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At least 73 records · Page 4

Pyrolysis Vapor and Bio-Oil Preconditioning via Ex Situ Hydrodeoxygenation and Alkylation Using a Heteropolyacid Catalyst

Ex situ catalytic preconditioning of biomass pyrolysis vapors (partial deoxygenation) has the potential for both reducing the oxygen content and beneficially influencing the oxygen speciation of condense bio-oils for enhancement of downstream condensed phase upgrading processes. Here, condensed phase upgrading processes may refer to both coprocessing and hydroprocessing with vacuum gas-oil (VGO). Reduction of oxygen content to produce bio-oils with greater hydrophobicity can enhance VGO-solubility while tailoring of oxygen speciation by removal of reactive carbonyls (e.g., acetic acid) can lessen catalytic deactivation via coking reactions. 1,2 Furthermore, enhanced VGO-solubility and reduced coking leads to greater biogenic carbon incorporation in end-products from condensed phase upgrading processes. By leveraging the hydrodeoxygenation and alkylation activity of a titania-supported molybdenum-heteropolyacid (Mo-HPA/TiO2) catalyst, pyrolysis vapors and resulting condensed bio-oils were effectively preconditioned for downstream upgrading. 3 Data regarding the use of Mo-HPA/TiO2 for pyrolysis vapor preconditioning will be presented on, including method of employment, catalyst characterization, and impacts on bio-oil in relation to downstream condensed phase upgrading processes. Our approach is to: Compare Mo-HPA/TiO2 product distribution to HZSM-5; Investigate Mo-HPA/TiO2 regeneration and characterize changes in acid site character; Assess product differences in terms of enhanced VGO-solubility.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

Space-Time Block Preconditioning for Incompressible Flow

Parallel-in-time methods have become increasingly popular in the simulation of time-dependent numerical PDEs, allowing for the efficient use of additional message passing interface processes when spatial parallelism saturates. Most methods treat the solution and parallelism in space and time separately. In contrast, all-at-once methods solve the full space-time system directly, largely treating time as simply another spatial dimension. All-at-once methods offer a number of benefits over separate treatment of space and time, most notably significantly increased parallelism and faster time to solution (when applicable). However, the development of fast, scalable all-at-once methods has largely been limited to time-dependent (advection-)diffusion problems. This paper introduces the concept of space-time block preconditioning for the all-at-once solution of incompressible flow. By extending well-known concepts of spatial block preconditioning to the space-time setting, we develop a block preconditioner whose application requires the solution of a space-time (advection-)diffusion equation in the velocity block, coupled with a pressure Schur complement approximation consisting of independent spatial solves at each time-step, and a space-time matrix-vector multiplication. The new method is tested on four classical models in incompressible flow. Finally, the results indicate perfect scalability in refinement of spatial and temporal mesh spacing, perfect scalability in nonlinear Picard iteration count when applied to a nonlinear Navier--Stokes problem, and minimal overhead in terms of number of preconditioner applications compared with sequential time-stepping.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Convergence Analysis of a Locally Accelerated Preconditioned Steepest Descent Method for Hermitian-Definite Generalized Eigenvalue Problems

By extending the classical analysis techniques due to Samokish, Faddeev and Faddeeva, and Longsine and McCormick among others, we prove the convergence of preconditioned steepest descent with implicit deflation (PSD-id) method for solving Hermitian-definite generalized eigenvalue problems. Moreover, we derive a nonasymptotic estimate of the rate of convergence of the PSD-id method. We show that with a proper choice of the shift, the indefinite shift-and-invert preconditioner is a locally accelerated preconditioner, and is asymptotically optimal that leads to superlinear convergence. Numerical examples are presented to verify the theoretical results on the convergence behavior of the PSDid method for solving ill-conditioned Hermitian-definite generalized eigenvalue problems arising from electronic structure calculations. While rigorous and full-scale convergence proofs of preconditioned block steepest descent methods in practical use still largely eludes us, we postulate that the theoretical results introduced in this paper sheds light on an improved understanding of the convergence behavior of these block methods.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

A nonlinearly preconditioned conjugate gradient algorithm for rank‐ R canonical tensor approximation

