Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “parallel methods”

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.

At least 1,351 records · Page 75
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2017

Accelerating gravitational microlensing simulations using the Xeon Phi coprocessor

Recently Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) have been used to speed up very CPU-intensive gravitational microlensing simulations. In this work, we use the Xeon Phi coprocessor to accelerate such simulations and compare its performance on a microlensing code with that of NVIDIA's GPUs. For the selected set of parameters evaluated in our experiment, we find that the speedup by Intel's Knights Corner coprocessor is comparable to that by NVIDIA's Fermi family of GPUs with compute capability 2.0, but less significant than GPUs with higher compute capabilities such as the Kepler. However, the very recently released second generation Xeon Phi, Knights Landing, is about 5.8 times faster than the Knights Corner, and about 2.9 times faster than the Kepler GPU used in our simulations. Here, we conclude that the Xeon Phi is a very promising alternative to GPUs for modern high performance microlensing simulations. LESS

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2017

An overlapping Domain Decomposition preconditioning method for monolithic solution of shear bands

Metals subjected to high strain rate impact often exhibit a sudden and profound drop in the material’s load bearing capability, a ductile failure phenomenon known as shear banding. Shear bands, characterized as material instabilities, are driven by shear heating and described as narrow regions that have sustained intense plastic deformation and high temperature rise. This coupled thermo-mechanical localization problem can be formulated as a nonlinear system with two balance equations, momentum and energy, and two constitutive laws for elasticity and plasticity. Here in our formulation, mixed finite elements are used to discretize the equations in space and an implicit finite difference scheme is used to advance the system in time, where at every time step, a Newton type method is used to solve the system monolithically. To that end, a block Jacobian matrix is formed analytically using Gâteaux derivatives. The resulting Jacobian is sparse, nonsymmetric and its sparsity pattern and eigenvalue content vary with the different stages of shear bands formation, consequently posing a significant challenge to iterative solvers. To address this issue, an overlapping Domain Decomposition preconditioner that takes into account the physics of shear bands and the domain in which it forms, is proposed. The key idea is to resolve the shear band domain accurately while only solving the remaining domain approximately, with selective updates when necessary. The preconditioner is formed on the basis of an additive Schwartz method that is applied to a Schur complement partition of the system. The proposed preconditioner is implemented in parallel and tested on three different benchmark problems as compared against off-the-shelf solvers. We study the effect of h- and k-refinement that are obtained from Isogeometric discretizations of the system, the overlapping strategy and its parallel performance. Excellent performance is demonstrated in serial and parallel on all benchmark examples.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2016

Recursive Factorization of the Inverse Overlap Matrix in Linear Scaling Quantum Molecular Dynamics Simulations

We present a reduced complexity algorithm to compute the inverse overlap factors required to solve the generalized eigenvalue problem in a quantum-based molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. Our method is based on the recursive iterative re nement of an initial guess Z of the inverse overlap matrix S. The initial guess of Z is obtained beforehand either by using an approximate divide and conquer technique or dynamically, propagated within an extended Lagrangian dynamics from previous MD time steps. With this formulation, we achieve long-term stability and energy conservation even under incomplete approximate iterative re nement of Z. Linear scaling performance is obtained using numerically thresholded sparse matrix algebra based on the ELLPACK-R sparse matrix data format, which also enables e cient shared memory parallelization. As we show in this article using selfconsistent density functional based tight-binding MD, our approach is faster than conventional methods based on the direct diagonalization of the overlap matrix S for systems as small as a few hundred atoms, substantially accelerating quantum-based simulations even for molecular structures of intermediate size. For a 4,158 atom water-solvated polyalanine system we nd an average speedup factor of 122 for the computation of Z in each MD step.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2016

Adsorption Microcalorimetry of CO 2 in Confined Aminopolymers

Aminopolymers confined within mesoporous supports have shown promise as materials for direct capture of CO 2 from ambient air. In spite of this, relatively little is known about the energetics of CO2 binding in these materials, and the limited calorimetric studies published to date have focused on materials made using molecular aminosilanes rather than amine polymers. In this work, poly(ethylenimine) (PEI) is impregnated within mesoporous SBA-15, and the heats of CO 2 adsorption at 30 °C are investigated using a Tian-Calvet calorimeter with emphasis on the role of PEI loading and CO 2 pressure in the compositional region relevant to direct capture of CO 2 from ambient air. In parallel, CO 2 uptakes of these materials are measured using multiple complementary approaches, including both volumetric and gravimetric methods, and distinct changes in uptake as a function of CO 2 pressure and amine loading are observed. The CO 2 sorption behavior is directly linked to textural data describing the porosity and PEI distribution in the materials.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2015

