Marco Tezzele

Nicola Demo, Marco Tezzele, Andrea Mola et al.

In this contribution, we present the results of the application of a parameter space reduction methodology based on active subspaces to the hull hydrodynamic design problem. Several parametric deformations of an initial hull shape are considered to assess the influence of the shape parameters considered on the hull total drag. The hull resistance is typically computed by means of numerical simulations of the hydrodynamic flow past the ship. Given the high number of parameters involved - which might result in a high number of time consuming hydrodynamic simulations - assessing whether the parameters space can be reduced would lead to considerable computational cost reduction. Thus, the main idea of this work is to employ the active subspaces to identify possible lower dimensional structures in the parameter space, or to verify the parameter distribution in the position of the control points. To this end, a fully automated procedure has been implemented to produce several small shape perturbations of an original hull CAD geometry which are then used to carry out high-fidelity flow simulations and collect data for the active subspaces analysis. To achieve full automation of the open source pipeline described, both the free form deformation methodology employed for the hull perturbations and the solver based on unsteady potential flow theory, with fully nonlinear free surface treatment, are directly interfaced with CAD data structures and operate using IGES vendor-neutral file formats as input files. The computational cost of the fluid dynamic simulations is further reduced through the application of dynamic mode decomposition to reconstruct the steady state total drag value given only few initial snapshots of the simulation. The active subspaces analysis is here applied to the geometry of the DTMB-5415 naval combatant hull, which is a common benchmark in ship hydrodynamics simulations.

Matteo Torzoni, Marco Tezzele, Stefano Mariani et al.

The digital twin concept represents an appealing opportunity to advance condition-based and predictive maintenance paradigms for civil engineering systems, thus allowing reduced lifecycle costs, increased system safety, and increased system availability. This work proposes a predictive digital twin approach to the health monitoring, maintenance, and management planning of civil engineering structures. The asset-twin coupled dynamical system is encoded employing a probabilistic graphical model, which allows all relevant sources of uncertainty to be taken into account. In particular, the time-repeating observations-to-decisions flow is modeled using a dynamic Bayesian network. Real-time structural health diagnostics are provided by assimilating sensed data with deep learning models. The digital twin state is continually updated in a sequential Bayesian inference fashion. This is then exploited to inform the optimal planning of maintenance and management actions within a dynamic decision-making framework. A preliminary offline phase involves the population of training datasets through a reduced-order numerical model and the computation of a health-dependent control policy. The strategy is assessed on two synthetic case studies, involving a cantilever beam and a railway bridge, demonstrating the dynamic decision-making capabilities of health-aware digital twins.

Marco Tezzele, Francesco Ballarin, Gianluigi Rozza

In this chapter we introduce a combined parameter and model reduction methodology and present its application to the efficient numerical estimation of a pressure drop in a set of deformed carotids. The aim is to simulate a wide range of possible occlusions after the bifurcation of the carotid. A parametric description of the admissible deformations, based on radial basis functions interpolation, is introduced. Since the parameter space may be very large, the first step in the combined reduction technique is to look for active subspaces in order to reduce the parameter space dimension. Then, we rely on model order reduction methods over the lower dimensional parameter subspace, based on a POD-Galerkin approach, to further reduce the required computational effort and enhance computational efficiency.

Gianluigi Rozza, Haris Malik, Nicola Demo et al.

Reduced order modeling has gained considerable attention in recent decades owing to the advantages offered in reduced computational times and multiple solutions for parametric problems. The focus of this manuscript is the application of model order reduction techniques in various engineering and scientific applications including but not limited to mechanical, naval and aeronautical engineering. The focus here is kept limited to computational fluid mechanics and related applications. The advances in the reduced order modeling with proper orthogonal decomposition and reduced basis method are presented as well as a brief discussion of dynamic mode decomposition and also some present advances in the parameter space reduction. Here, an overview of the challenges faced and possible solutions are presented with examples from various problems.

Nicola Demo, Marco Tezzele, Gianluca Gustin et al.