Summary Alternating least squares (ALS) is often considered the workhorse algorithm for computing the rank‐ R canonical tensor approximation, but for certain problems, its convergence can be very slow. The nonlinear conjugate gradient (NCG) method was recently proposed as an alternative to ALS, but the results indicated that NCG is usually not faster than ALS. To improve the convergence speed of NCG, we consider a nonlinearly preconditioned NCG (PNCG) algorithm for computing the rank‐ R canonical tensor decomposition. Our approach uses ALS as a nonlinear preconditioner in the NCG algorithm. Alternatively, NCG can be viewed as an acceleration process for ALS. We demonstrate numerically that the convergence acceleration mechanism in PNCG often leads to important pay‐offs for difficult tensor decomposition problems, with convergence that is significantly faster and more robust than for the stand‐alone NCG or ALS algorithms. We consider several approaches for incorporating the nonlinear preconditioner into the NCG algorithm that have been described in the literature previously and have met with success in certain application areas. However, it appears that the nonlinearly PNCG approach has received relatively little attention in the broader community and remains underexplored both theoretically and experimentally. Thus, this paper serves several additional functions, by providing in one place a concise overview of several PNCG variants and their properties that have only been described in a few places scattered throughout the literature, by systematically comparing the performance of these PNCG variants for the tensor decomposition problem, and by drawing further attention to the usefulness of nonlinearly PNCG as a general tool. In addition, we briefly discuss the convergence of the PNCG algorithm. In particular, we obtain a new convergence result for one of the PNCG variants under suitable conditions, building on known convergence results for non‐preconditioned NCG. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Sterck, Hans De↗

Performance of preconditioned iterative solvers in MFiX–Trilinos for fluidized beds

MFiX, a general-purpose Fortran-based suite, simulates the complex flow in fluidized bed applications via BiCGStab and GMRES methods along with plane relaxation preconditioners. Trilinos, an object-oriented framework, contains various first- and second-generation Krylov subspace solvers and preconditioners. We developed a framework to integrate MFiX with Trilinos as MFiX does not possess advanced linear methods. The framework allows MFiX to access advanced linear solvers and preconditioners in Trilinos. The integrated solver is called MFiX–Trilinos, here after. In the present work, we study the performance of variants of GMRES and CGS methods in MFiX–Trilinos and BiCGStab and GMRES solvers in MFiX for a 3D gas–solid fluidized bed problem. Two right preconditioners employed along with various solvers in MFiX–Trilinos are Jacobi and smoothed aggregation. The flow from MFiX–Trilinos is validated against the same from MFiX for BiCGStab and GMRES methods. And, the effect of the preconditioning on the iterative solvers in MFiX–Trilinos is also analyzed. In addition, the effect of left and right smoothed aggregation preconditioning on the solvers is studied. Finally, the performance of the first- and second-generation solver stacks in MFiX–Trilinos is studied as well for two different problem sizes.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Preconditioning in the Rhesus Macaque Induces a Proteomic Signature Following Cerebral Ischemia that Is Associated with Neuroprotection

Each year thousands of patients are at risk of cerebral ischemic injury, due to iatrogenic responses to surgical procedures. Prophylactic treatment of these patients as standard care could minimize potential neurological complications. We have shown that protection of brain tissue, in a non-human primate model of cerebral ischemic injury, is possible through pharmacological preconditioning using the immune activator D192935. We postulate that preconditioning with D192935 results in neuroprotective reprogramming that is evident in the brain following experimentally induced cerebral ischemia. We performed quantitative proteomic analysis of cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) collected post-stroke from our previously published efficacy study to determine whether CSF protein profiles correlated with induced protection. Four groups of animals were examined: naïve animals (no treatment or stroke); animals treated with vehicle prior to stroke; D192935 treated and stroked animals, further delineated into two groups, ones that were protected (small infarcts) and those that were not protected (large infarcts). We found that distinct protein clusters defined the protected and non-protected animal groups, with a 16-member cluster of proteins induced exclusively in D192935 protected animals. Seventy percent of the proteins induced in the protected animals have functions that would enhance neuroprotection and tissue repair, including several members associated with M2 macrophages, a macrophage phenotype shown to contribute to neuroprotection and repair during ischemic injury. Overall, these studies highlight the translational importance of CSF biomarkers in defining mechanism and monitoring responses to treatment in development of stroke therapeutics.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Preconditioned steepest descent methods for some nonlinear elliptic equations involving p-Laplacian terms

