feature-importance scores.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Hybrid Recurrent Neural Network Modeling for Traffic Delay Prediction at Signalized Intersections Along an Urban Arterial

This paper studies the traffic delay prediction modeling for multiple signalized intersections along the Ala Moana Boulevard and Nimitz Highway in Hawaii. Several machine learning (ML) based approaches have been studied in the literature, and most of them focused on prediction accuracy rather than the end use of real-time control and implementation. These ML models tend to be very complex and non-linear in nature, making it challenging to achieve fast inferences and are computationally heavy for real-time signal control implementation. As such, in this paper, a simple yet accurate hybrid modeling method is proposed to predict traffic delay one-step ahead with the model made suitable for real-time implementation to control traffic flow. Since real-time road-side measurements are recorded in unstructured form, the paper also discusses other issues related to data extraction and the pre-processing process. Finally, a simple signal control loop is developed to demonstrate the proposed modeling approach, which has shown advantages in model accuracy and computation efficiency compared against several existing modeling methods.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Discontinuous Spectral Difference Method for Conservation Laws on Unstructured Grids

A new, high-order, conservative, and efficient discontinuous spectral finite difference (SD) method for conservation laws on unstructured grids is developed. The concept of discontinuous and high-order local representations to achieve conservation and high accuracy is utilized in a manner similar to the Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) and the Spectral Volume (SV) methods, but while these methods are based on the integrated forms of the equations, the new method is based on the differential form to attain a simpler formulation and higher efficiency. Conventional unstructured finite-difference and finite-volume methods require data reconstruction based on the least-squares formulation using neighboring point or cell data. Since each unknown employs a different stencil, one must repeat the least-squares inversion for every point or cell at each time step, or to store the inversion coefficients. In a high-order, three-dimensional computation, the former would involve impractically large CPU time, while for the latter the memory requirement becomes prohibitive. In addition, the finite-difference method does not satisfy the integral conservation in general. By contrast, the DG and SV methods employ a local, universal reconstruction of a given order of accuracy in each cell in terms of internally defined conservative unknowns. Since the solution is discontinuous across cell boundaries, a Riemann solver is necessary to evaluate boundary flux terms and maintain conservation. In the DG method, a Galerkin finite-element method is employed to update the nodal unknowns within each cell. This requires the inversion of a mass matrix, and the use of quadratures of twice the order of accuracy of the reconstruction to evaluate the surface integrals and additional volume integrals for nonlinear flux functions. In the SV method, the integral conservation law is used to update volume averages over subcells defined by a geometrically similar partition of each grid cell. As the order of accuracy increases, the partitioning for 3D requires the introduction of a large number of parameters, whose optimization to achieve convergence becomes increasingly more difficult. Also, the number of interior facets required to subdivide non-planar faces, and the additional increase in the number of quadrature points for each facet, increases the computational cost greatly.

Liu, Yen↗

Numerical Modeling of Spray Combustion with an Unstructured-Grid Method

The present unstructured-grid method follows strictly the basic finite volume forms of the conservation laws of the governing equations for the entire flow domain. High-order spatially accurate formulation has been employed for the numerical solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations. A two-equation k-epsilon turbulence model is also incorporated in the unstructured-grid solver. The convergence of the resulted linear algebraic equation is accelerated with preconditioned Conjugate Gradient method. A statistical spray combustion model has been incorporated into the present unstructured-grid solver. In this model, spray is represented by discrete particles, rather than by continuous distributions. A finite number of computational particles are used to predict a sample of total population of particles. Particle trajectories are integrated using their momentum and motion equations and particles exchange mass, momentum and energy with the gas within the computational cell in which they are located. The interaction calculations are performed simultaneously and eliminate global iteration for the two-phase momentum exchange. A transient spray flame in a high pressure combustion chamber is predicted and then the solution of liquid-fuel combusting flow with a rotating cup atomizer is presented and compared with the experimental data. The major conclusion of this investigation is that the unstructured-grid method can be employed to study very complicated flow fields of turbulent spray combustion. Grid adaptation can be easily achieved in any flow domain such as droplet evaporation and combustion zone. Future applications of the present model can be found in the full three-dimensional study of flow fields of gas turbine and liquid propulsion engine combustion chambers with multi-injectors.