Shape optimization is a challenging task in many engineering fields, since the numerical solutions of parametric system may be computationally expensive. This work presents a novel optimization procedure based on reduced order modeling, applied to a naval hull design problem. The advantage introduced by this method is that the solution for a specific parameter can be expressed as the combination of few numerical solutions computed at properly chosen parametric points. The reduced model is built using the proper orthogonal decomposition with interpolation (PODI) method. We use the free form deformation (FFD) for an automated perturbation of the shape, and the finite volume method to simulate the multiphase incompressible flow around the deformed hulls. Further computational reduction is done by the dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) technique: from few high dimensional snapshots, the system evolution is reconstructed and the final state of the simulation is faithfully approximated. Finally the global optimization algorithm iterates over the reduced space: the approximated drag and lift coefficients are projected to the hull surface, hence the resistance is evaluated for the new hulls until the convergence to the optimal shape is achieved. We will present the results obtained applying the described procedure to a typical Fincantieri cruise ship.

Marco Tezzele, Nicola Demo, Andrea Mola et al.

In this work we present an integrated computational pipeline involving several model order reduction techniques for industrial and applied mathematics, as emerging technology for product and/or process design procedures. Its data-driven nature and its modularity allow an easy integration into existing pipelines. We describe a complete optimization framework with automated geometrical parameterization, reduction of the dimension of the parameter space, and non-intrusive model order reduction such as dynamic mode decomposition and proper orthogonal decomposition with interpolation. Moreover several industrial examples are illustrated.

Nicola Demo, Marco Tezzele, Gianluigi Rozza

In the present work, we introduce a novel approach to enhance the precision of reduced order models by exploiting a multi-fidelity perspective and DeepONets. Reduced models provide a real-time numerical approximation by simplifying the original model. The error introduced by the such operation is usually neglected and sacrificed in order to reach a fast computation. We propose to couple the model reduction to a machine learning residual learning, such that the above-mentioned error can be learned by a neural network and inferred for new predictions. We emphasize that the framework maximizes the exploitation of high-fidelity information, using it for building the reduced order model and for learning the residual. In this work, we explore the integration of proper orthogonal decomposition (POD), and gappy POD for sensors data, with the recent DeepONet architecture. Numerical investigations for a parametric benchmark function and a nonlinear parametric Navier-Stokes problem are presented.

Alessandro Veneziani, Annalisa Quaini, Marco Tezzele et al.

The combination of data and models, enhanced by AI methodologies, leads to the paradigm called Digital Twins. This concept is expected to bring unprecedented support to personalized medicine. The combination of mathematical and numerical models with diagnostic devices that provide patient-specific knowledge in a bidirectional framework can be a formidable decision support for clinicians. In this paper, we consider some mathematical aspects of constructing a Digital Twin to prevent and treat Coronary Artery Disease. The keywords for the bidirectional communication between twins in our system are (i) Data Assimilation and (ii) Probabilistic Graphic Models. In particular, a quantity of paramount interest in the evaluation and prognosis of Coronary Artery Disease is the Wall Shear Stress, i.e., the tangential component of normal stress on the arterial wall. By considering steps for the personalization and the synthesis of Wall Shear Stress estimation, we propose a mathematical roadmap for constructing a Digital Twin system that could help prevent infarcts, one of the most lethal diseases in the world.

Eugenio Varetti, Matteo Torzoni, Marco Tezzele et al.

This work shows how adaptivity can enhance value realization of digital twins in civil engineering. We focus on adapting the state transition models within digital twins represented through probabilistic graphical models. The bi-directional interaction between the physical and virtual domains is modeled using dynamic Bayesian networks. By treating state transition probabilities as random variables endowed with conjugate priors, we enable hierarchical online learning of transition dynamics from a state to another through effortless Bayesian updates. We provide the mathematical framework to account for a larger class of distributions with respect to the current literature. To compute dynamic policies with precision updates we solve parametric Markov decision processes through reinforcement learning. The proposed adaptive digital twin framework enjoys enhanced personalization, increased robustness, and improved cost-effectiveness. We assess our approach on a case study involving structural health monitoring and maintenance planning of a railway bridge.

Marco Tezzele, Filippo Salmoiraghi, Andrea Mola et al.