Radiometric calibration of optical microscopy and microspectroscopy apparata over a broad spectral range using a special thin-film luminescence standard

Application capabilities of optical microscopes and microspectroscopes can be considerably enhanced by a proper calibration of their spectral sensitivity. We propose and demonstrate a method of relative and absolute calibration of a microspectroscope over an extraordinary broad spectral range covered by two (parallel) detection branches in visible and near-infrared spectral regions. The key point of the absolute calibration of a relative spectral sensitivity is application of the standard sample formed by a thin layer of Si nanocrystals with stable and efficient photoluminescence. The spectral PL quantum yield and the PL spatial distribution of the standard sample must be characterized by separate experiments. The absolutely calibrated microspectroscope enables to characterize spectral photon emittance of a studied object or even its luminescence quantum yield (QY) if additional knowledge about spatial distribution of emission and about excitance is available. Capabilities of the calibrated microspectroscope are demonstrated by measuring external QY of electroluminescence from a standard poly-Si solar-cell and of photoluminescence of Er-doped Si nanocrystals.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2023

Quadratic pseudospectrum for identifying localized states

Here we examine the utility of the quadratic pseudospectrum for understanding and detecting states that are somewhat localized in position and energy, in particular, in the context of condensed matter physics. Specifically, the quadratic pseudospectrum represents a method for approaching systems with incompatible observables {A j |1 ≤ j ≤ d} as it minimizes collectively the errors $\parallel$A j v - λ j v$\parallel$ while defining a joint approximate spectrum of incompatible observables. Moreover, we derive an important estimate relating the Clifford and quadratic pseudospectra. Finally, we prove that the quadratic pseudospectrum is local and derive the bounds on the errors that are incurred by truncating the system in the vicinity of where the pseudospectrum is being calculated.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2026

Supercharging simulation-based inference for Bayesian optimal experimental design

Abstract Bayesian optimal experimental design (BOED) seeks to maximize the expected information gain (EIG) of experiments. This requires a likelihood estimate, which in many settings is intractable. Simulation-based inference (SBI) provides powerful tools for this regime. However, existing work explicitly connecting SBI and BOED is restricted to a single contrastive EIG bound. We show that the EIG admits multiple formulations which can directly leverage modern SBI density estimators, encompassing neural posterior, likelihood, and ratio estimation. Building on this perspective, we define a novel EIG estimator using neural likelihood estimation. Further, we identify optimization as a key bottleneck of gradient based EIG maximization and show that a simple multi-start parallel gradient ascent procedure can substantially improve reliability and performance. With these innovations, our SBI-based BOED methods are able to match or outperform by up to 22% existing state-of-the-art approaches across standard BOED benchmarks.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2020

Decentralized Schemes with Overlap for Solving Graph-Structured Optimization Problems

We present a new algorithmic paradigm for the decentralized solution of graph-structured optimization problems that arise in the estimation and control of network systems. A key and novel design concept of the proposed approach is that it uses overlapping subdomains to promote and accelerate convergence. We show that the algorithm converges if the size of the overlap is sufficiently large and that the convergence rate improves exponentially with the size of the overlap. The proposed approach provides a bridge between fully decentralized and centralized architectures and is flexible in that it enables the implementation of asynchronous schemes, handling of constraints, and balancing of computing, communication, and data privacy needs. The proposed scheme is tested in an estimation problem for a 9241-node power network and we show that it outperforms the alternating direction method of multipliers.

asynchronous↗
DOE OSTI2018

HiSpatialCluster: A novel high‐performance software tool for clustering massive spatial points

