Uncertainty Quantification of geochemical and mechanical compaction in layered sedimentary basins

In this work we propose an Uncertainty Quantification methodology for sedimentary basins evolution under mechanical and geochemical compaction processes, which we model as a coupled, time-dependent, non-linear, monodimensional (depth-only) system of PDEs with uncertain parameters. While in previous works (Formaggia et al. 2013, Porta et al., 2014) we assumed a simplified depositional history with only one material, in this work we consider multi-layered basins, in which each layer is characterized by a different material, and hence by different properties. This setting requires several improvements with respect to our earlier works, both concerning the deterministic solver and the stochastic discretization. On the deterministic side, we replace the previous fixed-point iterative solver with a more efficient Newton solver at each step of the time-discretization. On the stochastic side, the multi-layered structure gives rise to discontinuities in the dependence of the state variables on the uncertain parameters, that need an appropriate treatment for surrogate modeling techniques, such as sparse grids, to be effective. We propose an innovative methodology to this end which relies on a change of coordinate system to align the discontinuities of the target function within the random parameter space. The reference coordinate system is built upon exploiting physical features of the problem at hand. We employ the locations of material interfaces, which display a smooth dependence on the random parameters and are therefore amenable to sparse grid polynomial approximations. We showcase the capabilities of our numerical methodologies through two synthetic test cases. In particular, we show that our methodology reproduces with high accuracy multi-modal probability density functions displayed by target state variables (e.g., porosity).Comment: 25 pages, 30 figure

Structure preserving stochastic Galerkin methods for Fokker-Planck equations with background interactions

This paper is devoted to the construction of structure preserving stochastic Galerkin schemes for Fokker-Planck type equations with uncertainties and interacting with an external distribution, that we refer to as a background distribution. The proposed methods are capable to preserve physical properties in the approximation of statistical moments of the problem like nonnegativity, entropy dissipation and asymptotic behaviour of the expected solution. The introduced methods are second order accurate in the transient regimes and high order for large times. We present applications of the developed schemes to the case of fixed and dynamic background distribution for models of collective behaviour

A combination technique for optimal control problems constrained by random PDEs

We present a combination technique based on mixed differences of both spatial approximations and quadrature formulae for the stochastic variables to solve efficiently a class of Optimal Control Problems (OCPs) constrained by random partial differential equations. The method requires to solve the OCP for several low-fidelity spatial grids and quadrature formulae for the objective functional. All the computed solutions are then linearly combined to get a final approximation which, under suitable regularity assumptions, preserves the same accuracy of fine tensor product approximations, while drastically reducing the computational cost. The combination technique involves only tensor product quadrature formulae, thus the discretized OCPs preserve the convexity of the continuous OCP. Hence, the combination technique avoids the inconveniences of Multilevel Monte Carlo and/or sparse grids approaches, but remains suitable for high dimensional problems. The manuscript presents an a-priori procedure to choose the most important mixed differences and an asymptotic complexity analysis, which states that the asymptotic complexity is exclusively determined by the spatial solver. Numerical experiments validate the results.Comment: 25 pages, 4 figure

Goal-oriented error control of stochastic system approximations using metric-based anisotropic adaptations

International audienceThe simulation of complex nonlinear engineering systems such as compressible fluid flows may be targeted to make more efficient and accurate the approximation of a specific (scalar) quantity of interest of the system. Putting aside modeling error and parametric uncertainty, this may be achieved by combining goal-oriented error estimates and adaptive anisotropic spatial mesh refinements. To this end, an elegant and efficient framework is the one of (Riemannian) metric-based adaptation where a goal-based a priori error estimation is used as indicator for adaptivity. This work proposes a novel extension of this approach to the case of aforementioned system approximations bearing a stochastic component. In this case, an optimisation problem leading to the best control of the distinct sources of errors is formulated in the continuous framework of the Riemannian metric space. Algorithmic developments are also presented in order to quantify and adaptively adjust the error components in the deterministic and stochastic approximation spaces. The capability of the proposed method is tested on various problems including a supersonic scramjet inlet subject to geometrical and operational parametric uncertainties. It is demonstrated to accurately capture discontinuous features of stochastic compressible flows impacting pressure-related quantities of interest, while balancing computational budget and refinements in both spaces

Sparse recovery in bounded Riesz systems with applications to numerical methods for PDEs

We study sparse recovery with structured random measurement matrices having independent, identically distributed, and uniformly bounded rows and with a nontrivial covariance structure. This class of matrices arises from random sampling of bounded Riesz systems and generalizes random partial Fourier matrices. Our main result improves the currently available results for the null space and restricted isometry properties of such random matrices. The main novelty of our analysis is a new upper bound for the expectation of the supremum of a Bernoulli process associated with a restricted isometry constant. We apply our result to prove new performance guarantees for the CORSING method, a recently introduced numerical approximation technique for partial differential equations (PDEs) based on compressive sensing