We present the results of the first application in the naval architecture field of a methodology based on active subspaces properties for parameters space reduction. The physical problem considered is the one of the simulation of the hydrodynamic flow past the hull of a ship advancing in calm water. Such problem is extremely relevant at the preliminary stages of the ship design, when several flow simulations are typically carried out by the engineers to assess the dependence of the hull total resistance on the geometrical parameters of the hull, and others related with flows and hull properties. Given the high number of geometric and physical parameters which might affect the total ship drag, the main idea of this work is to employ the active subspaces properties to identify possible lower dimensional structures in the parameter space. Thus, a fully automated procedure has been implemented to produce several small shape perturbations of an original hull CAD geometry, in order to exploit the resulting shapes to run high fidelity flow simulations with different structural and physical parameters as well, and then collect data for the active subspaces analysis. The free form deformation procedure used to morph the hull shapes, the high fidelity solver based on potential flow theory with fully nonlinear free surface treatment, and the active subspaces analysis tool employed in this work have all been developed and integrated within SISSA math- Lab as open source tools. The contribution will also discuss several details of the implementation of such tools, as well as the results of their application to the selected target engineering problem.

Francesco Romor, Marco Tezzele, Gianluigi Rozza

Parameter space reduction has been proved to be a crucial tool to speed-up the execution of many numerical tasks such as optimization, inverse problems, sensitivity analysis, and surrogate models' design, especially when in presence of high-dimensional parametrized systems. In this work we propose a new method called local active subspaces (LAS), which explores the synergies of active subspaces with supervised clustering techniques in order to carry out a more efficient dimension reduction in the parameter space. The clustering is performed without losing the input-output relations by introducing a distance metric induced by the global active subspace. We present two possible clustering algorithms: K-medoids and a hierarchical top-down approach, which is able to impose a variety of subdivision criteria specifically tailored for parameter space reduction tasks. This method is particularly useful for the community working on surrogate modelling. Frequently, the parameter space presents subdomains where the objective function of interest varies less on average along different directions. So, it could be approximated more accurately if restricted to those subdomains and studied separately. We tested the new method over several numerical experiments of increasing complexity, we show how to deal with vectorial outputs, and how to classify the different regions with respect to the local active subspace dimension. Employing this classification technique as a preprocessing step in the parameter space, or output space in case of vectorial outputs, brings remarkable results for the purpose of surrogate modelling.

Francesco Romor, Marco Tezzele, Gianluigi Rozza

Gaussian processes are employed for non-parametric regression in a Bayesian setting. They generalize linear regression, embedding the inputs in a latent manifold inside an infinite-dimensional reproducing kernel Hilbert space. We can augment the inputs with the observations of low-fidelity models in order to learn a more expressive latent manifold and thus increment the model's accuracy. This can be realized recursively with a chain of Gaussian processes with incrementally higher fidelity. We would like to extend these multi-fidelity model realizations to case studies affected by a high-dimensional input space but with low intrinsic dimensionality. In this cases physical supported or purely numerical low-order models are still affected by the curse of dimensionality when queried for responses. When the model's gradient information is provided, the presence of an active subspace can be exploited to design low-fidelity response surfaces and thus enable Gaussian process multi-fidelity regression, without the need to perform new simulations. This is particularly useful in the case of data scarcity. In this work we present a multi-fidelity approach involving active subspaces and we test it on two different high-dimensional benchmarks.

Nicola Demo, Marco Tezzele, Andrea Mola et al.

In the reduced order modeling (ROM) framework, the solution of a parametric partial differential equation is approximated by combining the high-fidelity solutions of the problem at hand for several properly chosen configurations. Examples of the ROM application, in the naval field, can be found in [31, 24]. Mandatory ingredient for the ROM methods is the relation between the high-fidelity solutions and the parameters. Dealing with geometrical parameters, especially in the industrial context, this relation may be unknown and not trivial (simulations over hand morphed geometries) or very complex (high number of parameters or many nested morphing techniques). To overcome these scenarios, we propose in this contribution an efficient and complete data-driven framework involving ROM techniques for shape design and optimization, extending the pipeline presented in [7]. By applying the singular value decomposition (SVD) to the points coordinates defining the hull geometry - assuming the topology is inaltered by the deformation -, we are able to compute the optimal space which the deformed geometries belong to, hence using the modal coefficients as the new parameters we can reconstruct the parametric formulation of the domain. Finally the output of interest is approximated using the proper orthogonal decomposition with interpolation technique. To conclude, we apply this framework to a naval shape design problem where the bulbous bow is morphed to reduce the total resistance of the ship advancing in calm water.