Abstract In the era of big data, spatial clustering is a very important means for geo‐data analysis. When clustering big geo‐data such as social media check‐in data, geotagged photos, and taxi trajectory points, traditional spatial clustering algorithms are facing more challenges. On the one hand, existing spatial clustering tools cannot support the clustering of massive point sets; on the other hand, there is no perfect solution for self‐adaptive spatial clustering. In order to achieve clustering of millions or even billions of points adaptively, a new spatial clustering tool—HiSpatialCluster—was proposed, in which the CFSFDP (clustering by fast search and finding density peaks) idea to find cluster centers and the DBSCAN (density‐based spatial clustering of applications with noise) idea of density‐connect filtering for classification are introduced. The tool’s source codes and other resources have been released on Github, and experimental evaluation was performed through clustering massive taxi trajectory points and Flickr geotagged photos in Beijing, China. The spatial clustering results were compared with those through K‐means and DBSCAN as well. As a spatial clustering tool, HiSpatialCluster is expected to play a fundamental role in big geo‐data research. First, this tool enables clustering adaptively on massive point datasets with uneven spatial density distribution. Second, the density‐connect filter method is applied to generate homogeneous analysis units from geotagged data. Third, the tool is accelerated by both parallel CPU and GPU computing so that millions or even billions of points can be clustered efficiently.

Chen, Yiran↗
DOE OSTI2014

Development of a 6DOF robotic motion phantom for radiation therapy

Purpose: The use of medical technology capable of tracking patient motion or positioning patients along 6 degree-of-freedom (6DOF) has steadily increased in the field of radiation therapy. However, due to the complex nature of tracking and performing 6DOF motion, it is critical that such technology is properly verified to be operating within specifications in order to ensure patient safety. In this study, a robotic motion phantom is presented that can be programmed to perform highly accurate motion along any X (left–right), Y (superior–inferior), Z (anterior–posterior), pitch (around X), roll (around Y), and yaw (around Z) axes. In addition, highly synchronized motion along all axes can be performed in order to simulate the dynamic motion of a tumor in 6D. The accuracy and reproducibility of this 6D motion were characterized. Methods: An in-house designed and built 6D robotic motion phantom was constructed following the Stewart–Gough parallel kinematics platform archetype. The device was controlled using an inverse kinematics formulation, and precise movements in all 6 degrees-of-freedom (X, Y, Z, pitch, roll, and yaw) were performed, both simultaneously and separately for each degree-of-freedom. Additionally, previously recorded 6D cranial and prostate motions were effectively executed. The robotic phantom movements were verified using a 15 fps 6D infrared marker tracking system and the measured trajectories were compared quantitatively to the intended input trajectories. The workspace, maximum 6D velocity, backlash, and weight load capabilities of the system were also established. Results: Evaluation of the 6D platform demonstrated translational root mean square error (RMSE) values of 0.14, 0.22, and 0.08 mm over 20 mm in X and Y and 10 mm in Z, respectively, and rotational RMSE values of 0.16°, 0.06°, and 0.08° over 10° of pitch, roll, and yaw, respectively. The robotic stage also effectively performed controlled 6D motions, as well as reproduced cranial trajectories over 15 min, with a maximal RMSE of 0.04 mm translationally and 0.04° rotationally, and a prostate trajectory over 2 min, with a maximal RMSE of 0.06 mm translationally and 0.04° rotationally. Conclusions: This 6D robotic phantom has proven to be accurate under clinical standards and capable of reproducing tumor motion in 6D. Such functionality makes the robotic phantom usable for either quality assurance or research purposes.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2015

SU-E-T-275: Dose Build Up and Bolusing Characteristics for Total Body Irradiation Dosimetry

Purpose: Total Body Irradiation (TBI) treatments are mainly used in a preparative regimen for haematopoietic stem cell (or bone marrow) transplantation. Our standard regimen is a 12 Gy / 6 fraction bi-daily technique. To evaluate the delivered dose homogeneity to the patient, EBT3 Gafchromic film is positioned at the head, neck, chest, pelvis and groin for all fractions. This work investigates and quantifies the build-up dose characteristics at TBI distances and requirements for in-vivo dosimetry bolusing. Methods: Percentage dose build up characteristics of photon beams have been investigated at large extended SSD’s using parallel plate ionisations chambers (Attix) and EBT3 Gafchromic film. Measurements were made to open fields at different field sizes as well as large 40cm × 40cm fields with differing scatter conditions such as the introduction of standard Perspex scattering plates at different distances to the measurement point. Results: Percentage surface dose measured values for open fields at 300 cm SSD were found to range from 20 % up to 65.5 % for fields of 5 cm × 5 cm to 40 cm × 40 cm. With the introduction of 1cm Perspex scattering plates used in TBI treatments the surface dose values increased up to 83% to 90%, depending on the position of the Perspex scattering plate compared to the measurement point. Our work showed that at least 3mm water equivalent bolus / scatter material should be placed over the EBT3 for accurate dose assessment for TBI treatments. Conclusion: Build up dose characteristics exist at long (300cm) SSD’s including treatments using Perspex scattering plates placed at various distances form the patient during TBI treatment. Top accurately assess the applied dose during treatment, in-vivo dosimeters such as Gafchromic EBT3 should have at least 3mm bolus / scatter material placed over them to measure actual applied doses.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2016

