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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

Multigrid Reduction in Time for Nonlinear Parabolic Problems: A Case Study

The need for parallelism in the time dimension is being driven by changes in computer architectures, where performance increases are now provided through greater concurrency, not faster clock speeds. This creates a bottleneck for sequential time marching schemes because they lack parallelism in the time dimension. Multigrid reduction in time (MGRIT) is an iterative procedure that allows for temporal parallelism by utilizing multigrid reduction techniques and a multilevel hierarchy of coarse time grids. MGRIT has been shown to be effective for linear problems, with speedups of up to 50 times. The goal of this work is the efficient solution of nonlinear problems with MGRIT, where efficiency is defined as achieving similar performance when compared to an equivalent linear problem. The benchmark nonlinear problem is the p-Laplacian, where p=4 corresponds to a well-known nonlinear diffusion equation and p=2 corresponds to the standard linear diffusion operator, our benchmark linear problem. The key difficulty encountered is that the nonlinear time-step solver becomes progressively more expensive on coarser time levels as the time-step size increases. To overcome such difficulties, multigrid research has historically targeted an accumulated body of experience regarding how to choose an appropriate solver for a specific problem type. To that end, this paper develops a library of MGRIT optimizations and modifications, most important an alternate initial guess for the nonlinear time-step solver and delayed spatial coarsening, that will allow many nonlinear parabolic problems to be solved with parallel scaling behavior comparable to the corresponding linear problem.

parareal↗

Design, analysis and preliminary numerical results for the nonconforming VEM for parabolic problems

The virtual element method (VEM) is a numerical methodology for solving partial differential equations on unstructured polytopal meshes. In this work, we extend the nonconforming high-order formulation suitable to time-dependent diffusion problems with possibly nonlinear forcing terms. Coupling high-order virtual element formulations in space with time-marching schemes based on Backward Differention Formulas (BDFs) makes a fully discrete method with optimal order of convergence in the Method of Lines framework. We investigate and assess the performance of the method through theoretical analysis and a set of numerical experiments.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Fast Multilevel Solvers for a Class of Discrete Fourth Order Parabolic Problems

In this paper, we study fast iterative solvers for the solution of fourth order parabolic equations discretized by mixed finite element methods. We propose to use consistent mass matrix in the discretization and use lumped mass matrix to construct efficient preconditioners. We provide eigenvalue analysis for the preconditioned system and estimate the convergence rate of the preconditioned GMRes method. Furthermore, we show that these preconditioners only need to be solved inexactly by optimal multigrid algorithms. Our numerical examples indicate that the proposed preconditioners are very efficient and robust with respect to both discretization parameters and diffusion coefficients. We also investigate the performance of multigrid algorithms with either collective smoothers or distributive smoothers when solving the preconditioner systems.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

An asymmetric backward problem for the inhomogeneous parabolic equation with time-dependent diffusivity

In this paper, we deal with an asymmetric case of the non-homogeneous backward parabolic problem associated with time-dependent diffusivity in polar coordinates which arises in describing the heat transfer in cylinder. In general, this problem is severely ill-posed by the Hadamard instability. To subdue the instability of this problem, we apply the modified quasi-boundary value method. According to some a priori assumptions on the exact solution, we get an explicit error estimate of Hölder type for all t∈(0,T]. In addition, a numerical experiment is given to illustrate the efficiency and flexibility of our method.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Accelerated Simulation of Kinetic Transport Using Variational Principles and Sparsity

This project is centered on the development and application of techniques of sparsity and compressed sensing for variational principles, PDEs and physics problems, in particular for kinetic transport. This included derivation of sparse modes for elliptic and parabolic problems coming from variational principles. The research results of this project are on methods for sparsity in differential equations and their applications and on application of sparsity ideas to kinetic transport of plasmas.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

High-order dimensionally-split Cartesian embedded boundary method for non-dissipative schemes

