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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.

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At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2018

Effects of exposure estimation errors on estimated exposure-response relations for PM2.5

Highlights: • Recent literature has identified associations between concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in ambient air and adverse health effects at estimated exposure concentrations below current air ambient quality standards. • The models and analyses used do not usually quantify uncertainty about exposure estimates. • Realistic errors in exposure estimates can be estimated from available air quality monitoring stations by predicting concentrations at each station from concentrations at neighboring stations. • Exposure estimation errors are large enough to obscure low-dose nonlinearities or thresholds in the true concentration-response (C-R) function, artificially making them appear to be linear at low doses. • Better estimates of C-R functions will require modeling exposure distributions and estimation errors, rather than just estimating average exposure concentrations. Associations between fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exposure concentrations and a wide variety of undesirable outcomes, from autism and auto theft to elderly mortality, suicide, and violent crime, have been widely reported. Influential articles have argued that reducing National Ambient Air Quality Standards for PM2.5 is desirable to reduce these outcomes. Yet, other studies have found that reducing black smoke and other particulate matter by as much as 70% and dozens of micrograms per cubic meter has not detectably affected all-cause mortality rates even after decades, despite strong, statistically significant positive exposure concentration-response (C-R) associations between them. This paper examines whether this disconnect between association and causation might be explained in part by ignored estimation errors in estimated exposure concentrations. We use EPA air quality monitor data from the Los Angeles area of California to examine the shapes of estimated C-R functions for PM2.5 when the true C-R functions are assumed to be step functions with well-defined response thresholds. The estimated C-R functions mistakenly show risk as smoothly increasing with concentrations even well below the response thresholds, thus incorrectly predicting substantial risk reductions from reductions in concentrations that do not affect health risks. We conclude that ignored estimation errors obscure the shapes of true C-R functions, including possible thresholds, possibly leading to unrealistic predictions of the changes in risk caused by changing exposures. Instead of estimating improvements in public health per unit reduction (e.g., per 10 µg/m{sup 3} decrease) in average PM2.5 concentrations, it may be essential to consider how interventions change the distributions of exposure concentrations.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2016

Quantifying the impact of material-model error on macroscale quantities-of-interest using multiscale a posteriori error-estimation techniques

An a posteriori error-estimation framework is introduced to quantify and reduce modeling errors resulting from approximating complex mesoscale material behavior with a simpler macroscale model. Such errors may be prevalent when modeling welds and additively manufactured structures, where spatial variations and material textures may be present in the microstructure. We consider a case where a <100> fiber texture develops in the longitudinal scanning direction of a weld. Transversely isotropic elastic properties are obtained through homogenization of a microstructural model with this texture and are considered the reference weld properties within the error-estimation framework. Conversely, isotropic elastic properties are considered approximate weld properties since they contain no representation of texture. Errors introduced by using isotropic material properties to represent a weld are assessed through a quantified error bound in the elastic regime. Lastly, an adaptive error reduction scheme is used to determine the optimal spatial variation of the isotropic weld properties to reduce the error bound.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2015

Enhancing adaptive sparse grid approximations and improving refinement strategies using adjoint-based a posteriori error estimates

In this paper we present an algorithm for adaptive sparse grid approximations of quantities of interest computed from discretized partial differential equations. We use adjoint-based a posteriori error estimates of the physical discretization error and the interpolation error in the sparse grid to enhance the sparse grid approximation and to drive adaptivity of the sparse grid. Utilizing these error estimates provides significantly more accurate functional values for random samples of the sparse grid approximation. We also demonstrate that alternative refinement strategies based upon a posteriori error estimates can lead to further increases in accuracy in the approximation over traditional hierarchical surplus based strategies. Throughout this paper we also provide and test a framework for balancing the physical discretization error with the stochastic interpolation error of the enhanced sparse grid approximation.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2022

Multiscale analysis in solids with unseparated scales: fine-scale recovery, error estimation, and coarse-scale adaptivity

