Perspectives on dependable computing for solar system exploration
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A numerical method to solve the inverse problem for airfoil cascades is described. The case of compressible, inviscid flow is considered. The proposed method is based on the finite difference approximation of the time-dependent Euler equations. Numerical examples show the capability of the method to design subsonic or transonic shockless blades.
The research performed at the Center for Reactive Flow and Dynamical Systems in the Laboratory for Computational Physics and Fluid Dynamics, at the Naval Research Laboratory, in support of the NASA Microgravity Science and Applications Program is described. The primary focus was on investigating fundamental questions concerning the propagation and extinction of premixed flames in Earth gravity and in microgravity environments. The approach was to use detailed time-dependent, multispecies, numerical models as tools to simulate flames in different gravity environments. The models include a detailed chemical kinetics mechanism consisting of elementary reactions among the eight reactive species involved in hydrogen combustion, coupled to algorithms for convection, thermal conduction, viscosity, molecular and thermal diffusion, and external forces. The external force, gravity, can be put in any direction relative to flame propagation and can have a range of values. A combination of one-dimensional and two-dimensional simulations was used to investigate the effects of curvature and dilution on ignition and propagation of flames, to help resolve fundamental questions on the existence of flammability limits when there are no external losses or buoyancy forces in the system, to understand the mechanism leading to cellular instability, and to study the effects of gravity on the transition to cellular structure. A flame in a microgravity environment can be extinguished without external losses, and the mechanism leading to cellular structure is not preferential diffusion but a thermo-diffusive instability. The simulations have also lead to a better understanding of the interactions between buoyancy forces and the processes leading to thermo-diffusive instability.
This report describes the research performed at the Center for Reactive Flow and Dynamical Systems in the Laboratory for Computational Physics and Fluid Dynamics, at the Naval Research Laboratory, in support of NASA Microgravity Science and Applications Program. The primary focus of this research is on investigating fundamental questions concerning the propagation and extinction of premixed flames in earth gravity and in microgravity environments. Our approach is to use detailed time-dependent, multispecies, numerical models as tools to simulate flames in different gravity environments. The models include a detailed chemical kinetics mechanism consisting of elementary reactions among the eight reactive species involved in hydrogen combustion, coupled to algorithms for convection, thermal conduction, viscosity, molecular and thermal diffusion, and external forces. The external force, gravity, can be put in any direction relative to flame propagation and can have a range of values. Recently more advanced wall boundary conditions such as isothermal and no-slip have been added to the model. This enables the simulation of flames propagating in more practical systems than before. We have used the numerical simulations to investigate the effects of heat losses and buoyancy forces on the structure and stability of flames, to help resolve fundamental questions on the existence of flammability limits when there are no external losses or buoyancy forces in the system, to understand the interaction between the various processes leading to flame instabilities and extinguishment, and to study the dynamics of cell formation and splitting. Our studies have been able to bring out the differences between upward- and downward-propagating flames and predict the zero-gravity behavior of these flames. The simulations have also highlighted the dominant role of wall heat losses in the case of downward-propagating flames. The simulations have been able to qualitatively predict the formation of multiple cells and the cessation of cell-splitting. Our studies have also shown that some flames in a microgravity environment can be extinguished due to a chemical instability and without any external losses. However, further simulations are needed to more completely understand upward-propagating and zero-gravity flames as well as to understand the potential effect of radiative heat losses.
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The three-dimensional, primitive equations of motion are solved numerically for the case of isotropic box turbulence and the distortion of homogeneous turbulence by irrotational plane strain at large Reynolds numbers. A Gaussian filter is applied to governing equations to define the large scale field. This gives rise to additional second order computed scale stresses (Leonard stresses). The residual stresses are simulated through an eddy viscosity. Uniform grids are used, with a fourth order differencing scheme in space and a second order Adams-Bashforth predictor for explicit time stepping. The results are compared to the experiments and statistical information extracted from the computer generated data.
A viscoelastic model for deformation and stress associated with earthquakes is reported. The model consists of a rectangular dislocation (strike slip fault) in a viscoelastic layer (lithosphere) lying over a viscoelastic half space (asthenosphere). The time dependent surface stresses are analyzed. The model predicts that near the fault a significant fraction of the stress that was reduced during the earthquake is recovered by viscoelastic softening of the lithosphere. By contrast, the strain shows very little change near the fault. The model also predicts that the stress changes associated with asthenospheric flow extend over a broader region than those associated with lithospheric relaxation even though the peak value is less. The dependence of the displacements, stresses on fault parameters studied. Peak values of strain and stress drop increase with increasing fault height and decrease with fault depth. Under many circumstances postseismic strains and stresses show an increase with decreasing depth to the lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary. Values of the strain and stress at distant points from the fault increase with fault area but are relatively insensitive to fault depth.
