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WTEC Panel Report on International Assessment of Research and Development in Simulation-Based Engineering and Science

This WTEC panel report assesses the international research and development activities in the field of Simulation- Based Engineering and Science (SBE&S). SBE&S involves the use of computer modeling and simulation to solve mathematical formulations of physical models of engineered and natural systems. SBE&S today has reached a level of predictive capability that it now firmly complements the traditional pillars of theory and experimentation/observation. As a result, computer simulation is more pervasive today – and having more impact – than at any other time in human history. Many critical technologies, including those to develop new energy sources and to shift the cost-benefit factors in healthcare, are on the horizon that cannot be understood, developed, or utilized without simulation. A panel of experts reviewed and assessed the state of the art in SBE&S as well as levels of activity overseas in the broad thematic areas of life sciences and medicine, materials, and energy and sustainability; and in the crosscutting issues of next generation hardware and algorithms; software development; engineering simulations; validation, verification, and uncertainty quantification; multiscale modeling and simulation; and SBE&S education. The panel hosted a U.S. baseline workshop, conducted a bibliometric analysis, consulted numerous experts and reports, and visited 59 institutions and companies throughout East Asia and Western Europe to explore the active research projects in those institutions, the computational infrastructure used for the projects, the funding schemes that enable the research, the collaborative interactions among universities, national laboratories, and corporate research centers, and workforce needs and development for SBE&S.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

High-Performance Computation of Distributed-Memory Parallel 3D Voronoi and Delaunay Tessellation

Computing a Voronoi or Delaunay tessellation from a set of points is a core part of the analysis of many simulated and measured datasets: N-body simulations, molecular dynamics codes, and LIDAR point clouds are just a few examples. Such computational geometry methods are common in data analysis and visualization; but as the scale of simulations and observations surpasses billions of particles, the existing serial and shared-memory algorithms no longer suffice. A distributed-memory scalable parallel algorithm is the only feasible approach. The primary contribution of this paper is a new parallel Delaunay and Voronoi tessellation algorithm that automatically determines which neighbor points need to be exchanged among the subdomains of a spatial decomposition. Other contributions include periodic and wall boundary conditions, comparison of our method using two popular serial libraries, and application to numerous science datasets.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Conservative explicit local time-stepping schemes for the shallow water equations

Here we develop explicit local time-stepping (LTS) schemes with second and third order accuracy for the shallow water equations. The system is discretized in space by a C-grid staggering method, namely the TRiSK scheme adopted in MPAS-Ocean, a global ocean model with the capability of resolving multiple resolutions within a single simulation. The time integration is designed based on the strong stability preserving Runge–Kutta (SSP-RK) methods, but different time step sizes can be used in different regions of the domain through the coupling of coarse-fine time discretizations on the interface, and are only restricted by respective local CFL conditions. The proposed LTS schemes are of predictor–corrector type in which the predictors are constructed based on Taylor series expansions and SSP-RK stepping algorithms. The schemes preserve some important physical quantities in the discrete sense, such as exact conservation of the mass and potential vorticity and conservation of the total energy within time truncation errors. Moreover, they inherit the natural parallelism of the original explicit global time-stepping schemes. Extensive numerical tests are presented to illustrate the performance of the proposed algorithms.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

A Christoffel function weighted least squares algorithm for collocation approximations

Here, we propose, theoretically investigate, and numerically validate an algorithm for the Monte Carlo solution of least-squares polynomial approximation problems in a collocation framework. Our investigation is motivated by applications in the collocation approximation of parametric functions, which frequently entails construction of surrogates via orthogonal polynomials. A standard Monte Carlo approach would draw samples according to the density defining the orthogonal polynomial family. Our proposed algorithm instead samples with respect to the (weighted) pluripotential equilibrium measure of the domain, and subsequently solves a weighted least-squares problem, with weights given by evaluations of the Christoffel function. 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.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

iVPIC: A low-­dispersion, energy-­conserving relativistic PIC solver for LPI simulations

We have developed a novel low-­dispersion, exactly energy-­conserving PIC algorithm for the relativistic Vlasov-­Maxwell system. The approach features an exact energy conservation theorem while preserving the favorable performance and numerical dispersion properties of explicit PIC. The new algorithm has the potential to enable much longer laser-­plasma-­interaction (LPI) simulations than are currently possible.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Hybrid stochastic simulation of reaction-diffusion systems with slow and fast dynamics

In this paper, we present a novel hybrid method to simulate discrete stochastic reaction-diffusion models arising in biochemical signaling pathways. We study moderately stiff systems, for which we can partition each reaction or diffusion channel into either a slow or fast subset, based on its propensity. Numerical approaches missing this distinction are often limited with respect to computational run time or approximation quality. We design an approximate scheme that remedies these pitfalls by using a new blending strategy of the well-established inhomogeneous stochastic simulation algorithm and the tau-leaping simulation method. The advantages of our hybrid simulation algorithm are demonstrated on three benchmarking systems, with special focus on approximation accuracy and efficiency.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Potts-model critical manifolds revisited