Shang, H. M.↗

Geometrically Flexible and Efficient Flow Analysis of High Speed Vehicles Via Domain Decomposition, Part 1: Unstructured-Grid Solver for High Speed Flows

The ability to solve the equations governing the hypersonic turbulent flow of a real gas on unstructured grids using a spatially-elliptic, 2nd-order accurate, cell-centered, finite-volume method has been recently implemented in the VULCAN-CFD code. This paper describes the key numerical methods and techniques that were found to be required to robustly obtain accurate solutions to hypersonic flows on non-hex-dominant unstructured grids. The methods and techniques described include: an augmented stencil, weighted linear least squares, cell-average gradient method, a robust multidimensional cell-average gradient-limiter process that is consistent with the augmented stencil of the cell-average gradient method and a cell-face gradient method that contains a cell skewness sensitive damping term derived using hyperbolic diffusion based concepts. A data-parallel matrix-based symmetric Gauss-Seidel point-implicit scheme, used to solve the governing equations, is described and shown to be more robust and efficient than a matrix-free alternative. In addition, a y+ adaptive turbulent wall boundary condition methodology is presented. This boundary condition methodology is deigned to automatically switch between a solve-to-the-wall and a wall-matching-function boundary condition based on the local y+ of the 1st cell center off the wall. The aforementioned methods and techniques are then applied to a series of hypersonic and supersonic turbulent flat plate unit tests to examine the efficiency, robustness and convergence behavior of the implicit scheme and to determine the ability of the solve-to-the-wall and y+ adaptive turbulent wall boundary conditions to reproduce the turbulent law-of-the-wall. Finally, the thermally perfect, chemically frozen, Mach 7.8 turbulent flow of air through a scramjet flow-path is computed and compared with experimental data to demonstrate the robustness, accuracy and convergence behavior of the unstructured-grid solver for a realistic 3-D geometry on a non-hex-dominant grid.

White, Jeffery A.↗

Advanced Computational Aeroacoustics Methods for Fan Noise Prediction

Direct computation of fan noise is presently not possible. One of the major difficulties is the geometrical complexity of the problem. In the case of fan noise, the blade geometry is critical to the loading on the blade and hence the intensity of the radiated noise. The precise geometry must be incorporated into the computation. In computational fluid dynamics (CFD), there are two general ways to handle problems with complex geometry. One way is to use unstructured grids. The other is to use body fitted overset grids. In the overset grid method, accurate data transfer is of utmost importance. For acoustic computation, it is not clear that the currently used data transfer methods are sufficiently accurate as not to contaminate the very small amplitude acoustic disturbances. In CFD, low order schemes are, invariably, used in conjunction with unstructured grids. However, low order schemes are known to be numerically dispersive and dissipative. dissipative errors are extremely undesirable for acoustic wave problems. The objective of this project is to develop a high order unstructured grid Dispersion-Relation-Preserving (DRP) scheme. would minimize numerical dispersion and dissipation errors. contains the results of the funded portion of the project. scheme on an unstructured grid has been developed. constructed in the wave number space. The characteristics of the scheme can be improved by the inclusion of additional constraints. Stability of the scheme has been investigated. Stability can be improved by adopting the upwinding strategy.

Envia, Edmane↗

Some algorithmic problems of plotting codes for unstructured grids

Some algorithmic problems encountered during the development of unstructured grid plotting codes are described. Chief among them are the interpolation of three-dimensional data on planes, the plotting of a three-dimensional surface with a constant value for a given unknown, and the calculation of particle and oil-flow paths. Some special features of the unstructured grid plotting code, FEPLOT3D, are also described.

