Rethinking Sensitivity Analysis Of Nuclear Simulations With Topology

Rethinking Sensitivity Analysis Of Nuclear Simulations With Topology
Dan Maljovec, Bei Wang, Paul Rosen, Andrea Alfonsi, Giovanni Pastore, Cristian Rabiti, and Valerio Pascucci
IEEE Pacific Visualization Symposium, 2016

Abstract

In nuclear engineering, understanding the safety margins of the nuclear reactor via simulations is arguably of paramount importance in predicting and preventing nuclear accidents. It is therefore crucial to perform sensitivity analysis to understand how changes in the model inputs affect the outputs. Modern nuclear simulation tools rely on numerical representations of the sensitivity information – inherently lacking in visual encodings – offering limited effectiveness in communicating and exploring the generated data. In this paper, we design a framework for sensitivity analysis and visualization of multidimensional nuclear simulation data using partition-based, topology-inspired regression models and report on its efficacy. We rely on the established Morse-Smale regression technique, which allows us to partition the domain into monotonic regions where easily interpretable linear models can be used to assess the influence of inputs on the output variability. The underlying computation is augmented with an intuitive and interactive visual design to effectively communicate sensitivity information to the users. Our framework is being deployed into the multi-purpose probabilistic risk assessment and uncertainty quantification framework RAVEN (Reactor Analysis and Virtual Control Environment). We evaluate our framework using an simulation dataset studying nuclear fuel performance.

Downloads

Download the Paper Download the BiBTeX

Citation

Dan Maljovec, Bei Wang, Paul Rosen, Andrea Alfonsi, Giovanni Pastore, Cristian Rabiti, and Valerio Pascucci. Rethinking Sensitivity Analysis Of Nuclear Simulations With Topology. IEEE Pacific Visualization Symposium, 2016.

Bibtex


@inproceedings{maljovec2016rethinking,
  title = {Rethinking Sensitivity Analysis of Nuclear Simulations with Topology},
  author = {Maljovec, Dan and Wang, Bei and Rosen, Paul and Alfonsi, Andrea and Pastore,
    Giovanni and Rabiti, Cristian and Pascucci, Valerio},
  booktitle = {IEEE Pacific Visualization Symposium},
  series = {PacificVis},
  pages = {64--71},
  year = {2016},
  abstract = {In nuclear engineering, understanding the safety margins of the nuclear
    reactor via simulations is arguably of paramount importance in predicting and preventing
    nuclear accidents. It is therefore crucial to perform sensitivity analysis to understand
    how changes in the model inputs affect the outputs. Modern nuclear simulation tools rely
    on numerical representations of the sensitivity information - inherently lacking in
    visual encodings - offering limited effectiveness in communicating and exploring the
    generated data. In this paper, we design a framework for sensitivity analysis and
    visualization of multidimensional nuclear simulation data using partition-based,
    topology-inspired regression models and report on its efficacy. We rely on the
    established Morse-Smale regression technique, which allows us to partition the domain
    into monotonic regions where easily interpretable linear models can be used to assess
    the influence of inputs on the output variability. The underlying computation is
    augmented with an intuitive and interactive visual design to effectively communicate
    sensitivity information to the users. Our framework is being deployed into the
    multi-purpose probabilistic risk assessment and uncertainty quantification framework
    RAVEN (Reactor Analysis and Virtual Control Environment). We evaluate our framework
    using an simulation dataset studying nuclear fuel performance.}
}