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At least 1,063 records · Page 59

Neutron transport in Eulerian coordinates with bulk material motion

A consistent, numerically stable algorithm for the solution of the neutron transport equation in the presence of a moving material background is presented for one-dimensional spherical geometry. Manufactured solutions are used to demonstrate the correctness and stability of our numerical algorithm. The importance of including moving material corrections is shown for the r-process in proto-neutron stars. (authors)

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Simulations of relativistic quantum plasmas using real-time lattice scalar QED

Real-time lattice quantum electrodynamics (QED) provides a unique tool for simulating plasmas in the strong-field regime, where collective plasma scales are not well separated from relativistic-quantum scales. As a toy model, we study scalar QED, which describes self-consistent interactions between charged bosons and electromagnetic fields. To solve this model on a computer, we first discretize the scalar-QED action on a lattice, in a way that respects geometric structures of exterior calculus and U(1)-gauge symmetry. The lattice scalar QED can then be solved, in the classical-statistics regime, by advancing an ensemble of statistically equivalent initial conditions in time, using classical field equations obtained by extremizing the discrete action. To demonstrate the capability of our numerical scheme, we apply it to two example problems. The first example is the propagation of linear waves, where we recover analytic wave dispersion relations using numerical spectrum. The second example is an intense laser interacting with a one-dimensional plasma slab, where we demonstrate natural transition from wakefield acceleration to pair production when the wave amplitude exceeds the Schwinger threshold. Our real-time lattice scheme is fully explicit and respects local conservation laws, making it reliable for long-time dynamics. The algorithm is readily parallelized using domain decomposition, and the ensemble may also be computed using quantum parallelism in the future.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Divertor heat load estimates on NSTX and DIII-D using new and open-source 2D inversion analysis code

A thermography inversion algorithm has been developed in the open-source Python-based computer code, HYPERION, to calculate the heat flux incident on plasma-facing components (PFCs) in axisymmetric tokamaks. The chosen mesh size at the surface significantly affects the calculated transient heat flux results. The calculated transient heat flux will exceed the real value when the mesh size tends to zero but will underestimate the real value when the mesh size is large. A criterion for determining the appropriate mesh size for the transient heat flux calculation will be discussed. The numerical scheme for HYPERION uses a 2D fully implicit finite-difference approach, allowing temperature-dependent thermal properties of PFC materials. The inversion algorithm is benchmarked against established heat flux calculation codes, TACO and THEODOR, based on thermography data from NSTX and DIII-D respectively. The primary benefits of HYPERION compared to TACO and THEODOR are that it is open-source and it allows for the optimization of mesh thickness along the substrate. The algorithm also accounts for the thermal properties of thin surface layers that characteristically form on PFCs due to plasma-material interactions. The agreement between HYPERION and THEODOR is excellent, as the percent difference between the codes is ~5% on average in the case of the DIII-D data for moderate to high heat flux. Verification tests with TACO show slightly higher average percent differences of 8% and 12%. In using HYPERION to study filaments in heat flux, the initial results indicate that small ELMs filaments significantly broaden the divertor heat flux, and decrease divertor peak flux. Compared to the inter-ELM, the small ELM filaments decrease the divertor peak surface temperature. With intermittent divertor filaments, the divertor heat flux width is comparable with that found in L-mode.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Development of a CPU/GPU portable software library for Lagrangian–Eulerian simulations of liquid sprays

The Lagrangian–Eulerian method is widely used for simulations of fuel sprays in turbulent combustion because of the advantage of treating the spray droplets as discrete points. One challenge of the Lagrangian–Eulerian method is the intense computational requirement when tracking the large number of Lagrangian particles needed for high fidelity. We have developed a performance-portable library, Grit, to track the Lagrangian particles in parallel on central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) accelerated high performance computing (HPC) architectures. Grit is a C++ library which employs Message Passing Interface (MPI) for distributed memory parallelism and Kokkos programming model for on-node shared memory parallelism with performance portability across different architectures of GPUs and multi-core/manycore CPUs. The parallel algorithms, key parallel kernels, and their performances on the pre-exascale supercomputer, Summit, are presented. Grit is coupled with a direct numerical simulation (DNS) solver, S3D, for multiphase simulations. A conservative formulation has been developed and implemented in Grit for phase coupling with thermodynamic consistency. The formulation separates the conservation of mass, momentum and energy from the physical models to prevent accidental violation of conservation laws due to inconsistent models. The formulation also enforces consistent definitions of enthalpies of the fuel for both phases and the latent heat of evaporation. Finally, simulations of turbulent particle-laden flow and the evaporation of dilute turbulent spray jet are performed to verify the software implementation, and to demonstrate the scalability of Grit for large-scale multiphase simulations.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Quantum Monte Carlo Endstation for Petascale Computing