There are several engineering applications in which the assumptions of homogenization and scale separation may be violated, in particular, for metallic structures constructed through additive manufacturing. Instead of resorting to direct numerical simulation of the macroscale system with an embedded fine scale, an alternative approach is to use an approximate macroscale constitutive model, but then estimate the model-form error using a posteriori error estimation techniques and subsequently adapt the macroscale model to reduce the error for a given boundary value problem and quantity of interest. Here, we investigate this approach to multiscale analysis in solids with unseparated scales using the example of an additively manufactured metallic structure consisting of a polycrystalline microstructure that is neither periodic nor statistically homogeneous. As a first step to the general nonlinear case, we focus here on linear elasticity in which each grain within the polycrystal is linear elastic but anisotropic.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2019

Sensor Error Estimation for Reactor Coolant System with Generalization Error Equations

We consider a simplified version of the sensor error estimation problem in pressure sensors in the primary coolant system of a nuclear power plant under the condition that a majority of sensors are error-free. We present a sensor fusion method to estimate sensor errors in the primary coolant system of a power reactor by using measurements collected by multiple sensors. The underlying relationship between the measured and estimated parameters is inferred using measurements collected under controlled no-error conditions of the plant. We propose a machine learning approach to train fusers that provide an estimate of the sensor measurement by using measurements from other sensors, and the difference between the actual sensor measurement and its estimate provides the sensor estimate. We present generalization error equations for these methods that characterize the performance of their sensor error estimates on future measurements using the distribution-free machine learning formulation.

Rao, Nageswara S.↗
DOE OSTI2025

A note on the reliability of goal-oriented error estimates for Galerkin finite element methods with nonlinear functionals

Here, we consider estimating the discretization error in a nonlinear functional J (u) in the setting of an abstract variational problem: find u ϵ $\mathscr{V}$ such that B (u, φ) = L (φ) ∀φ ϵ $\mathscr{V}$, as approximated by a Galerkin finite element method. Here, $\mathscr{V}$ is a Hilbert space, B (. , .) is a bilinear form, and L (∙) is a linear functional. We consider well-known error estimates η of the form J (u) - J (u h ) ≈ η = L (z) - B (u h , z), where u h denotes a finite element approximation to u, and z denotes the solution to an auxiliary adjoint variational problem. We show that there exist nonlinear functionals for which error estimates of this form are not reliable, even in the presence of an exact adjoint solution z. An estimate η is said to be reliable if there exists a constant C ϵ $\mathbb{R}$ >0 independent of u h such that |J (u) - J (u h )| ≤ C|η|. We present several example pairs of bilinear forms and nonlinear functionals where reliability of η is not achieved.

A posteriori↗
DOE OSTI2013

A posteriori error estimators for the discrete ordinates approximation of the one-speed neutron transport equation

When calculating numerical solutions of the neutron transport equation it is important to have a measure of the accuracy of the solution. As the true solution is generally not known, a suitable estimation of the error must be made. The steady state transport equation possesses discretization errors in all its independent variables: angle, energy and space. In this work only spatial discretization errors are considered. An exact transport solution, in which the degree of regularity of the exact flux across the singular characteristic is controlled, is manufactured to determine the numerical solutions true discretization error. This solution is then projected onto a Legendre polynomial space in order to form an exact solution on the same basis space as the numerical solution, Discontinuous Galerkin Finite Element Method (DGFEM), to enable computation of the true error. Over a series of test problems the true error is compared to the error estimated by: Ragusa and Wang (RW), residual source (LER) and cell discontinuity estimators (JD). The validity and accuracy of the considered estimators are primarily assessed by considering the effectivity index and global L2 norm of the error. In general RW excels at approximating the true error distribution but usually under-estimates its magnitude; the LER estimator emulates the true error distribution but frequently over-estimates the magnitude of the true error; the JD estimator poorly captures the true error distribution and generally under-estimates the error about singular characteristics but over-estimates it elsewhere. (authors)

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2023

Linearization errors in discrete goal-oriented error estimation

This paper is concerned with goal-oriented a posteriori error estimation for nonlinear functionals in the context of nonlinear variational problems solved with continuous Galerkin finite element discretizations. A two-level, or discrete, adjoint-based approach for error estimation is considered. The traditional method to derive an error estimate in this context requires linearizing both the nonlinear variational form and the nonlinear functional of interest which introduces linearization errors into the error estimate. In this paper, we investigate these linearization errors. In particular, we develop a novel discrete goal-oriented error estimate that accounts for traditionally neglected nonlinear terms at the expense of greater computational cost. We demonstrate how this error estimate can be used to drive mesh adaptivity. Here, we show that accounting for linearization errors in the error estimate can improve its effectivity for several nonlinear model problems and quantities of interest. We also demonstrate that an adaptive strategy based on the newly proposed estimate can lead to more accurate approximations of the nonlinear functional with fewer degrees of freedom when compared to uniform refinement and traditional adjoint-based approaches.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2013

