Data-Driven CFD Modeling of Turbulent Flows Through Complex Structures

The growth of computational resources in the past decades has expanded the application of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) from the traditional fields of aerodynamics and hydrodynamics to a number of new areas. Examples range from the heat and fluid flows in nuclear reactor vessels and in data centers to the turbulence flows through wind turbine farms and coastal vegetation plants. However, in these new applications complex structures are often exist (e.g., rod bundles in reactor vessels and turbines in wind farms), which makes fully resolved, first-principle based CFD modeling prohibitively expensive. This obstacle seriously impairs the predictive capability of CFD models in these applications. On the other hand, a limited amount of measurement data is often available in the systems in the above-mentioned applications. In this work we propose a data-driven, physics-based approach to perform full field inversion on the effects of the complex structures on the flow. This is achieved by assimilating observation data and numerical model prediction in an iterative Ensemble Kalman method. Based on the inversion results, the velocity and turbulence of the flow field can be obtained. A major novelty of the present contribution is the non-parametric, full field inversion approach adopted, which is in contrast to the inference of coefficient in the ad hoc models often practiced in previous works. The merits of the proposed approach are demonstrated on the flow past a porous disk by using both synthetic data and real experimental measurements. The spatially varying drag forces of the porous disk on the flow are inferred. The proposed approach has the potential to be used in the monitoring of complex system in the above mentioned applications

Quantification of Uncertainties in Turbulence Modeling: A Comparison of Physics-Based and Random Matrix Theoretic Approaches

Numerical models based on Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations are widely used in engineering turbulence modeling. However, the RANS predictions have large model-form uncertainties for many complex flows. Quantification of these large uncertainties originating from the modeled Reynolds stresses has attracted attention in turbulence modeling community. Recently, a physics-based Bayesian framework for quantifying model-form uncertainties has been proposed with successful applications to several flows. Nonetheless, how to specify proper priors without introducing unwarranted, artificial information remains challenging to the current form of the physics-based approach. Another recently proposed method based on random matrix theory provides the prior distributions with the maximum entropy, which is an alternative for model-form uncertainty quantification in RANS simulations. In this work, we utilize the random matrix theoretic approach to assess and possibly improve the specification of priors used in the physics-based approach. The numerical results show that, to achieve maximum entropy in the prior of Reynolds stresses, the perturbations of shape parameters in Barycentric coordinates are normally distributed. Moreover, the perturbations of the turbulence kinetic energy should conform to log-normal distributions. Finally, it sheds light on how large the variance of each physical variable should be compared with each other to achieve the approximate maximum entropy prior. The conclusion can be used as a guidance for specifying proper priors in the physics-based, Bayesian uncertainty quantification framework.Comment: 38 pages, 10 figure

A Physics Informed Machine Learning Approach for Reconstructing Reynolds Stress Modeling Discrepancies Based on DNS Data

Turbulence modeling is a critical component in numerical simulations of industrial flows based on Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations. However, after decades of efforts in the turbulence modeling community, universally applicable RANS models with predictive capabilities are still lacking. Recently, data-driven methods have been proposed as a promising alternative to the traditional approaches of turbulence model development. In this work we propose a data-driven, physics-informed machine learning approach for predicting discrepancies in RANS modeled Reynolds stresses. The discrepancies are formulated as functions of the mean flow features. By using a modern machine learning technique based on random forests, the discrepancy functions are first trained with benchmark flow data and then used to predict Reynolds stresses discrepancies in new flows. The method is used to predict the Reynolds stresses in the flow over periodic hills by using two training flow scenarios of increasing difficulties: (1) the flow in the same periodic hills geometry yet at a lower Reynolds number, and (2) the flow in a different hill geometry with a similar recirculation zone. Excellent predictive performances were observed in both scenarios, demonstrating the merits of the proposed method. Improvement of RANS modeled Reynolds stresses enabled by the proposed method is an important step towards predictive turbulence modeling, where the ultimate goal is to predict the quantities of interest (e.g., velocity field, drag, lift) more accurately by solving RANS equations with the Reynolds stresses obtained therefrom.Comment: 36 pages, 1 figure