We compute the critical polynomials for the q-state Potts model on all Archimedean lattices, using a parallel implementation of the algorithm of Ref. [1] that gives us access to larger sizes than previously possible. The exact polynomials are computed for bases of size 6 6 unit cells, and the root in the temperature variable v = e K -1 is determined numerically at q = 1 for bases of size 8 8. This leads to improved results for bond percolation thresholds, and for the Potts-model critical manifolds in the real (q; v) plane. In the two most favourable cases, we find now the kagome-lattice threshold to eleven digits and that of the (3; 12 2 ) lattice to thirteen. Our critical manifolds reveal many interesting features in the antiferromagnetic region of the Potts model, and determine accurately the extent of the Berker-Kadano phase for the lattices studied.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Effects of refractive index mismatch in optical CT imaging of polymer gel dosimeters

Purpose: Proposing an image reconstruction technique, algebraic reconstruction technique-refraction correction (ART-rc). The proposed method takes care of refractive index mismatches present in gel dosimeter scanner at the boundary, and also corrects for the interior ray refraction. Polymer gel dosimeters with high dose regions have higher refractive index and optical density compared to the background medium, these changes in refractive index at high dose results in interior ray bending. Methods: The inclusion of the effects of refraction is an important step in reconstruction of optical density in gel dosimeters. The proposed ray tracing algorithm models the interior multiple refraction at the inhomogeneities. Jacob’s ray tracing algorithm has been modified to calculate the pathlengths of the ray that traverses through the higher dose regions. The algorithm computes the length of the ray in each pixel along its path and is used as the weight matrix. Algebraic reconstruction technique and pixel based reconstruction algorithms are used for solving the reconstruction problem. The proposed method is tested with numerical phantoms for various noise levels. The experimental dosimetric results are also presented. Results: The results show that the proposed scheme ART-rc is able to reconstruct optical density inside the dosimeter better than the results obtained using filtered backprojection and conventional algebraic reconstruction approaches. The quantitative improvement using ART-rc is evaluated using gamma-index. The refraction errors due to regions of different refractive indices are discussed. The effects of modeling of interior refraction in the dose region are presented. Conclusions: The errors propagated due to multiple refraction effects have been modeled and the improvements in reconstruction using proposed model is presented. The refractive index of the dosimeter has a mismatch with the surrounding medium (for dry air or water scanning). The algorithm reconstructs the dose profiles by estimating refractive indices of multiple inhomogeneities having different refractive indices and optical densities embedded in the dosimeter. This is achieved by tracking the path of the ray that traverses through the dosimeter. Extensive simulation studies have been carried out and results are found to be matching that of experimental results.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Representations of Materials for Machine Learning

High-throughput data generation methods and machine learning (ML) algorithms have given rise to a new era of computational materials science by learning the relations between composition, structure, and properties and by exploiting such relations for design. However, to build these connections, materials data must be translated into a numerical form, called a representation, that can be processed by an ML model. Data sets in materials science vary in format (ranging from images to spectra), size, and fidelity. Predictive models vary in scope and properties of interest. Here, we review context-dependent strategies for constructing representations that enable the use of materials as inputs or outputs for ML models. Furthermore, we discuss how modern ML techniques can learn representations from data and transfer chemical and physical information between tasks. Finally, we outline high-impact questions that have not been fully resolved and thus require further investigation.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Three-Dimensional Modeling of Fracture Clusters in Geothermal Reservoirs

The objective of this is to develop a 3-D numerical model for simulating mode I, II, and III (tensile, shear, and out-of-plane) propagation of multiple fractures and fracture clusters to accurately predict geothermal reservoir stimulation using the virtual multi-dimensional internal bond (VMIB). Effective development of enhanced geothermal systems can significantly benefit from improved modeling of hydraulic fracturing. In geothermal reservoirs, where the temperature can reach or exceed 350oC, thermal and poro-mechanical processes play an important role in fracture initiation and propagation. In this project hydraulic fracturing of hot subsurface rock mass will be numerically modeled by extending the virtual multiple internal bond theory and implementing it in a finite element code, WARP3D, a three-dimensional finite element code for solid mechanics. The new constitutive model along with the poro-thermoelastic computational algorithms will allow modeling the initiation and propagation of clusters of fractures, and extension of pre-existing fractures. The work will enable the industry to realistically model stimulation of geothermal reservoirs. The project addresses the Geothermal Technologies Office objective of accurately predicting geothermal reservoir stimulation (GTO technology priority item). The project goal will be attained by: (i) development of the VMIB method for application to 3D analysis of fracture clusters; (ii) development of poro- and thermoelastic material sub-routines for use in 3D finite element code WARP3D; (iii) implementation of VMIB and the new material routines in WARP3D to enable simulation of clusters of fractures while accounting for the effects of the pore pressure, thermal stress and inelastic deformation; (iv) simulation of 3D fracture propagation and coalescence and formation of clusters, and comparison with laboratory compression tests; and (v) application of the model to interpretation of injection experiments (planned by our industrial partner) with reference to the impact of the variations in injection rate and temperature, rock properties, and in-situ stress.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗

