Joakim Beck

Joakim Beck, Ben Mansour Dia, Luis FR Espath et al.

In calculating expected information gain in optimal Bayesian experimental design, the computation of the inner loop in the classical double-loop Monte Carlo requires a large number of samples and suffers from underflow if the number of samples is small. These drawbacks can be avoided by using an importance sampling approach. We present a computationally efficient method for optimal Bayesian experimental design that introduces importance sampling based on the Laplace method to the inner loop. We derive the optimal values for the method parameters in which the average computational cost is minimized according to the desired error tolerance. We use three numerical examples to demonstrate the computational efficiency of our method compared with the classical double-loop Monte Carlo, and a more recent single-loop Monte Carlo method that uses the Laplace method as an approximation of the return value of the inner loop. The first example is a scalar problem that is linear in the uncertain parameter. The second example is a nonlinear scalar problem. The third example deals with the optimal sensor placement for an electrical impedance tomography experiment to recover the fiber orientation in laminate composites.

Joakim Beck, Lorenzo Tamellini, Raúl Tempone

This paper proposes an extension of the Multi-Index Stochastic Collocation (MISC) method for forward uncertainty quantification (UQ) problems in computational domains of shape other than a square or cube, by exploiting isogeometric analysis (IGA) techniques. Introducing IGA solvers to the MISC algorithm is very natural since they are tensor-based PDE solvers, which are precisely what is required by the MISC machinery. Moreover, the combination-technique formulation of MISC allows the straight-forward reuse of existing implementations of IGA solvers. We present numerical results to showcase the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Joakim Beck, Giancarlo Sangalli, Lorenzo Tamellini

Isogeometric Analysis (IGA) typically adopts tensor-product splines and NURBS as a basis for the approximation of the solution of PDEs. In this work, we investigate to which extent IGA solvers can benefit from the so-called sparse-grids construction in its combination technique form, which was first introduced in the early 90s in the context of the approximation of high-dimensional PDEs. The tests that we report show that, in accordance to the literature, a sparse-grid construction can indeed be useful if the solution of the PDE at hand is sufficiently smooth. Sparse grids can also be useful in the case of non-smooth solutions when some a-priori knowledge on the location of the singularities of the solution can be exploited to devise suitable non-equispaced meshes. Finally, we remark that sparse grids can be seen as a simple way to parallelize pre-existing serial IGA solvers in a straightforward fashion, which can be beneficial in many practical situations.