The major achievements enabled by QMC Endstation grant include * Performance improvement on clusters of x86 multi-core systems, especially on Cray XT systems * New and improved methods for the wavefunction optimizations * New forms of trial wavefunctions * Implementation of the full application on NVIDIA GPUs using CUDA The scaling studies of QMCPACK on large-scale systems show excellent parallel efficiency up to 216K cores on Jaguarpf (Cray XT5). The GPU implementation shows speedups of 10-15x over the CPU implementation on older generation of x86. We have implemented hybrid OpenMP/MPI scheme in QMC to take advantage of multi-core shared memory processors of petascale systems. Our hybrid scheme has several advantages over the standard MPI-only scheme. * Memory optimized: large read-only data to store one-body orbitals and other shared properties to represent the trial wave function and many-body Hamiltonian can be shared among threads, which reduces the memory footprint of a large-scale problem. * Cache optimized: the data associated with an active Walker are in cache during the compute-intensive drift-diffusion process and the operations on an Walker are optimized for cache reuse. Thread-local objects are used to ensure the data affinity to a thread. * Load balanced: Walkers in an ensemble are evenly distributed among threads and MPI tasks. The two-level parallelism reduces the population imbalance among MPI tasks and reduces the number of point-to-point communications of large messages (serialized objects) for the Walker exchange. * Communication optimized: the communication overhead, especially for the collective operations necessary to determine ET and measure the properties of an ensemble, is significantly lowered by using less MPI tasks. The multiple forms of parallelism afforded by QMC algorithms make them ideal candidates for acceleration in the many-core paradigm. We presented the results of our effort to port the QMCPACK simulation code to the NVIDIA CUDA GPU platform. We restructured the CPU algorithms to express additional parallelism, minimize GPU-CPU communication, and efficiently utilize the GPU memory hierarchy. Using mixed precision on GT200 GPUs and MPI for intercommunication and load balancing, we observe typical full-application speedups of approximately 10x to 15x relative to quad-core Xeon CPUs alone, while reproducing the double-precision CPU results within statistical error. We developed an all-electron quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) method for solids that does not rely on pseudopotentials, and used it to construct a primary ultra-high-pressure calibration based on the equation of state of cubic boron nitride. We computed the static contribution to the free energy with the QMC method and obtained the phonon contribution from density functional theory, yielding a high-accuracy calibration up to 900 GPa usable directly in experiment. We computed the anharmonic Raman frequency shift with QMC simulations as a function of pressure and temperature, allowing optical pressure calibration. In contrast to present experimental approaches, small systematic errors in the theoretical EOS do not increase with pressure, and no extrapolation is needed. This all-electron method is applicable to first-row solids, providing a new reference for ab initio calculations of solids and benchmarks for pseudopotential accuracy. We compared experimental and theoretical results on the momentum distribution and the quasiparticle renormalization factor in sodium. From an x-ray Compton-profile measurement of the valence-electron momentum density, we derived its discontinuity at the Fermi wavevector finding an accurate measure of the renormalization factor that we compared with quantum-Monte-Carlo and G0W0 calculations performed both on crystalline sodium and on the homogeneous electron gas. Our calculated results are in good agreement with the experiment. We have been studying the heat of formation for various Kubas complexes of molecular hydrogen on Ti(1,2)ethylene-nH2 using Diffusion Monte Carlo. This work has been started and is ongoing. We are studying systems involving 1 and 2 Ti bonding sites with up to 10 hydrogen molecules in numerous configurations. This work will establish a benchmark that will test the accuracy of density functional calculations and establish the feasibility of our methods for similar systems.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Time-stepping DPG formulations for the heat equation

For a wide range of PDEs, the discontinuous Petrov–Galerkin (DPG) methodology of Demkowicz and Gopalakrishnan provides discrete stability starting from a coarse mesh and minimization of the residual in a user-controlled norm, among other appealing features. Research on DPG for transient problems has mainly focused on spacetime discretizations, which has theoretical advantages, but practical costs for computations and software implementations. The sole examination of time-stepping DPG formulations was performed by Führer, Heuer, and Gupta, who applied Rothe’s method to an ultraweak formulation of the heat equation to develop an implicit time-stepping scheme; their work emphasized theoretical results, including error estimates in time and space. Here, we follow Führer, Heuer, and Gupta in examining the heat equation; our focus is on numerical experiments, examining the stability and accuracy of several formulations, including primal as well as ultraweak, and explicit as well as implicit and Crank–Nicolson time-stepping schemes. We are additionally interested in communication-avoiding algorithms, and we therefore include a highly experimental formulation that places all the trace terms on the right-hand side of the equation.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Generalized Multiscale Inversion for Heterogeneous Problems