We describe and analyze preconditioned steepest descent (PSD) solvers for fourth and sixth-order nonlinear elliptic equations that include p-Laplacian terms on periodic domains in 2 and 3 dimensions. The highest and lowest order terms of the equations are constant-coefficient, positive linear operators, which suggests a natural preconditioning strategy. Such nonlinear elliptic equations often arise from time discretization of parabolic equations that model various biological and physical phenomena, in particular, liquid crystals, thin film epitaxial growth and phase transformations. The analyses of the schemes involve the characterization of the strictly convex energies associated with the equations. We first give a general framework for PSD in Hilbert spaces. Based on certain reasonable assumptions of the linear pre-conditioner, a geometric convergence rate is shown for the nonlinear PSD iteration. We then apply the general theory to the fourth and sixth-order problems of interest, making use of Sobolev embedding and regularity results to confirm the appropriateness of our pre-conditioners for the regularized p-Lapacian problems. Our results include a sharper theoretical convergence result for p-Laplacian systems compared to what may be found in existing works. We demonstrate rigorously how to apply the theory in the finite dimensional setting using finite difference discretization methods. Numerical simulations for some important physical application problems – including thin film epitaxy with slope selection and the square phase field crystal model – are carried out to verify the efficiency of the scheme.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Scalable preconditioning for the stabilized contact mechanics problem

We present a family of preconditioning strategies for the contact problem in fractured and faulted porous media. We combine low-order continuous finite elements to simulate the bulk deformation with piecewise constant Lagrange multipliers to impose the frictional contact constraints. This formulation is not uniformly inf-sup stable and requires stabilization. We improve previous work by Franceschini et al. (2020) by introducing a novel jump stabilization technique that requires only local geometrical and mechanical properties. We then design scalable preconditioning strategies that take advantage of the block structure of the Jacobian matrix using a physics-based partitioning of the unknowns by field type, namely displacement and Lagrange multipliers. The key to the success of the proposed preconditioners is a pseudo-Schur complement obtained by eliminating the Lagrange multiplier degrees of freedom, which can then be efficiently solved using an optimal multigrid method. Numerical results, including complex real-world problems, are presented to illustrate theoretical properties, scalability and robustness of the preconditioner. A comparison with other approaches available in the literature is also provided.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Finding Chemical Reaction Paths with a Multilevel Preconditioning Protocol

Finding transition paths for chemical reactions can be computationally costly owing to the level of quantum-chemical theory needed for accuracy. Here, we show that a multilevel preconditioning scheme that was recently introduced (Tempkin et al. J. Chem. Phys. 2014, 140, 184114) can be used to accelerate quantum-chemical string calculations. We demonstrate the method by finding minimum-energy paths for two well-characterized reactions: tautomerization of malonaldehyde and Claissen rearrangement of chorismate to prephanate. For these reactions, we show that preconditioning density functional theory (DFT) with a semiempirical method reduces the computational cost for reaching a converged path that is an optimum under DFT by several fold. In conclusion, the approach also shows promise for free energy calculations when thermal noise can be controlled.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Dimension-free path-integral molecular dynamics without preconditioning