SU-G-TeP1-12: Random Repainting as Mitigation for Scanned Ion Beam Interplay Effects

Purpose: Interference of dose application in scanned beam particle therapy and organ motion may lead to interplay effects with distorted dose to target volumes. Interplay effects depend on the speed and direction of the scanning beam, leading to fringed field edges (scanning parallel to organ motion direction) or over- and under-dosed regions (both directions are orthogonal). Current repainting methods can mitigate interplay effects, but are susceptible to artefacts when only a limited number of repaints are applied. In this study a random layered-repainting strategy was investigated. Methods: Mono-energetic proton beams were irradiated to a 10 ×10 cm{sup 2} scanned field at a Varian ProBeam facility. Applied dose was measured with a 2D amorphous silicon detector mounted on a motion platform (CIRS dynamic platform). Motion was considered with different cycles, directions and translations up to ±8 mm. Dose distributions were measured for a static case, regular repainting (repeated meander-like path) and random repainting. Latter was realized by randomly distributing single spot locations during irradiation for a given number of repaints. Efficiency of repainting was analyzed by comparison to the static case. A simulation tool based on treatment logs and motion information was developed to compare measurement results to expected dose distributions. Results: Regular repainting could reduce motion artefacts, but dose distortion was strongly dependent on motion direction. Random repainting with same number of repaints (N=4) showed superior results, independent of target movement direction, while introducing slight penalty on delivery times, caused by an increase of overall scanning travel distance. The simulation tool showed good agreement to measured results. Conclusion: The results demonstrate significant improvement in terms of dose conformity when layered repainting is applied in a randomized fashion. This allows for reduced target margins during treatment planning and limited number of repaints. A combination with e.g. respiratory gating is straight-forward. Authors are employees of Varian Medical Systems Particle Therapy GmbH.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Diagnostics of the efficiency of surface plasmon-polariton excitation by quantum dots via polarization measurements of the output radiation

It is demonstrated that the efficiency of surface plasmon-polariton excitation at a metal-semiconductor interface by active quantum dots can be determined from measurements of the polarization characteristics of the output radiation. Experimentally, the proposed diagnostic method is based on finding the ratio of the intensities of the output radiation with polarizations orthogonal and parallel to the nanoheterostructure plane for two different distances between the quantum-dot layer and the metal-semiconductor interface. These data are then used to obtain the unknown parameters in the proposed mathematical model which makes it possible to calculate the rate of surface plasmon-polariton excitation by active quantum dots. As a result, this rate can be determined without complicated expensive equipment for fast time-resolved measurements.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2016

Segmental Refinement: A Multigrid Technique for Data Locality

In this paper, we investigate a domain decomposed multigrid technique, termed segmental refinement, for solving general nonlinear elliptic boundary value problems. We extend the method first proposed in 1994 by analytically and experimentally investigating its complexity. We confirm that communication of traditional parallel multigrid is eliminated on fine grids, with modest amounts of extra work and storage, while maintaining the asymptotic exactness of full multigrid. We observe an accuracy dependence on the segmental refinement subdomain size, which was not considered in the original analysis. Finally, we present a communication complexity analysis that quantifies the communication costs ameliorated by segmental refinement and report performance results with up to 64K cores on a Cray XC30.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2018

PIACE Project v1.0

The PIACE software is an approach to the parallel integration and chromosomal expansion (PIACE) of metabolic pathways, which extends the Chemical-Induced Chromosomal Expansion (CIChE) method. The software has little to no application outside the specific use case of a specific approach to isopentanol production and analysis of specific related data.

