20,499 research outputs found
Data-driven modelling and monitoring of industrial processes with applications in nuclear waste vitrification
PhD ThesisProcess models are critical for process monitoring, control, and optimisation. With the
increasing amount of process data and advancements in computational hardware, data-driven
models are a good alternative to mechanistic models, which often have inaccuracies or are too
costly to develop. One problem with data-driven models is the difficulty in ensuring that the
models perform well on new data and produce accurate predictions in complex situations, which
are frequently encountered in the process industry.
Within this context, part of this thesis explores developing better data-driven models through
using a latent variable technique, known as slow feature analysis, as a pre-processing step to
regression. Slow feature analysis extracts slow varying features that contain underlying trends
in the data, which can improve model performance through providing more meaningful
information to regression, reducing noise, and reducing dimensionality. Firstly, the
effectiveness of combining linear slow feature analysis with a neural network is demonstrated
on two industrial case studies of soft sensor development and is compared with conventional
techniques, such as neural networks and integration of principal component analysis with a
neural network. It is shown that integration of slow feature analysis with neural networks can
significantly improve model performance. However, linear slow feature analysis can fail to
extract the driving forces behind data in nonlinear situations such as batch processes. Therefore,
using kernel slow feature analysis with a neural network is proposed to further enhance process
model performance. A numerical example was used to demonstrate the effective extraction of
driving forces in a nonlinear case where linear slow feature analysis cannot. Model
generalisation performance was improved using the proposed method on both this numerical
example, and an industrial penicillin process case study.
Dealing with radioactive nuclear waste is an important obstacle in nuclear energy. Sellafield
Ltd have a nuclear waste vitrification plant which converts high-level nuclear waste into a more
stable, lower volume glass form, which is more appropriate for long term storage in sealed
containers. This thesis presents three applications of data-driven modelling to this nuclear waste
vitrification process. A predictive model of the pour rate of processed nuclear waste into
containers, an early detection system for blockages in the dust scrubber, and a model of the
long-term chemical durability of the stored glass waste. These applications use the previously
developed slow feature analysis methods, as well as other data-driven techniques such as
extreme learning machine and bootstrap aggregation, for enhancing the model performance.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and
Sellafield Lt
Reduced order modeling of fluid flows: Machine learning, Kolmogorov barrier, closure modeling, and partitioning
In this paper, we put forth a long short-term memory (LSTM) nudging framework
for the enhancement of reduced order models (ROMs) of fluid flows utilizing
noisy measurements. We build on the fact that in a realistic application, there
are uncertainties in initial conditions, boundary conditions, model parameters,
and/or field measurements. Moreover, conventional nonlinear ROMs based on
Galerkin projection (GROMs) suffer from imperfection and solution instabilities
due to the modal truncation, especially for advection-dominated flows with slow
decay in the Kolmogorov width. In the presented LSTM-Nudge approach, we fuse
forecasts from a combination of imperfect GROM and uncertain state estimates,
with sparse Eulerian sensor measurements to provide more reliable predictions
in a dynamical data assimilation framework. We illustrate the idea with the
viscous Burgers problem, as a benchmark test bed with quadratic nonlinearity
and Laplacian dissipation. We investigate the effects of measurements noise and
state estimate uncertainty on the performance of the LSTM-Nudge behavior. We
also demonstrate that it can sufficiently handle different levels of temporal
and spatial measurement sparsity. This first step in our assessment of the
proposed model shows that the LSTM nudging could represent a viable realtime
predictive tool in emerging digital twin systems
Machine Learning for Fluid Mechanics
The field of fluid mechanics is rapidly advancing, driven by unprecedented
volumes of data from field measurements, experiments and large-scale
simulations at multiple spatiotemporal scales. Machine learning offers a wealth
of techniques to extract information from data that could be translated into
knowledge about the underlying fluid mechanics. Moreover, machine learning
algorithms can augment domain knowledge and automate tasks related to flow
control and optimization. This article presents an overview of past history,
current developments, and emerging opportunities of machine learning for fluid
mechanics. It outlines fundamental machine learning methodologies and discusses
their uses for understanding, modeling, optimizing, and controlling fluid
flows. The strengths and limitations of these methods are addressed from the
perspective of scientific inquiry that considers data as an inherent part of
modeling, experimentation, and simulation. Machine learning provides a powerful
information processing framework that can enrich, and possibly even transform,
current lines of fluid mechanics research and industrial applications.Comment: To appear in the Annual Reviews of Fluid Mechanics, 202
Multiscale Computations on Neural Networks: From the Individual Neuron Interactions to the Macroscopic-Level Analysis
We show how the Equation-Free approach for multi-scale computations can be
exploited to systematically study the dynamics of neural interactions on a
random regular connected graph under a pairwise representation perspective.