Loehner, Rainald↗

Accuracy Quantification of the Loci-CHEM Code for Chamber Wall Heat Transfer in a GO2/GH2 Single Element Model Problem

All solutions with Loci-CHEM achieved demonstrated steady state and mesh convergence. Preconditioning had no effect on solution accuracy and typically yields a 3-5times solution speed-up. The SST turbulence model has superior performance, relative to the data in the head end region, for the rise rate and peak heat flux. It was slightly worse than the others in the downstream region where all over-predicted the data by 30-100%.There was systematic mesh refinement in the unstructured volume and structured boundary layer areas produced only minor solution differences. Mesh convergence was achieved. Overall, Loci-CHEM satisfactorily predicts heat flux rise rate and peak heat flux and significantly over predicts the downstream heat flux.

West, Jeff↗

Description of the F-16XL Geometry and Computational Grids Used in CAWAPI

The objective of the Cranked-Arrow Wing Aerodynamics Project International (CAWAPI) was to allow a comprehensive validation of Computational Fluid Dynamics methods against the CAWAP flight database. A major part of this work involved the generation of high-quality computational grids. Prior to the grid generation an IGES file containing the air-tight geometry of the F-16XL aircraft was generated by a cooperation of the CAWAPI partners. Based on this geometry description both structured and unstructured grids have been generated. The baseline structured (multi-block) grid (and a family of derived grids) has been generated by the National Aerospace Laboratory NLR. Although the algorithms used by NLR had become available just before CAWAPI and thus only a limited experience with their application to such a complex configuration had been gained, a grid of good quality was generated well within four weeks. This time compared favourably with that required to produce the unstructured grids in CAWAPI. The baseline all-tetrahedral and hybrid unstructured grids has been generated at NASA Langley Research Center and the USAFA, respectively. To provide more geometrical resolution, trimmed unstructured grids have been generated at EADS-MAS, the UTSimCenter, Boeing Phantom Works and KTH/FOI. All grids generated within the framework of CAWAPI will be discussed in the article. Both results obtained on the structured grids and the unstructured grids showed a significant improvement in agreement with flight test data in comparison with those obtained on the structured multi-block grid used during CAWAP.

Boelens, O. J.↗

A New Approach to Parallel Dynamic Partitioning for Adaptive Unstructured Meshes

Classical mesh partitioning algorithms were designed for rather static situations, and their straightforward application in a dynamical framework may lead to unsatisfactory results, e.g., excessive data migration among processors. Furthermore, special attention should be paid to their amenability to parallelization. In this paper, a novel parallel method for the dynamic partitioning of adaptive unstructured meshes is described. It is based on a linear representation of the mesh using self-avoiding walks.

Heber, Gerd↗

Three-dimensional unstructured grid method applied to turbomachinery

This work has three objectives: to develop a three-dimensional flow solver based on unstructured tetrahedral meshes for turbomachinery flows; to validate the solver through comparisons with experimental data; and to apply the solver for better understanding of the flow through turbomachinery geometries and design improvement. The work followed three different approaches: an existing external flow solver/grid generator (USM3D/VGRID) was extensively modified for internal flows; a three-dimensional, finite-volume solver based on Roe's flux-difference splitting and explicit Runge-Kutta time stepping; and three-dimensional unstructured tetrahedral mesh generation using an advancing-front technique. A discussion of these topics is presented in viewgraph form.

Oh Joon Kwon↗

Multimodal Data Representation with Deep Learning for Extracting Cancer Characteristics from Clinical Text

This paper presents a multimodal data representation to improve the performance of deep learning models for extracting cancer key characteristics from unstructured text in pathology reports. Specifically, in addition to using the text as the input to deep learning models, we use concept unique identifiers (CUIs) as another source of information to the models. We analyze the performance of different text and CUI data representations, including word embeddings and bag of embeddings (BOE), with a convolutional neural network (CNN) and a fully connected multilayer perceptron neural network (MLP-NN). The high level document embeddings from text and CUI inputs are combined by concatenating them and then applying a classifier. The model is used for extracting cancer subsite and histology from pathology reports. These two classification tasks have a large number of labels, i.e. 317 for subsite and 556 for histology, with extreme class imbalance. We compare the performance of the developed DL models across the two tasks based on micro- and macro-F1 scores. The evaluation shows that a multi-channel DL model that utilizes text represented by word embeddings and CUIs represented by BOE outperforms other DL models. Also, this approach significantly improves the model performance on low prevalence classes.

