Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “Nonlocal diffusion problem”

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.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

42 records · Page 3

Fast response of electron-scale turbulence to auxiliary heating cessation in National Spherical Torus Experiment

In this letter, we report the first observation of the fast response of electron-scale turbulence to auxiliary heating cessation in National Spherical Torus eXperiment [Ono et al., Nucl. Fusion 40, 557 (2000)]. The observation was made in a set of RF-heated L-mode plasmas with toroidal magnetic field of 0.55 T and plasma current of 300 kA. It is observed that electron-scale turbulence spectral power (measured with a high-k collective microwave scattering system) decreases significantly following fast cessation of RF heating that occurs in less than 200 μs. The large drop in the turbulence spectral power has a short time delay of about 1–2 ms relative to the RF cessation and happens on a time scale of 0.5–1 ms, much smaller than the energy confinement time of about 10 ms. Power balance analysis shows a factor of about 2 decrease in electron thermal diffusivity after the sudden drop of turbulence spectral power. Measured small changes in equilibrium profiles across the RF cessation are unlikely able to explain this sudden reduction in the measured turbulence and decrease in electron thermal transport, supported by local linear stability analysis and both local and global nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations. The observations imply that nonlocal flux-driven mechanism may be important for the observed turbulence and electron thermal transport.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Solving Inverse Stochastic Problems from Discrete Particle Observations Using the Fokker--Planck Equation and Physics-Informed Neural Networks

The Fokker--Planck (FP) equation governing the evolution of the probability density function (PDF) is applicable to many disciplines, but it requires specification of the coefficients for each case, which can be functions of space-time and not just constants and hence require the development of a data-driven modeling approach. When the data available is directly on the PDF, there exist methods for inverse problems that can be employed to infer the coefficients and thus determine the FP equation and subsequently obtain its solution. Herein, we address a more realistic scenario, where only sparse data are given on the particles' positions at a few time instants, which are not sufficient to accurately construct directly the PDF even at those times from existing methods, e.g., kernel estimation algorithms. To this end, we develop a general framework based on physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) that introduces a new loss function using the Kullback--Leibler divergence to connect the stochastic samples with the FP equation to simultaneously learn the equation and infer the multidimensional PDF at all times. In particular, we consider two types of inverse problems, type I, where the FP equation is known but the initial PDF is unknown, and type II, in which, in addition to the unknown initial PDF, the drift and diffusion terms are also unknown. In both cases, we investigate problems with either Brownian or Lévy noise or a combination of both. Here, we demonstrate the new PINN framework in detail in the one-dimensional (1D) case, but we also provide results for up to five dimensions demonstrating that we can infer both the FP equation and dynamics simultaneously at all times with high accuracy using only very few discrete observations of the particles.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Slip velocity boundary conditions for the lattice Boltzmann modeling of microchannel flows

Abstract Slip flows in ducts are important in numerous engineering applications, most notably in microchannel flows. Compared to the standard no‐slip Dirichlet condition, the case of slip formulates as a Robin‐type condition for the fluid tangential velocity. Such an increase in mathematical complexity is accompanied by a more challenging numerical transcription. The present work concerns with this topic, addressing the modeling of the slip velocity boundary condition in the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) applied to steady slow viscous flows inside ducts of nontrivial shapes. As novelty, we extend the newly revised local second‐order boundary (LSOB) Dirichlet fluid flow method [ Philos. Trans. R. Soc. A 378, 20190404 (2020)] to implement the slip velocity condition within the two‐relaxation‐time (TRT) framework. The LSOB follows an in‐node philosophy where its operation principle seeks to explicitly reconstruct the unknown boundary populations in the form of a third‐order accurate Chapman–Enskog expansion, where the wall slip condition is built‐in as a normal Taylor‐type condition. The key point of this approach is that the required first‐ and second‐order momentum derivatives, rather than computed through nonlocal finite difference approximations, are locally determined through a simple local linear algebra procedure, whose formulation is particularly aided by the TRT symmetry argument. To express the obtained derivatives, two approaches are considered, called and , which operate with node and wall variables, respectively. These two formulations are developed to prescribe the physical slip condition over plane and curved walls, including the corners. Their consistency and accuracy characteristics are examined against alternative linkwise strategies to impose the wall slip velocity, such as the kinetic‐based diffusive bounce‐back scheme, the central linear interpolation slip scheme, and the multireflection slip scheme. The several slip schemes are tested over different 3D microchannel configurations, with walls not conforming with the LBM uniform mesh. Numerical tests confirm the advanced accuracy characteristics of the proposed LSOB slip boundary scheme, revealing the added challenge of the wall slip modeling, and that parabolic accuracy is a necessary requirement to reach second‐order accuracy within this problem class.