In this work, we propose a generalized multiscale inversion algorithm for heterogeneous problems that aims at solving an inverse problem on a computational coarse grid. Previous inversion techniques for multiscale problems seek a coarse-grid medium properties, e.g., permeability and conductivity, and by doing so, they assume that there exists a homogenized representation of the underlying fine-scale permeability field on a coarse grid. Generally such assumptions do not hold for highly heterogeneous fields, e.g., fracture media or channelized fields, where the width of channels are very small compared to the scale of coarse grids. In these cases, grid refinement can lead to many degrees of freedom, and thus numerically unattractive to apply. The proposed algorithm is based on the Generalized Multiscale Finite Element Method (GMsFEM), which uses local spectral problems to identify non-localized features, i.e., channels (high-conductivity inclusions that connect the boundaries of the coarse-grid block). The inclusion of these features in the coarse space enables one to achieve a good accuracy. The approach is valid under the assumption that the solution can be well represented in a reduced-dimensional space spanned by multiscale basis functions. In practice, these basis functions are non-observable as we do not identify the fine-scale features of the permeability field. Our inversion algorithm finds the discretization parameters of the resulting system on the coarse grid. By doing so, we identify the appropriate coarse-grid parameters representing the permeability field instead of fine-grid permeability field. We illustrate the potential of the approach by numerical results for fractured media.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

VAN-DAMME: GPU-accelerated and symmetry-assisted quantum optimal control of multi-qubit systems

We present an open-source software package, VAN-DAMME (Versatile Approaches to Numerically Design, Accelerate, and Manipulate Magnetic Excitations), for massively-parallelized quantum optimal control (QOC) calculations of multi-qubit systems. To enable large QOC calculations, the VAN-DAMME software package utilizes symmetry-based techniques with custom GPU-enhanced algorithms. This combined approach allows for the simultaneous computation of hundreds of matrix exponential propagators that efficiently leverage the intra-GPU parallelism found in high-performance GPUs. In addition, to maximize the computational efficiency of the VAN-DAMME code, we carried out several extensive tests on data layout, computational complexity, memory requirements, and performance. These extensive analyses allowed us to develop computationally efficient approaches for evaluating complex-valued matrix exponential propagators based on Padé approximants. To assess the computational performance of our GPU-accelerated VAN-DAMME code, we carried out QOC calculations of systems containing 10 - 15 qubits, which showed that our GPU implementation is 18.4× faster than the corresponding CPU implementation. Our GPU-accelerated enhancements allow efficient calculations of multi-qubit systems, which can be used for the efficient implementation of QOC applications across multiple domains.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Physics-informed machine learning

Despite great progress in simulating multiphysics problems using the numerical discretization of partial differential equations (PDEs), one still cannot seamlessly incorporate noisy data into existing algorithms, mesh generation remains complex, and high-dimensional problems governed by parameterized PDEs cannot be tackled. Moreover, solving inverse problems with hidden physics is often prohibitively expensive and requires different formulations and elaborate computer codes. Machine learning has emerged as a promising alternative, but training deep neural networks requires big data, not always available for scientific problems. Instead, such networks can be trained from additional information obtained by enforcing the physical laws (for example, at random points in the continuous space-time domain). Such physics-informed learning integrates (noisy) data and mathematical models, and implements them through neural networks or other kernel-based regression networks. Moreover, it may be possible to design specialized network architectures that automatically satisfy some of the physical invariants for better accuracy, faster training and improved generalization. Furthermore, we review some of the prevailing trends in embedding physics into machine learning, present some of the current capabilities and limitations and discuss diverse applications of physics-informed learning both for forward and inverse problems, including discovering hidden physics and tackling high-dimensional problems.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Holistic Numerical Calibration of the iMESA Electrostatic Analyzer