Convergence with respect to imaginary-time discretization (i.e., the number of ring-polymer beads) is an essential part of any path-integral-based molecular dynamics (MD) calculation. However, an unfortunate property of existing non-preconditioned numerical integration schemes for path-integral molecular dynamics—including essentially all existing ring-polymer molecular dynamics (RPMD) and thermostatted RPMD (T-RPMD) methods—is that for a given MD time step, the overlap between the exact ring-polymer Boltzmann–Gibbs distribution and that sampled using MD becomes zero in the infinite-bead limit. This has clear implications for hybrid Metropolis Monte Carlo/MD sampling schemes, and it also causes the divergence with bead number of the primitive path-integral kinetic-energy expectation value when using standard RPMD or T-RPMD. We show that these and other problems can be avoided through the introduction of “dimension-free” numerical integration schemes for which the sampled ring-polymer position distribution has non-zero overlap with the exact distribution in the infinite-bead limit for the case of a harmonic potential. Most notably, we introduce the BCOCB integration scheme, which achieves dimension freedom via a particular symmetric splitting of the integration time step and a novel implementation of the Cayley modification [R. Korol et al., J. Chem. Phys. 151, 124103 (2019)] for the free ring-polymer half-steps. More generally, we show that dimension freedom can be achieved via mollification of the forces from the external physical potential. The dimension-free path-integral numerical integration schemes introduced here yield finite error bounds for a given MD time step, even as the number of beads is taken to infinity; these conclusions are proven for the case of a harmonic potential and borne out numerically for anharmonic systems that include liquid water. The numerical results for BCOCB are particularly striking, allowing for nearly three-fold increases in the stable time step for liquid water with respect to the Bussi–Parrinello (OBABO) and Leimkuhler (BAOAB) integrators, while introducing negligible errors in the calculated statistical properties and absorption spectrum. Importantly, the dimension-free, non-preconditioned integration schemes introduced here preserve ergodicity and global second-order accuracy, and they remain simple, black-box methods that avoid additional computational costs, tunable parameters, or system-specific implementations.

Korol, Roman (ORCID:0000000193076351)↗

Accelerating astronomical and cosmological inference with preconditioned Monte Carlo

ABSTRACT We introduce preconditioned Monte Carlo (PMC), a novel Monte Carlo method for Bayesian inference that facilitates efficient sampling of probability distributions with non-trivial geometry. PMC utilizes a Normalizing Flow (NF) in order to decorrelate the parameters of the distribution and then proceeds by sampling from the preconditioned target distribution using an adaptive Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) scheme. The results produced by PMC include samples from the posterior distribution and an estimate of the model evidence that can be used for parameter inference and model comparison, respectively. The aforementioned framework has been thoroughly tested in a variety of challenging target distributions achieving state-of-the-art sampling performance. In the cases of primordial feature analysis and gravitational wave inference, PMC is approximately 50 and 25 times faster, respectively, than nested sampling (NS). We found that in higher dimensional applications, the acceleration is even greater. Finally, PMC is directly parallelisable, manifesting linear scaling up to thousands of CPUs.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Force field preconditioned ab initio structure relaxation method

We present a general method to accelerate ab initio atomic structural relaxations. In this method, the conjugate gradient ab initio relaxation is preconditioned by a force field relaxation. This force field is constructed on-the-flight with the information of the ab initio forces and the current atomic configuration. At each ab initio relaxation step, the so-constructed force field is used to prerelax the system, with the relaxation direction as the preconditioned direction for the ab initio conjugated gradient method. The force field model and its parameters are rather general making this method applicable for a wide range of systems commonly used in material simulations. We report more than 80 different systems have been tested representing different cases in material simulations. Across the board, we find accelerations mostly over a factor of 2 and for some large systems with a factor of 6 ~ 9 . There is no case where the relaxation becomes worse. The code and lib for this method are provided, which can be used as a plugin in a standard ab initio atomic relaxation code.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

A Generalized Sampling and Preconditioning Scheme for Sparse Approximation of Polynomial Chaos Expansions

We propose an algorithm for recovering sparse orthogonal polynomial expansions via collocation. A standard sampling approach for recovering sparse polynomials uses Monte Carlo sampling, from the density of orthogonality, which results in poor function recovery when the polynomial degree is high. Our proposed approach aims to mitigate this limitation by sampling with respect to the weighted equilibrium measure of the parametric domain and subsequently solves a preconditioned $\ell^1$-minimization problem, where the weights of the diagonal preconditioning matrix are given by evaluations of the Christoffel function. Our algorithm can be applied to a wide class of orthogonal polynomial families on bounded and unbounded domains, including all classical families. We present theoretical analysis to motivate the algorithm and numerical results that show our method is superior to standard Monte Carlo methods in many situations of interest. In conclusion, numerical examples are also provided to demonstrate that our proposed algorithm leads to comparable or improved accuracy even when compared with Legendre- and Hermite-specific algorithms.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

End-to-end GPU acceleration of low-order-refined preconditioning for high-order finite element discretizations