Costello, Zachary↗
DOE OSTI2016

iTOUGH2 v7.1

iTOUGH2 (inverse TOUGH2) provides inverse modeling capabilities for TOUGH2, a simulator for multi-dimensional, multi-phase, multi-component, non-isothermal flow and transport in fractured porous media. iTOUGH2 performs sensitivity analyses, data-worth analyses, parameter estimation, and uncertainty propagation analyses in geosciences and reservoir engineering and other application areas. iTOUGH2 supports a number of different combinations of fluids and components (equation-of-state (EOS) modules). In addition, the optimization routines implemented in iTOUGH2 can also be used for sensitivity analysis, automatic model calibration, and uncertainty quantification of any external code that uses text-based input and output files using the PEST protocol. iTOUGH2 solves the inverse problem by minimizing a non-linear objective function of the weighted differences between model output and the corresponding observations. Multiple minimization algorithms (derivative-free, gradient-based, and second-order; local and global) are available. iTOUGH2 also performs Latin Hypercube Monte Carlo simulations for uncertainty propagation analyses. A detailed residual and error analysis is provided. This upgrade includes (a) global sensitivity analysis methods, (b) dynamic memory allocation (c) additional input features and output analyses, (d) increased forward simulation capabilities, (e) parallel execution on multicore PCs and Linux clusters, and (f) bug fixes.

Finsterle, Stefan↗
DOE OSTI2017

HPC Institutional Computing Project: W15_lesreactiveflow KIVA-hpFE Development: A Robust and Accurate Engine Modeling Software

KIVA-hpFE is a high performance computer software for solving the physics of multi-species and multiphase turbulent reactive flow in complex geometries having immersed moving parts. The code is written in Fortran 90/95 and can be used on any computer platform with any popular complier. The code is in two versions, a serial version and a parallel version utilizing MPICH2 type Message Passing Interface (MPI or Intel MPI) for solving distributed domains. The parallel version is at least 30x faster than the serial version and much faster than our previous generation of parallel engine modeling software, by many factors. The 5th generation algorithm construction is a Galerkin type Finite Element Method (FEM) solving conservative momentum, species, and energy transport equations along with two-equation turbulent model k-ω Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) model and a Vreman type dynamic Large Eddy Simulation (LES) method. The LES method is capable modeling transitional flow from laminar to fully turbulent; therefore, this LES method does not require special hybrid or blending to walls. The FEM projection method also uses a Petrov-Galerkin (P-G) stabilization along with pressure stabilization. We employ hierarchical basis sets, constructed on the fly with enrichment in areas associated with relatively larger error as determined by error estimation methods. In addition, when not using the hp-adaptive module, the code employs Lagrangian basis or shape functions. The shape functions are constructed for hexahedral, prismatic and tetrahedral elements. The software is designed to solve many types of reactive flow problems, from burners to internal combustion engines and turbines. In addition, the formulation allows for direct integration of solid bodies (conjugate heat transfer), as in heat transfer through housings, parts, cylinders. It can also easily be extended to stress modeling of solids, used in fluid structure interactions problems, solidification, porous media modeling and magneto hydrodynamics.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2019

Dissipative and fast-timescale phenomena in superconductors

This project explored new effects and regimes that unfold in superconductors as they are pushed to ex treme and unprecedented conditions of electric field, power densities, vortex velocities, etc. Besides their own novelty, these phenomena yield fundamental in formation about the superconducting state and its parameters, as well as its practical limits for techno logical applications. Furthermore some of these ef fects (such as formation of phase slip processes and the acceleration of superfluid) are time dependent on time scales such as quasiparticle-phonon energy re laxation and gap relaxation. This project used fast low-duty-cycle pulsed signals to first of all access these regimes without excessive heating and secondly to observe directly in the time domain the temporal unfolding of these phenomena on nanosecond time scales. This project led to the discovery of new effects in the transport behavior in superconductors, provided new information on fundamental parameters, and helped establish intrinsic strengths and limitations of different superconducting materials for ap plications. The primary tools developed for extending the range of measurable dissipation densities and observation of short time-scale phenomena were fast pulsed-current and pulsed-voltage sources, and fast high-CM-rejection detection circuitry. This allowed conducting measurements at power densities in the 10 10 W/cm 3 range, and at E ~ 1 kV/cm and v Φ ~10 km/s. Also developed was the ability to simultaneously track current I(t) and voltage V (t) and cross correlate them with sub-nanosecond temporal resolution. A recent angle of this project was the exploration of subtle phenomena at low current densities, especially for the magnetic field orientation parallel to the plane of the films. Through modifications of the pulsed tube closed cycle cryostat, we developed methods for attaining low-noise and high temperature-stability conditions. This led to the observation of novel dimensional effects related to the mixed state and vortex matter, and to a new type of magnetoresistance oscillation.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