Centered finite-difference schemes are commonly used for high-fidelity turbulent flow simulations in canonical configurations because of their non-dissipative property and computational efficiency. However, their use in flow simulations over complex geometries is limited by the requirements of a structured grid and a stable boundary treatment in the absence of artificial (numerical) dissipation. Cartesian embedded boundary (EB) approaches provide an efficient structured-grid framework to apply difference schemes over complex domains. However, they are often restricted to low orders of accuracy because of numerical instabilities at the embedded boundaries and the issues of small-cell problem that are difficult to address with high-order accuracy. The present work discusses a systematic approach to obtain high-order EB methods with non-dissipative centered schemes in the interior. This approach, based on satisfying the primary and secondary conservation conditions, is employed to derive EB schemes that are up to sixth-order accurate in the interior and fourth-order accurate globally for hyperbolic, parabolic as well as incompletely parabolic problems. The proposed finite-difference discretization is, by construction, dimensionally split and addresses the small-cell problem without any cell/geometry transformations, thus, highly simplifying implementation in a flow solver. Various linear and non-linear numerical tests are performed to evaluate the stability and the accuracy of the proposed EB schemes.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

A multigrid waveform relaxation method for solving the poroelasticity equations

In this work, a multigrid waveform relaxation method is proposed for solving a collocated finite difference discretization of the linear Biot’s model. This gives rise to the first space–time multigrid solver for poroelasticity equations in the literature. The waveform relaxation iteration is based on a point-wise Vanka smoother that couples the pressure variable at a grid-point with the displacements around it. A semi-algebraic mode analysis is proposed to theoretically analyze the convergence of the multigrid waveform relaxation algorithm. This analysis is novel since it combines the semi-algebraic analysis, suitable for parabolic problems, with the non-standard analysis for overlapping smoothers. The practical utility of the method is illustrated through several numerical experiments in one and two dimensions.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Discontinuous Skeletal Gradient Discretisation methods on polytopal meshes

Here, in this work we develop arbitrary-order Discontinuous Skeletal Gradient Discretisations (DSGD) on general polytopal meshes. Discontinuous Skeletal refers to the fact that the globally coupled unknowns are broken polynomials on the mesh skeleton. The key ingredient is a high-order gradient reconstruction composed of two terms: (i) a consistent contribution obtained mimicking an integration by parts formula inside each element and (ii) a stabilising term for which sufficient design conditions are provided. An example of stabilisation that satisfies the design conditions is proposed based on a local lifting of high-order residuals on a Raviart–Thomas–Nédélec subspace. We prove that the novel DSGDs satisfy coercivity, consistency, limit-conformity, and compactness requirements that ensure convergence for a variety of elliptic and parabolic problems. Lastly, links with Hybrid High-Order, non-conforming Mimetic Finite Difference and non-conforming Virtual Element methods are also studied. Numerical examples complete the exposition.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Multigrid Reduction in Time for Chaotic Dynamical Systems

As CPU clock speeds have stagnated and high performance computers continue to have ever higher core counts, increased parallelism is needed to take advantage of these new architectures. Traditional serial time-marching schemes can be a significant bottleneck, as many types of simulations require large numbers of time-steps which must be computed sequentially. Parallel-in-time schemes, such as the Multigrid Reduction in Time (MGRIT) method, remedy this by parallelizing across time-steps and have shown promising results for parabolic problems. However, chaotic problems have proved more difficult, since chaotic initial value problems (IVPs) are inherently ill-conditioned. MGRIT relies on a hierarchy of successively coarser time-grids to iteratively correct the solution on the finest time-grid, but due to the nature of chaotic systems, small inaccuracies on the coarser levels can be greatly magnified and lead to poor coarse-grid corrections. Here we introduce a modified MGRIT algorithm based on an existing quadratically converging nonlinear extension to the multigrid Full Approximation Scheme (FAS), as well as a novel time-coarsening scheme. Together, these approaches better capture long-term chaotic behavior on coarse-grids and greatly improve convergence of MGRIT for chaotic IVPs. Further, we introduce a novel low-memory variant of the algorithm for solving chaotic PDEs with MGRIT which not only solves the IVP, but also provides estimates for the unstable Lyapunov vectors of the system. Finally, we provide supporting numerical results for the Lorenz system and demonstrate parallel speedup for the chaotic Kuramoto–Sivashinsky PDE over a significantly longer time-domain than in previous works.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Theoretical and numerical studies of inverse source problem for the linear parabolic equation with sparse boundary measurements

We consider the inverse source problem in the parabolic equation, where the unknown source possesses the semi-discrete formulation. Theoretically, we prove that the flux data from any nonempty open subset of the boundary can uniquely determine the semi-discrete source. This means the observed area can be extremely small, and that is the reason we call it sparse boundary data. For the numerical reconstruction, we formulate the problem from the Bayesian sequential prediction perspective and conduct the numerical examples which estimate the space-time-dependent source state by state. To better demonstrate the method’s performance, we solve two common multiscale problems from two models with a long source sequence. The numerical results illustrate that the inversion is accurate and efficient.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