In this article, we present algorithms and implementations for the end-to-end GPU acceleration of matrix-free low-order-refined preconditioning of high-order finite element problems. The methods described here allow for the construction of effective preconditioners for high-order problems with optimal memory usage and computational complexity. The preconditioners are based on the construction of a spectrally equivalent low-order discretization on a refined mesh, which is then amenable to, for example, algebraic multigrid preconditioning. The constants of equivalence are independent of mesh size and polynomial degree. For vector finite element problems in H(curl) and H(div) (e.g., for electromagnetic or radiation diffusion problems), a specially constructed interpolation–histopolation basis is used to ensure fast convergence. Detailed performance studies are carried out to analyze the efficiency of the GPU algorithms. The kernel throughput of each of the main algorithmic components is measured, and the strong and weak parallel scalability of the methods is demonstrated. The different relative weighting and significance of the algorithmic components on GPUs and CPUs is discussed. Results on problems involving adaptively refined nonconforming meshes are shown, and the use of the preconditioners on a large-scale magnetic diffusion problem using all spaces of the finite element de Rham complex is illustrated.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

On the Preconditioning of a Newton-Krylov Solver for a High-Order reconstructed Discontinuous Galerkin Discretization of All-Speed Compressible Flow with Phase Change for Application in Laser-Based Additive Manufacturing

This dissertation focuses on the development of a fully-implicit, high-order compressible ow solver with phase change. The work is motivated by laser-induced phase change applications, particularly by the need to develop large-scale multi-physics simulations of the selective laser melting (SLM) process in metal additive manufacturing (3D printing). Simulations of the SLM process require precise tracking of multi-material solid-liquid-gas interfaces, due to laser-induced melting/ solidi cation and evaporation/condensation of metal powder in an ambient gas. These rapid density variations and phase change processes tightly couple the governing equations, requiring a fully compressible framework to robustly capture the rapid density variations of the ambient gas and the melting/evaporation of the metal powder. For non-isothermal phase change, the velocity is gradually suppressed through the mushy region by a variable viscosity and Darcy source term model. The governing equations are discretized up to 4th-order accuracy with our reconstructed Discontinuous Galerkin spatial discretization scheme and up to 5th-order accuracy with L-stable fully implicit time discretization schemes (BDF2 and ESDIRK3-5). The resulting set of non-linear equations is solved using a robust Newton-Krylov method, with the Jacobian-free version of the GMRES solver for linear iterations. Due to the sti nes associated with the acoustic waves and thermal and viscous/material strength e ects, preconditioning the GMRES solver is essential. A robust and scalable approximate block factorization preconditioner was developed, which utilizes the velocity-pressure (vP) and velocity-temperature (vT) Schur complement systems. This multigrid block reduction preconditioning technique converges for high CFL/Fourier numbers and exhibits excellent parallel and algorithmic scalability on classic benchmark problems in uid dynamics (lid-driven cavity ow and natural convection heat transfer) as well as for laser-induced phase change problems in 2D and 3D.

42 ENGINEERING↗

A preconditioned formulation of the Cauchy-Riemann equations

A preconditioning of the Cauchy-Riemann equations which results in a second-order system is described. This system is shown to have a unique solution if the boundary conditions are chosen carefully. This choice of boundary condition enables the solution of the first-order system to be retrieved. A numerical solution of the preconditioned equations is obtained by the multigrid method.

Phillips, T. N.↗

Preconditioned methods for solving the incompressible and low speed compressible equations

Acceleration methods are presented for solving the steady state incompressible equations. These systems are preconditioned by introducing artificial time derivatives which allow for a faster convergence to the steady state. The compressible equations in conservation form with slow flow are also considered. Two arbitrary functions, alpha and beta, are introduced in the general preconditioning. An analysis of this system is presented and an optimal value for beta is determined given a constant, alpha. It is further shown that the resultant incompressible equations form a symmetric hyperbolic system and so are well posed. Several generalizations to the compressible equations are presented which generalize previous results.

Turkel, E.↗

Preconditioned methods for solving the incompressible and low speed compressible equations

The introduction of artificial time derivatives which permit faster convergence to the steady state is used to precondition steady state incompressible equation-solving acceleration methods. An optimal value is obtained for beta, given constant alpha, where alpha and beta are arbitrary functions in the general preconditioning stage. A symmetric hyperbolic system is formed by the resulting incompressible equations. Compressible equations in conservation form with slow flow are also considered.

Turkel, Eli↗