Data-augmented modeling of intracranial pressure

Precise management of patients with cerebral diseases often requires intracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring, which is highly invasive and requires a specialized ICU setting. The ability to noninvasively estimate ICP is highly compelling as an alternative to, or screening for, invasive ICP measurement. Most existing approaches for noninvasive ICP estimation aim to build a regression function that maps noninvasive measurements to an ICP estimate using statistical learning techniques. These data-based approaches have met limited success, likely because the amount of training data needed is onerous for this complex applications. In this work, we discuss an alternative strategy that aims to better utilize noninvasive measurement data by leveraging mechanistic understanding of physiology. Specifically, we developed a Bayesian framework that combines a multiscale model of intracranial physiology with noninvasive measurements of cerebral blood flow using transcranial Doppler. Virtual experiments with synthetic data are conducted to verify and analyze the proposed framework. A preliminary clinical application study on two patients is also performed in which we demonstrate the ability of this method to improve ICP prediction.Comment: 26 pages, 8 figure

Propagation of Input Uncertainty in Presence of Model-Form Uncertainty: A Multi-fidelity Approach for CFD Applications

Proper quantification and propagation of uncertainties in computational simulations are of critical importance. This issue is especially challenging for CFD applications. A particular obstacle for uncertainty quantifications in CFD problems is the large model discrepancies associated with the CFD models used for uncertainty propagation. Neglecting or improperly representing the model discrepancies leads to inaccurate and distorted uncertainty distribution for the Quantities of Interest. High-fidelity models, being accurate yet expensive, can accommodate only a small ensemble of simulations and thus lead to large interpolation errors and/or sampling errors; low-fidelity models can propagate a large ensemble, but can introduce large modeling errors. In this work, we propose a multi-model strategy to account for the influences of model discrepancies in uncertainty propagation and to reduce their impact on the predictions. Specifically, we take advantage of CFD models of multiple fidelities to estimate the model discrepancies associated with the lower-fidelity model in the parameter space. A Gaussian process is adopted to construct the model discrepancy function, and a Bayesian approach is used to infer the discrepancies and corresponding uncertainties in the regions of the parameter space where the high-fidelity simulations are not performed. The proposed multi-model strategy combines information from models with different fidelities and computational costs, and is of particular relevance for CFD applications, where a hierarchy of models with a wide range of complexities exists. Several examples of relevance to CFD applications are performed to demonstrate the merits of the proposed strategy. Simulation results suggest that, by combining low- and high-fidelity models, the proposed approach produces better results than what either model can achieve individually.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figure

Incorporating Prior Knowledge for Quantifying and Reducing Model-Form Uncertainty in RANS Simulations

Simulations based on Reynolds-Averaged Navier--Stokes (RANS) models have been used to support high-consequence decisions related to turbulent flows. Apart from the deterministic model predictions, the decision makers are often equally concerned about the predictions confidence. Among the uncertainties in RANS simulations, the model-form uncertainty is an important or even a dominant source. Therefore, quantifying and reducing the model-form uncertainties in RANS simulations are of critical importance to make risk-informed decisions. Researchers in statistics communities have made efforts on this issue by considering numerical models as black boxes. However, this physics-neutral approach is not a most efficient use of data, and is not practical for most engineering problems. Recently, we proposed an open-box, Bayesian framework for quantifying and reducing model-form uncertainties in RANS simulations by incorporating observation data and physics-prior knowledge. It can incorporate the information from the vast body of existing empirical knowledge with mathematical rigor, which enables a more efficient usage of data. In this work, we examine the merits of incorporating various types of prior knowledge in the uncertainties quantification and reduction in RANS simulations. The result demonstrates that informative physics-based prior plays an important role in improving the quantification of model-form uncertainties, particularly when the observation data are limited. Moreover, it suggests that the proposed Bayesian framework is an effective way to incorporate empirical knowledge from various sources

A Random Matrix Approach for Quantifying Model-Form Uncertainties in Turbulence Modeling

With the ever-increasing use of Reynolds-Averaged Navier--Stokes (RANS) simulations in mission-critical applications, the quantification of model-form uncertainty in RANS models has attracted attention in the turbulence modeling community. Recently, a physics-based, nonparametric approach for quantifying model-form uncertainty in RANS simulations has been proposed, where Reynolds stresses are projected to physically meaningful dimensions and perturbations are introduced only in the physically realizable limits. However, a challenge associated with this approach is to assess the amount of information introduced in the prior distribution and to avoid imposing unwarranted constraints. In this work we propose a random matrix approach for quantifying model-form uncertainties in RANS simulations with the realizability of the Reynolds stress guaranteed. Furthermore, the maximum entropy principle is used to identify the probability distribution that satisfies the constraints from available information but without introducing artificial constraints. We demonstrate that the proposed approach is able to ensure the realizability of the Reynolds stress, albeit in a different manner from the physics-based approach. Monte Carlo sampling of the obtained probability distribution is achieved by using polynomial chaos expansion to map independent Gaussian random fields to the Reynolds stress random field with the marginal distributions and correlation structures as specified. Numerical simulations on a typical flow with separation have shown physically reasonable results, which verifies the proposed approach. Therefore, the proposed method is a promising alternative to the physics-based approach for model-form uncertainty quantification of RANS simulations. The method explored in this work is general and can be extended to other complex physical systems in applied mechanics and engineering.Comment: 42 pages, 10 figure

