A Comparative Study of Uncertainty Propagation Methods for Black-Box Type Functions

Author(s):  
Sang Hoon Lee ◽  
Wei Chen

It is an important step in deign under uncertainty to select an appropriate uncertainty propagation (UP) method considering the characteristics of the engineering systems at hand, the required level of UP associated with the probabilistic design scenario, and the required accuracy and efficiency levels. Many uncertainty propagation methods have been developed in various fields, however, there is a lack of good understanding of their relative merits. In this paper, a comparative study on the performances of several UP methods, including a few recent methods that have received growing attention, is performed. The full factorial numerical integration (FFNI), the univariate dimension reduction method (UDR), and the polynomial chaos expansion (PCE) are implemented and applied to several test problems with different settings of the performance nonlinearity, distribution types of input random variables, and the magnitude of input uncertainty. The performances of those methods are compared in moment estimation, tail probability calculation, and the probability density function (PDF) construction. It is found that the FFNI with the moment matching quadrature rule shows good accuracy but the computational cost becomes prohibitive as the number of input random variables increases. The accuracy and efficiency of the UDR method for moment estimations appear to be superior when there is no significant interaction effect in the performance function. Both FFNI and UDR are very robust against the non-normality of input variables. The PCE is implemented in combination with FFNI for coefficients estimation. The PCE method is shown to be a useful approach when a complete PDF description is desired. Inverse Rosenblatt transformation is used to treat non-normal inputs of PCE, however, it is shown that the transformation may result in the degradation of accuracy of PCE. It is also shown that in black-box type of system the performance and convergence of PCE highly depend on the method adopted to estimate its coefficients.

2019 ◽  
Vol 141 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Giselle Fernández-Godino ◽  
S. Balachandar ◽  
Raphael T. Haftka

When simulations are expensive and multiple realizations are necessary, as is the case in uncertainty propagation, statistical inference, and optimization, surrogate models can achieve accurate predictions at low computational cost. In this paper, we explore options for improving the accuracy of a surrogate if the modeled phenomenon presents symmetries. These symmetries allow us to obtain free information and, therefore, the possibility of more accurate predictions. We present an analytical example along with a physical example that has parametric symmetries. Although imposing parametric symmetries in surrogate models seems to be a trivial matter, there is not a single way to do it and, furthermore, the achieved accuracy might vary. We present four different ways of using symmetry in surrogate models. Three of them are straightforward, but the fourth is original and based on an optimization of the subset of points used. The performance of the options was compared with 100 random designs of experiments (DoEs) where symmetries were not imposed. We found that each of the options to include symmetries performed the best in one or more of the studied cases and, in all cases, the errors obtained imposing symmetries were substantially smaller than the worst cases among the 100. We explore the options for using symmetries in two surrogates that present different challenges and opportunities: Kriging and linear regression. Kriging is often used as a black box; therefore, we consider approaches to include the symmetries without changes in the main code. On the other hand, since linear regression is often built by the user; owing to its simplicity, we consider also approaches that modify the linear regression basis functions to impose the symmetries.


Author(s):  
Kashif Memon

In this research paper, a new derivative-free Simpson 1/3-type quadrature scheme has been proposed for the approximation of the Riemann-Stieltjes integral (RSI). The composite form of the proposed scheme on the RSI has been derived using the concept of precision. The theorems concerning basic form, composite form, local and global errors of the new scheme have been proved theoretically. For the trivial case of the integrator in the proposed RS scheme, successful reduction to the corresponding Riemann scheme is proved. The performance of the proposed scheme has been tested by numerical experiments using MATLAB on some test problems of RS integrals from literature against some existing schemes. The computational cost, the order of accuracy and average CPU times (in seconds) of the discussed rules have been computed to demonstrate cost-effectiveness, time-efficiency and rapid convergence of the proposed scheme under similar conditions.