Silva, Goncalo↗

Testing nonlocal models of electron thermal conduction for magnetic and inertial confinement fusion applications

Three models for nonlocal electron thermal transport are here compared against Vlasov-Fokker-Planck (VFP) codes to assess their accuracy in situations relevant to both inertial fusion hohlraums and tokamak scrape-off layers. The models tested are (i) a moment-based approach using an eigenvector integral closure (EIC) originally developed by Ji, Held, and Sovinec [Phys. Plasmas 16, 022312 (2009)]; (ii) the non-Fourier Landau-fluid (NFLF) model of Dimits, Joseph, and Umansky [Phys. Plasmas 21, 055907 (2014)]; and (iii) Schurtz, Nicolaï, and Busquet’s [Phys. Plasmas 7, 4238 (2000)] multigroup diffusion model (SNB). We find that while the EIC and NFLF models accurately predict the damping rate of a small-amplitude temperature perturbation (within 10% at moderate collisionalities), they overestimate the peak heat flow by as much as 35% and do not predict preheat in the more relevant case where there is a large temperature difference. The SNB model, however, agrees better with VFP results for the latter problem if care is taken with the definition of the mean free path. Additionally, we present for the first time a comparison of the SNB model against a VFP code for a hohlraum-relevant problem with inhomogeneous ionisation and show that the model overestimates the heat flow in the helium gas-fill by a factor of ∼2 despite predicting the peak heat flux to within 16%.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Affine Approximation of Parametrized Kernels and Model Order Reduction for Nonlocal and Fractional Laplace Models

In this work, we consider parametrized problems driven by spatially nonlocal integral operators with parameter-dependent kernels. In particular, kernels with varying nonlocal interaction radius $\delta > 0$ and fractional Laplace kernels, parametrized by the fractional power $s\in(0,1)$, are studied. Furthermore, in order to provide an efficient and reliable approximation of the solution for different values of the parameters, we develop the reduced basis method as a parametric model order reduction approach. Major difficulties arise since the kernels are not affine in the parameters, singular, and discontinuous. Moreover, the spatial regularity of the solutions depends on the varying fractional power $s$. To address this, we derive regularity and differentiability results with respect to $\delta$ and $s$, which are of independent interest for other applications such as optimization and parameter identification. We then use these results to construct affine approximations of the kernels by local polynomials. Finally, we certify the method by providing reliable a posteriori error estimators, which account for all approximation errors, and support the theoretical findings by numerical experiments.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

An end-to-end deep learning method for solving nonlocal Allen–Cahn and Cahn–Hilliard phase-field models

Here, we propose an efficient end-to-end deep learning method for solving nonlocal Allen–Cahn (AC) and Cahn–Hilliard (CH) phase-field models. One motivation for this effort emanates from the fact that discretized partial differential equation-based AC or CH phase-field models result in diffuse interfaces between phases, with the only recourse for remediation is to severely refine the spatial grids in the vicinity of the true moving sharp interface whose width is determined by a grid-independent parameter that is substantially larger than the local grid size. In this work, we introduce non-mass conserving nonlocal AC or CH phase-field models with regular, logarithmic, or obstacle double-well potentials. Because of non-locality, some of these models feature totally sharp interfaces separating phases. The discretization of such models can lead to a transition between phases whose width is only a single grid cell wide. Another motivation is to use deep learning approaches to ameliorate the otherwise high cost of solving discretized nonlocal phase-field models. To this end, loss functions of the customized neural networks are defined using the residual of the fully discrete approximations of the AC or CH models, which results from applying a Fourier collocation method and a temporal semi-implicit approximation. To address the long-range interactions in the models, we tailor the architecture of the neural network by incorporating a nonlocal kernel as an input channel to the neural network model. We then provide the results of extensive computational experiments to illustrate the accuracy, predictive capabilities, and cost reductions of the proposed method.

42 ENGINEERING↗