Alawad, Mohammed↗

On the role of dimensionality and sample size for unstructured and structured covariance matrix estimation

The experimental observation that a surprisingly small sample size vis-a-vis dimension is needed to achieve good signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) performance with an adaptive predetection filter is explained. The adaptive filter requires estimates as obtained by a recursive stochastic algorithm of the inverse of the filter input data covariance matrix. The SIR performance with sample size is compared for the situations where the covariance matrix estimates are of unstructured (generalized) form and of structured (finite Toeplitz) form; the latter case is consistent with weak stationarity of the input data stochastic process.

Morgera, S. D.↗

Application of a two-equation turbulence model for high speed compressible flows using unstructured grids

Application of a two-equation compressible turbulence model for practical hypersonic flows 18 presented. The solution algorithm is based on solving all of the governing equations simultaneously. Application of the solution procedure to several test cases for compressible flows show good agreement with theoretical predictions and/or other computational results. The solution procedure is employed to investigate the effects of turbulence in Type III and Type IV shock-shock interactions in hypersonic flows in association with adaptive unstructured grids. Computational results for these cases are compared with available experimental data.

Vemaganti, Gururaja R.↗

The Overgrid Interface for Computational Simulations on Overset Grids

Computational simulations using overset grids typically involve multiple steps and a variety of software modules. A graphical interface called OVERGRID has been specially designed for such purposes. Data required and created by the different steps include geometry, grids, domain connectivity information and flow solver input parameters. The interface provides a unified environment for the visualization, processing, generation and diagnosis of such data. General modules are available for the manipulation of structured grids and unstructured surface triangulations. Modules more specific for the overset approach include surface curve generators, hyperbolic and algebraic surface grid generators, a hyperbolic volume grid generator, Cartesian box grid generators, and domain connectivity: pre-processing tools. An interface provides automatic selection and viewing of flow solver boundary conditions, and various other flow solver inputs. For problems involving multiple components in relative motion, a module is available to build the component/grid relationships and to prescribe and animate the dynamics of the different components.

Chan, William M.↗

Validation of an Experimentally Derived Uncertainty Model

The results show that uncertainty models can be obtained directly from system identification data by using a minimum norm model validation approach. The error between the test data and an analytical nominal model is modeled as a combination of unstructured additive and structured input multiplicative uncertainty. Robust controllers which use the experimentally derived uncertainty model show significant stability and performance improvements over controllers designed with assumed ad hoc uncertainty levels. Use of the identified uncertainty model also allowed a strong correlation between design predictions and experimental results.

Lim, K. B.↗

Simulation and Regression Modeling of Nasa'S X-59 Low-Boom Carpets Across America

NASA’s X-59 aircraft is predicted to produce a significantly quieter cruise sonic boom than traditional N-wave-producing aircraft. A propagation simulation study was undertaken to quantify loudness levels, exposure size, and variability of the X-59’s low-boom carpet using realistic atmospheric profiles across the contiguous United States of America (CONUS). Near-field pressure data of the X-59 in supersonic cruise from NASA’s fully unstructured Navier–Stokes three-dimensional (known as FUN3D) computational fluid dynamics code were propagated using NASA’s PCBoom code, which solves an enhanced Burgers equation along acoustic rays. Atmospheric profiles from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Forecast System Version 2 database were used for propagation at 138 locations across the CONUS. Carpets at each location were generated for aircraft headings in the four cardinal directions. Over one million X-59 carpets were generated in total. The effects of the heading, season, geography, and climate zone on boom levels and exposure size are presented. Multiple linear regression models were developed to estimate carpet width and loudness metrics across the CONUS. These results inform regulators and mission planners on expected variations in boom levels and carpet extent from atmospheric variations. Understanding potential carpet variability is important when planning community noise surveys using the X-59.

X-59↗