Performance of the Community Earth System Model

The Community Earth System Model (CESM), released in June 2010, incorporates new physical process and new numerical algorithm options, significantly enhancing simulation capabilities over its predecessor, the June 2004 release of the Community Climate System Model. CESM also includes enhanced performance tuning options and performance portability capabilities. This paper describes the performance engineering aspects of the CESM and reports performance and performance scaling on both the Cray XT5 and the IBM BG/P for four representative production simulations, varying both problem size and enabled physical processes. The paper also describes preliminary performance results for high resolution simulations using over 200,000 processor cores, indicating the promise of ongoing work in numerical algorithms and where further work is required.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

GPU Accelerated Event Detection Algorithm

Smart grid external require new algorithmic approaches as well as parallel formulations. One of the critical components is the prediction of changes and detection of anomalies within the power grid. The state-of-the-art algorithms are not suited to handle the demands of streaming data analysis. (i) need for events detection algorithms that can scale with the size of data, (ii) need for algorithms that can not only handle multi dimensional nature of the data, but also model both spatial and temporal dependencies in the data, which, for the most part, are highly nonlinear, (iii) need for algorithms that can operate in an online fashion with streaming data. The GAEDA code is a new online anomaly detection techniques that take into account spatial, temporal, multi-dimensional aspects of the data set. The basic idea behind the proposed approach is to (a) to convert a multi-dimensional sequence into a univariate time series that captures the changes between successive windows extracted from the original sequence using singular value decomposition (SVD), and then (b) to apply known anomaly detection techniques for univariate time series. A key challenge for the proposed approach is to make the algorithm scalable to huge datasets by adopting techniques from perturbation theory, incremental SVD analysis. We used recent advances in tensor decomposition techniques which reduce computational complexity to monitor the change between successive windows and detect anomalies in the same manner as described above. Therefore we propose to develop the parallel solutions on many core systems such as GPUs, because these algorithms involve lot of numerical operations and are highly data-parallelizable.

Source record↗

Computation of neutron fluxes in clusters of fuel pins arranged in hexagonal assemblies (2D and 3D)

For computations of fluxes, we have used Carvik's method of collision probabilities. This method requires tracking algorithms. An algorithm to compute tracks (in 2D and 3D) has been developed for seven hexagonal geometries with cluster of fuel pins. This has been implemented in the NXT module of the code DRAGON. The flux distribution in cluster of pins has been computed by using this code. For testing the results, they are compared when possible with the EXCELT module of the code DRAGON. Tracks are plotted in the NXT module by using MATLAB, these plots are also presented here. Results are presented with increasing number of lines to show the convergence of these results. We have numerically computed volumes, surface areas and the percentage errors in these computations. These results show that 2D results converge faster than 3D results. The accuracy on the computation of fluxes up to second decimal is achieved with fewer lines. (authors)

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

A hybrid method for hydrodynamic-kinetic flow Part I: A particle-grid method for reducing stochastic noise in kinetic regimes

In this work we present a hybrid particle-grid Monte Carlo method for the Boltzmann equation, which is characterized by a significant reduction of the stochastic noise in the kinetic regime. The hybrid method is based on a first order splitting in time to separate the transport from the relaxation step. The transport step is solved by a deterministic scheme, while a hybrid DSMC-based method is used to solve the collision step. Such a hybrid scheme is based on splitting the solution in a collisional and a non-collisional part at the beginning of the collision step, and the DSMC method is used to solve the relaxation step for the collisional part of the solution only. This is accomplished by sampling only the fraction of particles candidate for collisions from the collisional part of the solution, performing collisions as in a standard DSMC method, and then projecting the particles back onto a velocity grid to compute a piecewise constant reconstruction for the collisional part of the solution. The latter is added to a piecewise constant reconstruction of the non-collisional part of the solution, which in fact remains unchanged during the relaxation step. Numerical results show that the stochastic noise is significantly reduced at large Knudsen numbers with respect to the standard DSMC method. Indeed in this algorithm, the particle scheme is applied only on the collisional part of the solution, so only this fraction of the solution is affected by stochastic fluctuations. But since the collisional part of the solution reduces as the Knudsen number increases, stochastic noise reduces as well at large Knudsen numbers.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Analytical estimation of emission zone mean position and width in organic light-emitting diodes from emission pattern image-source interference fringes