Using an individual-based microscopic simulator as a black box coarse-grained
timestepper and with the aid of simulated annealing we compute the
coarse-grained equilibrium bifurcation diagram and analyze the stability of the
stationary states sidestepping the necessity of obtaining explicit closures at
the macroscopic level. We also exploit the scheme to perform a rare-events
analysis by estimating an effective Fokker-Planck describing the evolving
probability density function of the corresponding coarse-grained observables
Data-driven Soft Sensors in the Process Industry
In the last two decades Soft Sensors established themselves as a valuable alternative to the traditional means for the acquisition of critical process variables, process monitoring and other tasks which are related to process control. This paper discusses characteristics of the process industry data which are critical for the development of data-driven Soft Sensors. These characteristics are common to a large number of process industry fields, like the chemical industry, bioprocess industry, steel industry, etc. The focus of this work is put on the data-driven Soft Sensors because of their growing popularity, already demonstrated usefulness and huge, though yet not completely realised, potential. A comprehensive selection of case studies covering the three most important Soft Sensor application fields, a general introduction to the most popular Soft Sensor modelling techniques as well as a discussion of some open issues in the Soft Sensor development and maintenance and their possible solutions are the main contributions of this work
Robust fractional order PI control for cardiac output stabilisation
Drug regulatory paradigms are dependent on the hemodynamic system as it serves to distribute and clear the drug in/from the body. While focusing on the objective of the drug paradigm at hand, it is important to maintain stable hemodynamic variables. In this work, a biomedical application requiring robust control properties has been used to illustrate the potential of an autotuning method, referred to as the fractional order robust autotuner. The method is an extension of a previously presented autotuning principle and produces controllers which are robust to system gain variations. The feature of automatic tuning of controller parameters can be of great use for data-driven adaptation during intra-patient variability conditions. Fractional order PI/PD controllers are generalizations of the well-known PI/PD controllers that exhibit an extra parameter usually used to enhance the robustness of the closed loop system. (C) 2019, IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) Hosting by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
Structure Learning in Coupled Dynamical Systems and Dynamic Causal Modelling
Identifying a coupled dynamical system out of many plausible candidates, each
of which could serve as the underlying generator of some observed measurements,
is a profoundly ill posed problem that commonly arises when modelling real
world phenomena. In this review, we detail a set of statistical procedures for
inferring the structure of nonlinear coupled dynamical systems (structure
learning), which has proved useful in neuroscience research. A key focus here
is the comparison of competing models of (ie, hypotheses about) network
architectures and implicit coupling functions in terms of their Bayesian model
evidence. These methods are collectively referred to as dynamical casual
modelling (DCM). We focus on a relatively new approach that is proving
remarkably useful; namely, Bayesian model reduction (BMR), which enables rapid
evaluation and comparison of models that differ in their network architecture.
We illustrate the usefulness of these techniques through modelling
neurovascular coupling (cellular pathways linking neuronal and vascular
systems), whose function is an active focus of research in neurobiology and the
imaging of coupled neuronal systems
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