Residual a posteriori error estimation of a mimetic/virtual element method

A posteriori error estimation and adaptivity are very useful in the context of the mimetic finite difference method due to the flexibility of the meshes to which this family of numerical schemes can be applied. Nevertheless, developing error estimators for mimetic methods is not a straightforward task due to the lack of knowledge of the basis functions. This issue is tackled by the virtual element method recently introduced in [4], which can be interpreted as a Galerkin reformulation of the mimetic finite difference method. In the new virtual element setting, we develop a residual based a posteriori error estimator that immediately applies to its mimetic counterpart. For such estimator we prove the reliability and we show the numerical performance when it is combined with an adaptive strategy for the mesh refinement. For the lowest-regular approximation we also developed an hp-adaptive strategy based on the comparison between the numerical solution on a base mesh and on a reference mesh.

a posteriori error estimation↗
DOE OSTI2017

Stochastic goal-oriented error estimation with memory

We propose a stochastic dual-weighted error estimator for the viscous shallow-water equation with boundaries. For this purpose, previous work on memory-less stochastic dual-weighted error estimation is extended by incorporating memory effects. The memory is introduced by describing the local truncation error as a sum of time-correlated random variables. The random variables itself represent the temporal fluctuations in local truncation errors and are estimated from high-resolution information at near-initial times. The resulting error estimator is evaluated experimentally in two classical ocean-type experiments, the Munk gyre and the flow around an island. In these experiments, the stochastic process is adapted locally to the respective dynamical flow regime. Our stochastic dual-weighted error estimator is shown to provide meaningful error bounds for a range of physically relevant goals. We prove, as well as show numerically, that our approach can be interpreted as a linearized stochastic-physics ensemble.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2014

Enabling Predictive Simulation and UQ of Complex Multiphysics PDE Systems by the Development of Goal-Oriented Variational Sensitivity Analysis and A Posteriori Error Estimation Methods

It was demonstrated that a posteriori analyses in general and in particular one that uses adjoint methods can accurately and efficiently compute numerical error estimates and sensitivity for critical Quantities of Interest (QoIs) that depend on a large number of parameters. Activities include: analysis and implementation of several time integration techniques for solving system of ODEs as typically obtained from spatial discretization of PDE systems; multirate integration methods for ordinary differential equations; formulation and analysis of an iterative multi-discretization Galerkin finite element method for multi-scale reaction-diffusion equations; investigation of an inexpensive postprocessing technique to estimate the error of finite element solution of the second-order quasi-linear elliptic problems measured in some global metrics; investigation of an application of the residual-based a posteriori error estimates to symmetric interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin method for solving a class of second order quasi-linear elliptic problems; a posteriori analysis of explicit time integrations for system of linear ordinary differential equations; derivation of accurate a posteriori goal oriented error estimates for a user-defined quantity of interest for two classes of first and second order IMEX schemes for advection-diffusion-reaction problems; Postprocessing finite element solution; and A Bayesian Framework for Uncertain Quantification of Porous Media Flows.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2023

Evaluation of dual-weighted residual and machine learning error estimation for projection-based reduced-order models of steady partial differential equations

Projection-based reduced-order models (pROMs) show great promise as a means to accelerate many-query applications such as forward error propagation, solving inverse problems, and design optimization. In order to deploy pROMs in the context of high-consequence decision making, accurate error estimates are required to determine the region(s) of applicability in the parameter space. The following paper considers the dual-weighted residual (DWR) error estimate for pROMs and compares it to another promising pROM error estimate, machine learned error models (MLEM). Here, we show how DWR can be applied to ROMs and then evaluate DWR on two partial differential equations (PDEs): a two-dimensional linear convection–reaction–diffusion equation, and a three-dimensional static hyper-elastic beam. It is shown that DWR is able to estimate errors for pROMs extrapolating outside of their training set while MLEM is best suited for pROMs used to interpolate within the pROM training set.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2015

SU-E-T-769: T-Test Based Prior Error Estimate and Stopping Criterion for Monte Carlo Dose Calculation in Proton Therapy