2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua T. Horwood ◽  
Jeffrey M. Aristoff ◽  
Navraj Singh ◽  
Aubrey B. Poore

Mathematics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (10) ◽  
pp. 923 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdul Ghafoor ◽  
Sirajul Haq ◽  
Manzoor Hussain ◽  
Poom Kumam ◽  
Muhammad Asif Jan

In this paper, a wavelet based collocation method is formulated for an approximate solution of (1 + 1)- and (1 + 2)-dimensional time fractional diffusion wave equations. The main objective of this study is to combine the finite difference method with Haar wavelets. One and two dimensional Haar wavelets are used for the discretization of a spatial operator while time fractional derivative is approximated using second order finite difference and quadrature rule. The scheme has an excellent feature that converts a time fractional partial differential equation to a system of algebraic equations which can be solved easily. The suggested technique is applied to solve some test problems. The obtained results have been compared with existing results in the literature. Also, the accuracy of the scheme has been checked by computing L 2 and L ∞ error norms. Computations validate that the proposed method produces good results, which are comparable with exact solutions and those presented before.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeong-Hoon Song ◽  
Thomas Menouillard ◽  
Alireza Tabarraei

A numerical method for dynamic failure analysis through the phantom node method is further developed. A distinct feature of this method is the use of the phantom nodes with a newly developed correction force scheme. Through this improved approach, fracture energy can be smoothly dissipated during dynamic failure processes without emanating noisy artifact stress waves. This method is implemented to the standard 4-node quadrilateral finite element; a single quadrature rule is employed with an hourglass control scheme in order to decrease computational cost and circumvent difficulties associated with the subdomain integration schemes for cracked elements. The effectiveness and robustness of this method are demonstrated with several numerical examples. In these examples, we showed the effectiveness of the described correction force scheme along with the applicability of this method to an interesting class of structural dynamic failure problems.


Author(s):  
Alessandra Cuneo ◽  
Alberto Traverso ◽  
Shahrokh Shahpar

In engineering design, uncertainty is inevitable and can cause a significant deviation in the performance of a system. Uncertainty in input parameters can be categorized into two groups: aleatory and epistemic uncertainty. The work presented here is focused on aleatory uncertainty, which can cause natural, unpredictable and uncontrollable variations in performance of the system under study. Such uncertainty can be quantified using statistical methods, but the main obstacle is often the computational cost, because the representative model is typically highly non-linear and complex. Therefore, it is necessary to have a robust tool that can perform the uncertainty propagation with as few evaluations as possible. In the last few years, different methodologies for uncertainty propagation and quantification have been proposed. The focus of this study is to evaluate four different methods to demonstrate strengths and weaknesses of each approach. The first method considered is Monte Carlo simulation, a sampling method that can give high accuracy but needs a relatively large computational effort. The second method is Polynomial Chaos, an approximated method where the probabilistic parameters of the response function are modelled with orthogonal polynomials. The third method considered is Mid-range Approximation Method. This approach is based on the assembly of multiple meta-models into one model to perform optimization under uncertainty. The fourth method is the application of the first two methods not directly to the model but to a response surface representing the model of the simulation, to decrease computational cost. All these methods have been applied to a set of analytical test functions and engineering test cases. Relevant aspects of the engineering design and analysis such as high number of stochastic variables and optimised design problem with and without stochastic design parameters were assessed. Polynomial Chaos emerges as the most promising methodology, and was then applied to a turbomachinery test case based on a thermal analysis of a high-pressure turbine disk.


Author(s):  
George H. Cheng ◽  
Adel Younis ◽  
Kambiz Haji Hajikolaei ◽  
G. Gary Wang

Mode Pursuing Sampling (MPS) was developed as a global optimization algorithm for optimization problems involving expensive black box functions. MPS has been found to be effective and efficient for problems of low dimensionality, i.e., the number of design variables is less than ten. A previous conference publication integrated the concept of trust regions into the MPS framework to create a new algorithm, TRMPS, which dramatically improved performance and efficiency for high dimensional problems. However, although TRMPS performed better than MPS, it was unproven against other established algorithms such as GA. This paper introduces an improved algorithm, TRMPS2, which incorporates guided sampling and low function value criterion to further improve algorithm performance for high dimensional problems. TRMPS2 is benchmarked against MPS and GA using a suite of test problems. The results show that TRMPS2 performs better than MPS and GA on average for high dimensional, expensive, and black box (HEB) problems.


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