The paper derives the 'reduced' system of equations commonly used to describe the time evolution of the polar wind and multiconstituent stellar winds from the equations for a multispecies plasma with known temperature profiles by assuming that the electron thermal speed approaches infinity. The reduced system is proved to have unbounded growth near the sonic point of the protons for many of the standard parameter cases. For the same parameter cases, the unmodified system exhibits growth in some of the Fourier modes, but this growth is bounded. An alternate system (the 'approximate' system) in which the electron thermal speed is slowed down is introduced. The approximate system retains the mathematical behavior of the unmodified system and can be shown to accurately describe the smooth solutions of the unmodified system. Other advantages of the approximate system over the reduced system are discussed.
The goal of this work is to add insight about the flow within expansion tubes by using computational fluid dynamics. This is accomplished by comparing the results of axisymmetric numerical simulations with finite-rate chemistry to data from the HYPULSE expansion tube facility which was previously the NASA Langley expansion tube. The numerical simulations begin at the opening of the primary diaphragm and compute the flow throughout the whole facility and, thus, are able to follow and assess the effect of many of the flow features created during operation of the facility. One particular issue that will be investigated is the effect of boundary layer formation in the acceleration tube on the test gas volume and test gas conditions. Both laminar and turbulent boundary layers will be implemented. The effect of momentary shock reflection off the secondary diaphragm will also be investigated. There is concern that such a reflection will stagnate the test gas and create high levels of dissociated molecules. This is particularly important in propulsion experiments where a freestream composition different from flight conditions may influence ignition and burning data. Several different models of diaphragm rupture will be implemented in order to help understand the importance of this issue.
Transverse momentum dependent parton distributions (TMDPDFs) which appear in factorized cross sections involve infinite Wilson lines with edges on or close to the light-cone. Since these TMDPDFs are not directly calculable with a Euclidean path integral in lattice QCD, we study the construction of quasi-TMDPDFs with finite-length spacelike Wilson lines that are amenable to such calculations. We define an infrared consistency test to determine which quasi-TMDPDF definitions are related to the TMDPDF, by carrying out a one-loop study of infrared logarithms of transverse position b T ~Λ QCD -1 , which must agree between them. This agreement is a necessary condition for the two quantities to be related by perturbative matching. TMDPDFs necessarily involve combining a hadron matrix element, which nominally depends on a single light-cone direction, with soft matrix elements that necessarily depend on two light-cone directions. We show at one loop that the simplest definitions of the quasi hadron matrix element, the quasi soft matrix element, and the resulting quasi-TMDPDF all fail the infrared consistency test. Ratios of impact parameter quasi-TMDPDFs still provide nontrivial information about the TMD-PDFs, and are more robust since the soft matrix elements cancel. We show at one loop that such quasi ratios can be matched to ratios of the corresponding TMDPDFs. We also introduce a modified “bent” quasi soft matrix element which yields a quasi-TMDPDF that passes the consistency test with the TMDPDF at one loop, and discuss potential issues at higher orders.
Designing efficient and scalable sparse linear algebra kernels on modern multi-GPU based HPC systems is a daunting task due to significant irregular memory references and workload imbalance across the GPUs. This is particularly the case for \textit{Sparse Triangular Solver (SpTRSV)} which introduces additional two-dimensional computation dependencies among subsequent computation steps. Dependency information is exchanged and shared among GPUs, thus warrant for efficient memory allocation, data partitioning, and workload distribution as well as fine-grained communication and synchronization support. In this work, we demonstrate that directly adopting unified memory can adversely affect the performance of SpTRSV on multi-GPU architectures, despite linking via fast interconnect like NVLinks and NVSwitches. Alternatively, we employ the latest NVSHMEM technology based on Partitioned Global Address Space programming model to enable efficient fine-grained communication and drastic synchronization overhead reduction. Furthermore, to handle workload imbalance, we propose a malleable task-pool execution model which can further enhance the utilization of GPUs. By applying these techniques, our experiments on the NVIDIA multi-GPU supernode V100-DGX-1 and DGX-2 systems demonstrate that our design can achieve on average 3.53x (up to 9.86x) speedup on a DGX-1 system and 3.66x (up to 9.64x) speedup on a DGX-2 system with 4-GPUs over the Unified-Memory design. The comprehensive sensitivity and scalability studies also show that the proposed zero-copy SpTRSV is able to fully utilize the computing and communication resources of the multi-GPU system.