A drifted Maxwellian velocity distribution is the most common model used to interpret the data from low-energy charged-particle instruments onboard spacecraft that are used to investigate the ambient plasma environment in the low Earth orbit (LEO). An original method is presented for determining the flow parameters (density, temperature, and flow energy) of such a distribution from the output of the integrated miniaturized electrostatic analyzer, which has been successfully flown on several LEO missions. Rather than attempting to deconvolve from the on-orbit data the analyzer’s response to an ideal, monoenergetic input, numerical simulation is used to predict and parameterize the response of the device to an input distribution that includes an isotropic, non-zero temperature, yielding a straightforward method for extracting the flow parameters from the spacecraft data. The method is computationally simple enough to be incorporated into a robust algorithm suitable for rapid batch processing or real-time analysis of data.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Advanced Combustion Numerics and Modeling - FY18 First Quarter Report

This project is focused on early stage research and development of numerical methods and models to improve advanced engine combustion concepts and systems. The current focus is on development of new mathematics and algorithms to reduce the time to solution for advanced combustion engine design using detailed fuel chemistry. The research is prioritized towards the most time-consuming workflow bottlenecks (computer and human) and accuracy gaps that slow ACS program members. Zero-RK, the fast and accurate chemical kinetics solver software developed in this project, is central to the research efforts and continues to be developed to address the current and emerging needs of the engine designers, engine modelers and fuel mechanism developers.

30 DIRECT ENERGY CONVERSION↗

Advanced Combustion Numerics and Modeling - 18M Progress Report (Mar 2018)

This project is focused on early stage research and development of numerical methods and models to improve advanced engine combustion concepts and systems. The current focus is on development of new mathematics and algorithms to reduce the time to solution for advanced combustion engine design using detailed fuel chemistry. The research is prioritized towards the most time-consuming workflow bottlenecks (computer and human) and accuracy gaps that slow ACS program members. Zero-RK, the fast and accurate chemical kinetics solver software developed in this project, is central to the research efforts and continues to be developed to address the current and emerging needs of the engine designers, engine modelers and fuel mechanism developers.

30 DIRECT ENERGY CONVERSION↗

Multiscale dynamics of reactive fronts in the subsurface

1. Brief summary of progress to date. Major Goals of the Project. Overreaching goals of the proposed activity are to develop an or- ganizing framework to describe nonlinear reactive transport in geologic systems over many length and time scales, and corresponding physics-based adaptive multi-scale hybrid models. We will also provide computational tools for robust uncertainty quantification in hybrid simulations. Major Activities of the Project. The major activities in this reporting period have focused on developing a time-averaging framework for ADR transport (Task 1) and global diagnosis criteria for spatio-temporal algorithm refinement (Task 2), as well as numerical validation and verification of the analytical approaches developed. The main activities are as follows: (a) We use homogenization theory to perform a spatio-temporal upscaling of pore-scale advection- diffusion equation in a periodic porous medium in the presence of fluctuating boundary conditions on some parts of the boundary and nonlinear chemical reaction on the solid-liquid interface and we investigate the constraints under which the macroscopic equation gives an accurate explanation of the underlying physics at the pore scale. We demonstrate that the dynamics at the continuum scale is strongly influenced by the interplay between signal frequency at the boundary and transport processes at the pore level. Furthermore, we show that by choosing appropriate scaling factors, a homogenized equation along with expressions for the effective coefficients reliably describe the concentration of solute at the length and time scales vastly different from physically robust micro-scale provided that some specific scale separation constraints are met. Our analysis proves that if the reaction rate or advection at the micro-scale are large, the effectiveness of the homogenized model is impeded. (b) We test numerically the conditions derived theoretically for advective-diffusive and reactive trans- port in a fracture with planar walls subject to temporally oscillating Dirichlet boundary conditions. The numerical analysis confirms the theoretical predictions. Significant Results. Two paper are in preparation. 2. Description of work yet to be accomplished The Tasks yet to be accomplished are listed below: (a) Quantify the impact of uncertainty in wall geometry of planar fractures on predictions hybrids of ARD transport (b) Develop coupling conditions for time hybridzation (c) Quantify the impact of uncertainty in pore geometry on predictions of hybrids of ARD transport in porous media, i.e. develop stochastic hybrid models (d) Use the hybrids combined with X-Ray tomographic images of pore scale structure (from Dr. Gouze, see letter of collaboration) to model dynamic changes in porosity/permeability

42 ENGINEERING↗

An Extension of the Athena++ Code Framework for Radiation-magnetohydrodynamics in General Relativity Using a Finite-solid-angle Discretization