Inversion of Tsunamis Characteristics from Sediment Deposits Based on Ensemble Kalman Filtering

Sediment deposits are the only leftover records from paleo tsunami events. Therefore, inverse modeling method based on the information contained in the deposit is an indispensable way of deciphering the quantitative characteristics of the tsunamis, e.g., the flow speed and the flow depth. While several models have been proposed to perform tsunami inversion, i.e., to infer the tsunami characteristics based on the sediment deposits, the existing methods lack mathematical rigorousness and are not able to account for uncertainties in the inferred quantities. In this work, we propose an inversion scheme based on Ensemble Kalman Filtering (EnKF) to infer tsunami characteristics from sediment deposits. In contrast to traditional data assimilation methods using EnKF, a novelty of the current work is that we augment the system state to include both the physical variables (sediment fluxes) that are observable and the unknown parameters (flow speed and flow depth) to be inferred. Based on the rigorous Bayesian inference theory, the inversion scheme provides quantified uncertainties on the inferred quantities, which clearly distinguishes the present method with existing schemes for tsunami inversion. Two test cases with synthetic observation data are used to verify the proposed inversion scheme. Numerical results show that the tsunami characteristics inferred from the sediment deposit information have a favorable agreement with the truths, which demonstrated the merits of the proposed tsunami inversion scheme.Comment: 38 pages, 10 figure

A Bi-fidelity Ensemble Kalman Method for PDE-Constrained Inverse Problems

Mathematical modeling and simulation of complex physical systems based on partial differential equations (PDEs) have been widely used in engineering and industrial applications. To enable reliable predictions, it is crucial yet challenging to calibrate the model by inferring unknown parameters/fields (e.g., boundary conditions, mechanical properties, and operating parameters) from sparse and noisy measurements, which is known as a PDE-constrained inverse problem. In this work, we develop a novel bi-fidelity (BF) ensemble Kalman inversion method to tackle this challenge, leveraging the accuracy of high-fidelity models and the efficiency of low-fidelity models. The core concept is to build a BF model with a limited number of high-fidelity samples for efficient forward propagations in the iterative ensemble Kalman inversion. Compared to existing inversion techniques, salient features of the proposed methods can be summarized as follow: (1) achieving the accuracy of high-fidelity models but at the cost of low-fidelity models, (2) being robust and derivative-free, and (3) being code non-intrusive, enabling ease of deployment for different applications. The proposed method has been assessed by three inverse problems that are relevant to fluid dynamics, including both parameter estimation and field inversion. The numerical results demonstrate the excellent performance of the proposed BF ensemble Kalman inversion approach, which drastically outperforms the standard Kalman inversion in terms of efficiency and accuracy.Comment: 33 pages. 9 figure

A Priori Assessment of Prediction Confidence for Data-Driven Turbulence Modeling

Although Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations are still the dominant tool for engineering design and analysis applications involving turbulent flows, standard RANS models are known to be unreliable in many flows of engineering relevance, including flows with separation, strong pressure gradients or mean flow curvature. With increasing amounts of 3-dimensional experimental data and high fidelity simulation data from Large Eddy Simulation (LES) and Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS), data-driven turbulence modeling has become a promising approach to increase the predictive capability of RANS simulations. Recently, a data-driven turbulence modeling approach via machine learning has been proposed to predict the Reynolds stress anisotropy of a given flow based on high fidelity data from closely related flows. In this work, the closeness of different flows is investigated to assess the prediction confidence a priori. Specifically, the Mahalanobis distance and the kernel density estimation (KDE) technique are used as metrics to quantify the distance between flow data sets in feature space. The flow over periodic hills at Re=10595 is used as the test set and seven flows with different configurations are individually used as training set. The results show that the prediction error of the Reynolds stress anisotropy is positively correlated with Mahalanobis distance and KDE distance, demonstrating that both extrapolation metrics can be used to estimate the prediction confidence a priori. A quantitative comparison using correlation coefficients shows that the Mahalanobis distance is less accurate in estimating the prediction confidence than KDE distance. The extrapolation metrics introduced in this work and the corresponding analysis provide an approach to aid in the choice of the data source and to assess the prediction confidence for data-driven turbulence modeling.Comment: 31 pages, 13 figure