Orion Exploration Mission Entry Interface Target Line

The Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle is required to return to the continental United States at any time during the month. In addition, it is required to provide a survivable entry from a wide range of trans-lunar abort trajectories. The Entry Interface (EI) state must be targeted to ensure that all requirements are met for all possible return scenarios, even in the event of no communication with the Mission Control Center to provide an updated EI target. The challenge then is to functionalize an EI state constraint manifold that can be used in the on-board targeting algorithm, as well as the ground-based trajectory optimization programs. This paper presents the techniques used to define the EI constraint manifold and to functionalize it as a set of polynomials in several dimensions

Data-Driven Extrapolation Via Feature Augmentation Based on Variably Scaled Thin Plate Splines

The data driven extrapolation requires the definition of a functional model depending on the available data and has the application scope of providing reliable predictions on the unknown dynamics. Since data might be scattered, we drive our attention towards kernel models that have the advantage of being meshfree. Precisely, the proposed numerical method makes use of the so-called Variably Scaled Kernels (VSKs), which are introduced to implement a feature augmentation-like strategy based on discrete data. Due to the possible uncertainty on the data and since we are interested in modelling the behaviour of the target functions, we seek for a regularized solution by ridge regression. Focusing on polyharmonic splines, we investigate their implementation in the VSK setting and we provide error bounds in Beppo–Levi spaces. The performances of the method are then tested on functions showing exponential or rational decay. Comparisons with Support Vector Regression (SVR) are also carried out and highlight that the proposed approach is effective, particularly since it does not require to train complex architecture constructions

A Comparison of High Order Interpolation Nodes for the Pyramid

The use of pyramid elements is crucial to the construction of efficient hex-dominant meshes. For conforming nodal finite element methods with mixed element types, it is advantageous for nodal distributions on the faces of the pyramid to match those on the faces and edges of hexahedra and tetrahedra. We adapt existing procedures for constructing optimized tetrahedral nodal sets for high order interpolation to the pyramid with constrained face nodes, including two generalizations of the explicit Warp and Blend construction of nodes on the tetrahedron.Comment: Submitted to SIAM:SIS

Spatial analysis of storm depths from an Arizona raingage network

Eight years of summer rainstorm observations are analyzed by a dense network of 93 raingages operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, in the 150 km Walnut Gulch experimental catchment near Tucson, Arizona. Storms are defined by the total depths collected at each raingage during the noon-to-noon period for which there was depth recorded at any of the gages. For each of the resulting 428 storm days, the gage depths are interpolated onto a dense grid and the resulting random field analyzed to obtain moments, isohyetal plots, spatial correlation function, variance function, and the spatial distribution of storm depth

A Nonuniform Fast Fourier Transform Based on Low Rank Approximation

By viewing the nonuniform discrete Fourier transform (NUDFT) as a perturbed version of a uniform discrete Fourier transform, we propose a fast and quasi-optimal algorithm for computing the NUDFT based on the fast Fourier transform (FFT). Our key observation is that an NUDFT and DFT matrix divided entry by entry is often well approximated by a low rank matrix, allowing us to express a NUDFT matrix as a sum of diagonally scaled DFT matrices. Our algorithm is simple to implement, automatically adapts to any working precision, and is competitive with state-of-the-art algorithms. In the fully uniform case, our algorithm is essentially the FFT. We also describe quasi-optimal algorithms for the inverse NUDFT and two-dimensional NUDFTs.The first author’s work was supported by Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (reference BES-2013-064743). The second author’s work was supported by National Science Foundation grant 164544

Validation and generation of curved meshes for high-order unstructured methods

In this thesis, a new framework to validate and generate curved high-order meshes for complex models is proposed. The main application of the proposed framework is to generate curved meshes that are suitable for finite element analysis with unstructured high-order methods. Note that the lack of a robust and automatic curved mesh generator is one of the main issues that has hampered the adoption of high-order methods in industry. Specifically, without curved high-order meshes composed by valid elements and that match the domain boundary, the convergence rates and accuracy of high-order methods cannot be realized. The main motivation of this work is to propose a framework to address this issue. First, we propose a definition of distortion (quality) measure for curved meshes of any polynomial degree. The presented measures allow validating if a high-order mesh is suitable to perform finite element analysis with an unstructured high-order method. In particular, given a high-order element, the measures assign zero quality if the element is invalid, and one if the element corresponds to the selected ideal configuration (desired shape and nodal distribution). Moreover, we prove that if the quality of an element is not zero, the region where the determinant of the Jacobian is not positive has measure zero. We present several examples to illustrate that the proposed measures can be used to validate high-order isotropic and boundary layer meshes. Second, we develop a smoothing and untangling procedure to improve the quality for curved high-order meshes. Specifically, we propose a global non-linear least squares minimization of the defined distortion measures. The distortion is regularized to allow untangling invalid meshes, and it ensures that if the initial configuration is valid, it never becomes invalid. Moreover, the optimization procedure preserves, whenever is possible, some geometrical features of the linear mesh such as the shape, stretching, straight-sided edges, and element size. We demonstrate through examples that the implementation of the optimization problem is robust and capable of handling situations in which the mesh before optimization contains a large number of invalid elements. We consider cases with polynomial approximations up to degree ten, large deformations of the curved boundaries, concave boundaries, and highly stretched boundary layer elements. Third, we extend the definition of distortion and quality measures to curved high-order meshes with the nodes on parameterized surfaces. Using this definition, we also propose a smoothing and untangling procedure for meshes on CAD surfaces. This procedure is posed in terms of the parametric coordinates of the mesh nodes to enforce that the nodes are on the CAD geometry. In addition, we prove that the procedure is independent of the surface parameterization. Thus, it can optimize meshes on CAD surfaces defined by low-quality parameterizations. Finally, we propose a new mesh generation procedure by means of an a posteriori approach. The approach consists of modifying an initial linear mesh by first, introducing high-order nodes, second, displacing the boundary nodes to ensure that they are on the CAD surface, and third, smoothing and untangling the resulting mesh to produce a valid curved high-order mesh. To conclude, we include several examples to demonstrate that the generated meshes are suitable to perform finite element analysis with unstructured high-order methods.Postprint (published version

Efficient high-order rational integration and deferred correction with equispaced data

Stable high-order linear interpolation schemes are well suited for the accurate approximation of antiderivatives and the construction of efficient quadrature rules. In this paper we utilize for this purpose the family of linear barycentric rational interpolants by Floater and Hormann, which are particularly useful for interpolation with equispaced nodes. We analyze the convergence of integrals of these interpolants to those of analytic functions as well as functions with a finite number of continuous derivatives. As a by-product, our convergence analysis leads to an extrapolation scheme for rational quadrature at equispaced nodes. Furthermore, as a main application of our analysis, we present and investigate a new iterated deferred correction method for the solution of initial value problems, which allows to work efficiently even with large numbers of equispaced data. This so-called rational deferred correction (RDC) method turns out to be highly competitive with other methods relying on more involved implementations or non-equispaced node distributions. Extensive numerical experiments are carried out, comparing the RDC method to the well established spectral deferred correction (SDC) method by Dutt, Greengard and Rokhlin