We extend the general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (GRMHD) capabilities of Athena++ to incorporate radiation. The intensity field in each finite-volume cell is discretized in angle, with explicit transport in both space and angle properly accounting for the effects of gravity on null geodesics, and with matter and radiation coupled in a locally implicit fashion. Here we describe the numerical procedure in detail, verifying its correctness with a suite of tests. Motivated in particular by black hole accretion in the high-accretion-rate, thin-disk regime, we demonstrate the application of the method to this problem. With excellent scaling on flagship computing clusters, the port of the algorithm to the GPU-enabled AthenaK code now allows the simulation of many previously intractable radiation-GRMHD systems.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Numerical experiment of thermal conductivity in two-dimensional Yukawa liquids

A newly improved homogenous nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulation (HNEMDS) method, proposed by the Evans, has been used to compute the thermal conductivity of two-dimensional (2D) strongly coupled complex (dusty) plasma liquids (SCCDPLs), for the first time. The effects of equilibrium external field strength along with different system sizes and plasma states (Γ, κ) on the thermal conductivity of SCCDPLs have been calculated using an enhanced HNEMDS method. A simple analytical temperature representation of Yukawa 2D thermal conductivity with appropriate normalized frequencies (plasma and Einstein) has also been calculated. The new HNEMDS algorithm shows that the present method provides more accurate results with fast convergence and small size effects over a wide range of plasma states. The presented thermal conductivity obtained from HNEMDS method is found to be in very good agreement with that obtained through the previously known numerical simulations and experimental results for 2D Yukawa liquids (SCCDPLs) and with the three-dimensional nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulation (MDS) and equilibrium MDS calculations. It is shown that the HNEMDS algorithm is a powerful tool, making the calculations very efficient and can be used to predict the thermal conductivity in 2D Yukawa liquid systems.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Scalable implementation of polynomial filtering for density functional theory calculation in PARSEC

In this work, we present an efficient implementation of polynomial filtering methods in PARSEC, a real-space pseudopotential based Kohn–Sham density functional theory solver. The implementation described here improves upon a Chebyshev-filtered subspace iteration algorithm used in the previous version of PARSEC. We present a hybrid polynomial filtering scheme that combines Chebyshev-filtered subspace iteration and a spectrum slicing method that partitions the spectrum into several spectral slices and uses bandpass-filtered subspace iteration to compute approximate eigenpairs within each interior slice simultaneously. We describe a procedure to partition a spectrum and construct polynomial filters. We also discuss a number of practical issues such as the use of appropriate data layouts for carrying out the computation on a two-dimensional process grid and how to achieve good load balance by allocating an appropriate number of process groups to each spectral slice. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the hybrid polynomial filtering method as well as the superior parallel scalability of spectrum slicing in comparison to that of Chebyshev-filtered subspace iteration.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

A Geometric Volume of Fluid-Based Multiphase Flow Solver Extension to the Reacting Flow Solver, PeleLM

A new algorithm is presented to simulate multiphase flows with surface tension in a pathway for spray combustion simulation. The algorithm combines capabilities from two open-source packages, including the interface reconstruction library (IRL), a library of computational geometry routines to enable the volume of fluid (VOF) method, and PeleLM, a solver for the reacting Navier-Stokes equations. Additionally, surface tension is implemented using the continuum surface force (CSF) model with an improved height function technique in the volume fraction field. Spurious errors in volume fraction arising from our combined strategy are corrected through a topology-based method that improves both numerical stability and accuracy. Multiple validation simulations are conducted, including (i) translations and rotations of Zalesak's disk, (ii) a stationary circular droplet with surface tension, (iii) an oscillating elliptical droplet, and (iv) three-dimensional deformation of a spherical droplet. Results indicate that the combined scheme retains the favorable properties of each of the component algorithms.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Specular reflection treatment for the 3D radiative transfer equation solved with the discrete ordinates method

The contribution of this paper relies in the development of numerical algorithms for the mathematical treatment of specular reflection on borders when dealing with the numerical solution of radiative transfer problems. The radiative transfer equation being integro-differential, the discrete ordinates method allows to write down a set of semi-discrete equations in which weights are to be calculated. The calculation of these weights is well known to be based on either a quadrature or on angular discretization, making the use of such method straightforward for the state equation. Also, the diffuse contribution of reflection on borders is usually well taken into account. However, the calculation of accurate partition ratio coefficients is much more tricky for the specular condition applied on arbitrary geometrical borders. This paper presents algorithms that calculate analytically partition ratio coefficients needed in numerical treatments. The developed algorithms, combined with a decentered finite element scheme, are validated with the help of comparisons with analytical solutions before being applied on complex geometries.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