Purpose: The Monte Carlo (MC) method is a gold standard for dose calculation in radiotherapy. However, it is not a priori clear how many particles need to be simulated to achieve a given dose accuracy. Prior error estimate and stopping criterion are not well established for MC. This work aims to fill this gap. Methods: Due to the statistical nature of MC, our approach is based on one-sample t-test. We design the prior error estimate method based on the t-test, and then use this t-test based error estimate for developing a simulation stopping criterion. The three major components are as follows.First, the source particles are randomized in energy, space and angle, so that the dose deposition from a particle to the voxel is independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.).Second, a sample under consideration in the t-test is the mean value of dose deposition to the voxel by sufficiently large number of source particles. Then according to central limit theorem, the sample as the mean value of i.i.d. variables is normally distributed with the expectation equal to the true deposited dose.Third, the t-test is performed with the null hypothesis that the difference between sample expectation (the same as true deposited dose) and on-the-fly calculated mean sample dose from MC is larger than a given error threshold, in addition to which users have the freedom to specify confidence probability and region of interest in the t-test based stopping criterion. Results: The method is validated for proton dose calculation. The difference between the MC Result based on the t-test prior error estimate and the statistical Result by repeating numerous MC simulations is within 1%. Conclusion: The t-test based prior error estimate and stopping criterion are developed for MC and validated for proton dose calculation. Xiang Hong and Hao Gao were partially supported by the NSFC (#11405105), the 973 Program (#2015CB856000) and the Shanghai Pujiang Talent Program (#14PJ1404500)

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2019

An a posteriori residual-based spatial discretization error estimator for S N neutron transport

The “residual source estimator”, an implicit residual-based spatial discretization error estimator for S N neutron transport methods, is introduced. The estimator uses an approximation of the residual as a fixed source for an analogous transport problem whose solution is the error estimate, using the same transport operator as the original numerical solution. The complete derivation of the residual source estimator, the approximation of the residual, and higher-order derivatives is included. The performance of the residual source estimator for 0-order DGFEM is tested against reference solutions. For problems with true solutions discontinuous in the first derivative across the singular characteristics, the residual source estimator is generally accurate, precise, and computationally affordable compared to similar estimators. It suffers in problems where solutions are discontinuous, particularly when the discontinuity inflicts significant inaccuracies on the discrete solution; however, compared to other estimators, which suffer similarly, it remains a competitive option.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2020

High Order Implicit Residual-Based Spatial Discretization Error Estimation for S N Neutron Transport

This work demonstrates our novel residual source spatial discretization error estimator (LeR/TEAD) for a DGFEM-1 discretization and assesses it along with two contemporary estimators, Ragusa and Wang's h -refinement estimator (RW) and Duo, Azmy, and Zikatanov's explicit residual-based estimator (DAZ), on a suite of Method of Manufactured Solutions (MMS) 2D problems and three realistic problem geometries. LeR/TE-AD is attractive because it directly estimates the local error in the angular flux, as opposed to a mere indicator of the error's behavior, on the same mesh and method order as the original numerical solution, thus typically being less computationally intensive than a refinement-based method. On the MMS suite, LeR/TE-AD consistently displayed a reduced performance versus its DGFEM-0 results in terms of accuracy and precision metrics, though it was not typically grossly inaccurate. This is attributed to the irregularities in the true solution across singular characteristics limiting the local accuracy of the numerical flux solution, leading to poor derivative approximations used in the residual approximations. The error transport problem then spreads the error in the residual to nearby cells, causing a greater degree of imprecision that did not afflict DAZ or RW. In testing the estimators on realistic problem geometries, however, LeR/TE-AD fared better. In practice, the true error is much larger in non-idealized geometries like in MMS, and a superlinear true solution means that RW and DAZ are not beneficially biased for DGFEM-1 error estimation. LeR/TE-AD was typically first or second in accuracy, primarily competing with RW, but the latter usually consumed 2-4 times the computational time as LeR/TE-AD, and requires a solution with four times as many unknowns. Furthermore, RW and LeR/TE-AD can be used to compute direct estimates of the error in any quantity of interest that is based on the angular ux solution, such as the fission rate density in a fuel pin, whereas DAZ requires a heuristic extension due to its norm-based nature.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