Section: Overall Objectives

Our approach

A standar way a certification study may be contacted can be described as two box modelling. The first box is the physical model itself, which is composed of the 3 main elements: PDE system, mesh generation/adaptation, and discretization of the PDE (numerical scheme). The second box is the main robust certification loop which contains separate boxes involving the evaluation of the physical model, the post-processing of the output, and the exploration of the spaces of physical and stochastic parameters (uncertainties). There are some known interactions taking place in the loop which are a necessary to exploit as much as possible the potential of high order methods [66] such as e.g. $h-$/$p-$/$r-$ adaptation in the physical model w.r.t. some post-processed output value, or w.r.t. some sort of adjoint sensitivity coming from the physical parameter evolution box, etc.

As things stand today, we will not be able to take advantage of the potential of new high order numerical techniques and of hierarchical (multi-fidelity) robust certification approaches without some very aggressive adaptive methodology. Such a methodology, will require interactions between e.g. the uncertainty quantification methods and the adaptive spatial discretization, as well as with the PDE modelling part. Such a strategy cannot be developed, let alone implemented in an operational context, without completely disassembling the scheme of the two boxes, and letting all the parts (PDE system, mesh generation/adaptation, numerical scheme, evalutaion of the physical model, the post processing of the output, exploration of the spaces of physical and stochastic parameters) interact together. This is what we want to do in CARDAMOM $$. We have the unique combination of skills which allows to explore such an avenue: PDE analysis, high order numerical discretizations, mesh generation and adaptation, optimization and uncertainty quantification, specific issues related to the applications considered.

Our strength is also our unique chance of exploring the interactions between all the parts. We will try to answer some fundamental questions related to the following aspects

• What are the relations between PDE model accuracy (asymptotic error) and scheme accuracy, and how to control, en possibly exploit these relations to minimize the error for a given computational effort ;

• How to devise and implement adaptation techniques ($r-$, $h-$, and $p-$) for time dependent problems while guaranteeing an efficient time marching procedure (minimize CPU time at constant error) ;

• How to exploit the wide amount of information made available from the optimization and uncertainty quantification process to construct a more aggressive adaptation strategy in physical, parameter, and stochastic space, and in the physical model itself ;

These research avenues related to the PDE models and numerical methods used, will allow us to have an impact on the applications communities targeted which are

• Aeronautics and aerospace engineering (de-anti icing systems, space re-entry) ;

• Energy engineering (organic Rankine cycles and wave energy conversion) ;

• Material engineering (self healing composite materials) ;

• Coastal engineering (coastal protection, hazard assessment etc.).

The main research directions related to the above topics are discussed in the following section.