Andrea Mola, Marco Tezzele, Mahmoud Gadalla et al.

In this work, we present the results of a ship propeller design optimization campaign carried out in the framework of the research project PRELICA, funded by the Friuli Venezia Giulia regional government. The main idea of this work is to operate on a multidisciplinary level to identify propeller shapes that lead to reduced tip vortex-induced pressure and increased efficiency without altering the thrust. First, a specific tool for the bottom-up construction of parameterized propeller blade geometries has been developed. The algorithm proposed operates with a user defined number of arbitrary shaped or NACA airfoil sections, and employs arbitrary degree NURBS to represent the chord, pitch, skew and rake distribution as a function of the blade radial coordinate. The control points of such curves have been modified to generate, in a fully automated way, a family of blade geometries depending on as many as 20 shape parameters. Such geometries have then been used to carry out potential flow simulations with the Boundary Element Method based software PROCAL. Given the high number of parameters considered, such a preliminary stage allowed for a fast evaluation of the performance of several hundreds of shapes. In addition, the data obtained from the potential flow simulation allowed for the application of a parameter space reduction methodology based on active subspaces (AS) property, which suggested that the main propeller performance indices are, at a first but rather accurate approximation, only depending on a single parameter which is a linear combination of all the original geometric ones. AS analysis has also been used to carry out a constrained optimization exploiting response surface method in the reduced parameter space, and a sensitivity analysis based on such surrogate model. The few selected shapes were finally used to set up high fidelity RANS simulations and select an optimal shape.

Marco Tezzele, Nicola Demo, Gianluigi Rozza

We propose a numerical pipeline for shape optimization in naval engineering involving two different non-intrusive reduced order method (ROM) techniques. Such methods are proper orthogonal decomposition with interpolation (PODI) and dynamic mode decomposition (DMD). The ROM proposed will be enhanced by active subspaces (AS) as a pre-processing tool that reduce the parameter space dimension and suggest better sampling of the input space. We will focus on geometrical parameters describing the perturbation of a reference bulbous bow through the free form deformation (FFD) technique. The ROM are based on a finite volume method (FV) to simulate the multi-phase incompressible flow around the deformed hulls. In previous works we studied the reduction of the parameter space in naval engineering through AS [38, 10] focusing on different parts of the hull. PODI and DMD have been employed for the study of fast and reliable shape optimization cycles on a bulbous bow in [9]. The novelty of this work is the simultaneous reduction of both the input parameter space and the output fields of interest. In particular AS will be trained computing the total drag resistance of a hull advancing in calm water and its gradients with respect to the input parameters. DMD will improve the performance of each simulation of the campaign using only few snapshots of the solution fields in order to predict the regime state of the system. Finally PODI will interpolate the coefficients of the POD decomposition of the output fields for a fast approximation of all the fields at new untried parameters given by the optimization algorithm. This will result in a non-intrusive data-driven numerical optimization pipeline completely independent with respect to the full order solver used and it can be easily incorporated into existing numerical pipelines, from the reference CAD to the optimal shape.

Marco Tezzele, Nicola Demo, Mahmoud Gadalla et al.

We present the results of the application of a parameter space reduction methodology based on active subspaces (AS) to the hull hydrodynamic design problem. Several parametric deformations of an initial hull shape are considered to assess the influence of the shape parameters on the hull wave resistance. Such problem is relevant at the preliminary stages of the ship design, when several flow simulations are carried out by the engineers to establish a certain sensibility with respect to the parameters, which might result in a high number of time consuming hydrodynamic simulations. The main idea of this work is to employ the AS to identify possible lower dimensional structures in the parameter space. The complete pipeline involves the use of free form deformation to parametrize and deform the hull shape, the high fidelity solver based on unsteady potential flow theory with fully nonlinear free surface treatment directly interfaced with CAD, the use of dynamic mode decomposition to reconstruct the final steady state given only few snapshots of the simulation, and the reduction of the parameter space by AS, and shared subspace. Response surface method is used to minimize the total drag.