An Efficient Parallel-in-Time Method for Optimization with Parabolic PDEs

To solve optimization problems with parabolic PDE constraints, often methods working on the reduced objective functional are used. They are computationally expensive due to the necessity of solving both the state equation and a backward-in-time adjoint equation to evaluate the reduced gradient in each iteration of the optimization method. In this study, we investigate the use of the parallel-in-time method PFASST in the setting of PDE-constrained optimization. In order to develop an efficient fully time-parallel algorithm, we discuss different options for applying PFASST to adjoint gradient computation, including the possibility of doing PFASST iterations on both the state and the adjoint equations simultaneously. Here, we also explore the additional gains in efficiency from reusing information from previous optimization iterations when solving each equation. Numerical results for both a linear and a nonlinear reaction-diffusion optimal control problem demonstrate the parallel speedup and efficiency of different approaches.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Boundary-Value Problems with Impulsive Conditions for Parabolic Equations with Degenerations

We consider the first boundary-value problem and the unilateral boundary-value problem with impulsive conditions with respect to the time variable for a linear parabolic equation with power singularities of any order in the space variables. With the help of the maximum principle and a priori estimates, we establish the existence and uniqueness of the solutions of the posed problems in the Hölder spaces with power weights.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Analysis of the Spectral Stability of the Generalized Runge–Kutta Methods Applied to Initial-Boundary-Value Problems for Equations of the Parabolic Type. II. Implicit Methods

We consider specific realizations of different implicit generalized Runge–Kutta methods as applied to the numerical integration with respect to time of initial-boundary-value problems for the second-order parabolic equations and investigate their spectral stability. It is shown that all implicit generalized Runge–Kutta methods are unconditionally spectrally stable but some of them have the conditional property of monotonicity of the numerical solution with respect to time. The functions of spectral stability of the implicit generalized Runge–Kutta methods are rational. We compare the analytic solution of the nonstationary one-dimensional problem of heat conduction with the numerical solutions of this problem obtained by different implicit generalized Runge–Kutta methods. It is shown that, in this case, the application of the one-stage Radau methods with subsequent discretization of the problem with respect to the space variable leads to the classical forward finite difference scheme (Laasonen scheme), whereas the use of the one-stage Gauss–Legendre method leads to a six-point symmetric scheme (Crank–Nicolson scheme). It is shown that diagonally implicit generalized Nørsett and Burrage methods are realized in almost the same way as the one-stage Radau and Gauss–Legendre methods but their accuracy in the time step is 10–1000 times higher. On the basis of comparison of the numerical and analytic solutions, we conclude that, in order to get practically suitable numerical solutions without any restrictions on the time step, it is reasonable to use one- and three-stage generalized Radau methods or two- and four-stage Lobatto IIIC methods. All other explicit and implicit generalized Runge–Kutta methods require certain restrictions imposed on the time step.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Analysis of the Spectral Stability of the Generalized Runge–Kutta Methods Applied to Initial-Boundary-Value Problems for Equations of the Parabolic Type. I. Explicit Methods

We develop a general algorithm for the analysis the spectral stability of generalized multistage Runge–Kutta methods of various orders of accuracy as applied to the numerical integration with respect to time of an initial-boundary-value problem for the second-order parabolic equation. The expression for the function of spectral stability is obtained in two alternative forms: on the basis of matrix relations and in the determinant form. We study specific realizations of various generalized explicit Runge–Kutta methods and their spectral stability. It is shown that all explicit generalized Runge–Kutta methods possess the property of conditional spectral stability and the property of conditional monotonicity of the numerical solution in time whose violation leads to the appearance of false oscillations of the approximate solution. The stability function for these methods is polynomial. It is shown that the application of two-stage generalized explicit Runge–Kutta methods leads to the appearance of predictor-corrector-type schemes. In the case of nonstationary one-dimensional heat-conduction problem, on the basis of a one-stage generalized Runge–Kutta method, we obtain the classical two-layer conditionally stable explicit finite-difference scheme on a four-point template. It is demonstrated that the five-stage generalized Runge–Kutta–Merson method is characterized by the weakest condition of spectral stability as compared with all investigated explicit generalized Runge–Kutta methods.

42 ENGINEERING↗