We present an analytical method for evaluating the first and second moments of the effective exciton spatial distribution in organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) from measured emission patterns. Specifically, the suggested algorithm estimates the emission zone mean position and width, respectively, from two distinct features of the pattern produced by interference between the emission sources and their images (induced by the reflective cathode): the angles in which interference extrema are observed, and the prominence of interference fringes. The relations between these parameters are derived rigorously for a general OLED structure, indicating that extrema angles are related to the mean position of the radiating excitons via Bragg's condition, and the spatial broadening is related to the attenuation of the image-source interference prominence due to an averaging effect. The method is applied successfully both on simulated emission patterns and on experimental data, exhibiting a very good agreement with the results obtained by numerical techniques. We investigate the method performance in detail, showing that it is capable of producing accurate estimations for a wide range of source-cathode separation distances, provided that the measured spectral interval is large enough; guidelines for achieving reliable evaluations are deduced from these results as well. As opposed to numerical fitting tools employed to perform similar tasks to date, our approximate method explicitly utilizes physical intuition and requires far less computational effort (no fitting is involved). Hence, applications that do not require highly resolved estimations, e.g., preliminary design and production-line verification, can benefit substantially from the analytical algorithm, when applicable. This introduces a novel set of efficient tools for OLED engineering, highly important in the view of the crucial role the exciton distribution plays in determining the device performance.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Understanding the Effects of Tapering on Gaussian Process Regression

Gaussian process regression is a computationally expensive machine learning algorithm that requires the solution of a system of linear equations with a dense covariance matrix. We propose a modification that uses tapering to introduce sparsity into the covariance matrix followed by matrix reordering schemes to reduce the bandwidth of the sparse matrix. We also apply iterative refinement to our approximate solution in order to recover some of the accuracy lost to tapering. Our numerical tests showed that this modification works best with datasets that have many small values in the covariance matrix. This restricts the usefulness of the modification, so other techniques to reduce computational time may be worth considering in the future.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Second order multidimensional sign-preserving remapping for ALE methods

A second-order conservative sign-preserving remapping scheme for Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) methods is developed utilising concepts of the Multidimensional Positive Definite Advection Transport Algorithm (MPDATA). The algorithm is inherently multidimensional, and so does not introduce splitting errors. The remapping is implemented in a two-dimensional, finite element ALE solver employing staggered quadrilateral meshes. The MPDATA remapping uses a finite volume discretization developed for volume coordinates. It is applied for the remapping of density and internal energy arranged as cell centered, and velocity as nodal, dependent variables. In the paper, the advection of scalar fields is examined first for test cases with prescribed mesh movement. A direct comparison of MPDATA with the performance of the van Leer MUSCL scheme indicates advantages of a multidimensional approach. Furthermore, distinctly different performance between basic MPDATA and the infinite gauge option is illustrated using benchmarks involving transport of a sign changing velocity field. Further development extends the application of MPDATA remapping to the full ALE solver with a staggered mesh arrangement for density, internal energy and momentum using volume coordinates. At present, two options of the algorithm - basic and infinite gauge - are implemented. To ensure a meaningful assessment, an identical Lagrangian solver and computational mesh update routines are used with either MPDATA or van Leer MUSCL remapping. The evaluation places particular focus on the abilities of both schemes to accurately model multidimensional problems. Theoretical considerations are supported with numerical examples. In addition to the prescribed mesh movement cases for advection of scalars, the demonstrations include two-dimensional Eulerian and ALE flow simulations on quadrilateral meshes with both fixed and variable timestep control. The key comparisons include the standard test cases of Sod and Noh for single material problems. The results demonstrate that the MPDATA gauge option is suitable for providing accurate ALE remapping and preserves the multidimensionality and sign of both scalar and vector fields.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Hybrid quantum simulations with qubits and qumodes on trapped-ion platforms

We explore the feasibility of gate-based hybrid quantum computing using both discrete (qubit) and continuous (qumode) variables on trapped-ion platforms. Trapped-ion systems have demonstrated record one- and two-qubit gate fidelities and long qubit coherence times, while qumodes, which can be represented by the collective vibrational modes of the ion chain, have remained relatively unex- plored for their use in computing. Using numerical simulations, we show that high-fidelity hybrid gates and measurement operations can be achieved for existing trapped-ion quantum platforms. As an exemplary application, we consider quantum simulations of the Jaynes-Cummings-Hubbard model, which is given by a one-dimensional chain of interacting spin and boson degrees of free- dom. Using classical simulations, we study its real-time evolution and develop a suitable variational quantum algorithm for ground state preparation. Furthermore, our results motivate further studies of hybrid quantum computing in this context, which may lead to direct applications in condensed matter and fundamental particle and nuclear physics.

Lower-dimensional field theories↗