This paper reviews an area which has evolved over the past 15 years: experimental analysis of computer system dependability. Methodologies and advances are discussed for three basic approaches used in the area: simulated fault injection, physical fault injection, and measurement-based analysis. The three approaches are suited, respectively, to dependability evaluation in the three phases of a system's life: design phase, prototype phase, and operational phase. Before the discussion of these phases, several statistical techniques used in the area are introduced. For each phase, a classification of research methods or study topics is outlined, followed by discussion of these methods or topics as well as representative studies. The statistical techniques introduced include the estimation of parameters and confidence intervals, probability distribution characterization, and several multivariate analysis methods. Importance sampling, a statistical technique used to accelerate Monte Carlo simulation, is also introduced. The discussion of simulated fault injection covers electrical-level, logic-level, and function-level fault injection methods as well as representative simulation environments such as FOCUS and DEPEND. The discussion of physical fault injection covers hardware, software, and radiation fault injection methods as well as several software and hybrid tools including FIAT, FERARI, HYBRID, and FINE. The discussion of measurement-based analysis covers measurement and data processing techniques, basic error characterization, dependency analysis, Markov reward modeling, software-dependability, and fault diagnosis. The discussion involves several important issues studies in the area, including fault models, fast simulation techniques, workload/failure dependency, correlated failures, and software fault tolerance.
Computer program predicts heat-exchanger performance under variety of conditions. Program provides rapid means of calculating distribution of fluid and wall temperatures, fuel deposit formation, and pressure losses at various locations in heat exchanger. Developed for use with heat exchanger that vaporizes fuel prior to fuel ignition; other applications possible.
Several recent papers have shown a close relationship between entanglement wedge reconstruction and the unitarity of black hole evaporation in AdS/CFT. The analysis of these papers however has a rather puzzling feature: all calculations are done using bulk dynamics which are essentially those Hawking used to predict information loss, but applying ideas from entanglement wedge reconstruction seems to suggest a Page curve which is consistent with information conservation. Why should two different calculations in the same model give different answers for the Page curve? In this note we present a new pair of models which clarify this situation. Our first model gives a holographic illustration of unitary black hole evaporation, in which the analogue of the Hawking radiation purifies itself as expected, and this purification is reproduced by the entanglement wedge analysis. Moreover a smooth black hole interior persists until the last stages the evaporation process. Our second model gives an alternative holographic interpretation of the situation where the bulk evolution leads to information loss: unlike in the models proposed so far, this bulk information loss is correctly reproduced by the entanglement wedge analysis. This serves as an illustration that quantum extremal surfaces are in some sense kinematic: the time-dependence of the entropy they compute depends on the choice of bulk dynamics. In both models no bulk quantum corrections need to be considered: classical extremal surfaces are enough to do the job. We argue that our first model is the one which gives the right analogy for what actually happens to evaporating black holes, but we also emphasize that any complete resolution of the information problem will require an understanding of non-perturbative bulk dynamics.
A time-dependent computer model is used to study a non-equilibrium structure of the heliosphere, resulting from the interaction between the solar wind and the interstellar plasma. An interaction of the heliospheric termination shock with various disturbances such as density or velocity jumps or interplanetary shocks in upstream solar wind as well as pressure jumps in local interstellar medium is investigated. Consequences of latitudinal variation in dynamic pressure are also discussed. The initial boundary conditions of unsteady calculations are given by the solar wind parameters as functions of time and/or latitude on an inner boundary, and/or by the local interstellar pressure as a function of time (roughly simulating the effect of the local interstellar medium) on an outer boundary.
This paper simulates seven transient experiments with geometrical movements performed at the GIACINT facility of Belarus. These experiments include three slow control rods insertion in more than 25 s, one fast control rod insertion in less than 1 s, and three water moderator draining transients. In the fast control rod insertion experiment, the control rods are first pushed by a mechanical spring and then let fall by gravity in the assembly. In this experiment, the control rods speed varies because of the initial spring force, the gravitational acceleration, and the water buoyancy force. In all other transient experiments, the geometry change occurs with a constant speed. The Serpent computer program was utilized to simulate these transient experiments with geometrical changes by performing two separate computations. One time-independent computation is performed in criticality mode and the other time-dependent computation is performed in dynamic-source mode. The first computation writes the neutron population and delayed neutron precursors for starting the transient simulation. The second computation divides the transient time into several time bins, reads the two files from the first computation, and updates them at the end of each time bin. The Serpent simulation results obtained for this set of experiments are in good agreement with the time dependent experimental measurements. In addition, Serpent and MCNP simulations results show an excellent agreement for the water moderator transient