Bayesian inference of inaccuracies in radiation transport physics from inertial confinement fusion experiments

First principles microphysics models are essential to the design and analysis of high energy density physics experiments. Using experimental data to investigate the underlying physics is also essential, particularly when simulations and experiments are not consistent with each other. This is a difficult task, due to the large number of physical models that play a role, and due to the complex and noisy nature of the experiments. This results in a large number of parameters that make any inference a daunting task; it is also very important to consistently treat both experimental and prior understanding of the problem. In this paper we present a Bayesian method that includes both these effects, and allows the inference of a set of modifiers that have been constructed to give information about microphysics models from experimental data. We pay particular attention to radiation transport models. The inference takes into account a large set of experimental parameters and an estimate of the prior knowledge through a modified χ² function, which is minimised using an efficient genetic algorithm. Both factors play an essential role in our analysis. We find that although there is evidence of inaccuracies in off-line calculations of X-ray drive intensity and Ge L shell absorption, modifications to radiation transport are unable to reconcile differences between 1D HYDRA simulations and the experiment.     

Integrated facility location and production scheduling in multi-generation energy systems

In this paper, we investigate the energy system design problems with the multi-generation technologies, i.e., simultaneous generation of multiple types of energy. Our results illustrate the economic value of multi-generation technologies to reduce spatio-temporal demand uncertainty by risk pooling both within and across different facilities.     

Applying Ant System for solving Unequal Area Facility Layout Problems

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is a young metaheuristic algorithm which has shown promising results in solving many optimization problems. To date, a formal ACO-based metaheuristic has not been applied for solving Unequal Area Facility Layout Problems (UA-FLPs). This paper proposes an Ant System (AS) (one of the ACO variants) to solve them. As a discrete optimization algorithm, the proposed algorithm uses slicing tree representation to easily represent the problems without too restricting the solution space. It uses several types of local search to improve its search performance. It is then tested using several case problems with different size and setting. Overall, the proposed algorithm shows encouraging results in solving UA-FLPs.     

Capacitated location model with online demand pooling in a multi-channel supply chain

This paper presents a location model that assigns online demands to the capacitated regional warehouses currently serving in-store demands in a multi-channel supply chain. The model explicitly considers the trade-off between the risk pooling effect and the transportation cost in a two-echelon inventory/logistics system. Keeping the delivery network of the in-store demands unchanged, the model aims to minimize the transportation cost, inventory cost, and fixed handling cost in the system when assigning the online demands. We formulate the assignment problem as a non-linear integer programming model. Lagrangian relaxation based procedures are proposed to solve the model, both the general case and an important special case. Numerical experiments show the efficiency of our algorithms. Furthermore, we find that because of the pooling effect the variance of in-store demands currently served by a warehouse is an important parameter of the warehouse when it is considered as a candidate for supplying online demands. Highly uncertain in-store demands, as well as low transportation cost per unit, can make a warehouse appealing. We illustrate with numerical examples the trade-off between the pooling effect and the transportation cost in the assignment problem. We also evaluate the cost savings between the policy derived from the model, which integrates the transportation cost with the pooling effect, and the commonly used policy, which is based only on the transportation cost. Results show that the derived policy can reduce 1.5–7.5% cost in average and in many instances the percentage of cost savings is more than 10%.     

Polyhedral cones and positive operators

Some results are obtained relating topological properties of polyhedral cones to algebraic properties of matrices whose columns are the extremal vectors of the cone. In addition, several characterizations of positive operators on polyhedral cones are given.     

上海光源准直测量方案设计

 上海光源在准直测量方案设计中面临的最大挑战来自于松软地基及高精度的定位要求。上海光源的准直过程分为控制网测量、元件标定、预安装准直、现场安装及平滑测量5个关键步骤。采用激光跟踪仪和静力水准系统等测量手段,将控制网精度设计为0.08 mm,其余步骤精度达到0.05 mm,以保证相邻共架机构的准直精度达到0.12 mm,优于0.15 mm的设计指标。方案在注重精度指标的同时,还兼顾了可靠性、测量效率、费用及实时监测的可能性。     

高功率脉冲氙灯中的等离子体放电通道

研究了高功率脉冲氙灯放电过程中等离子体通道的演化规律。分析了充电电压、主脉冲脉宽及主预脉冲时间间隔等对等离子体通道的影响规律。实验过程中在脉冲氙灯接地端子附近观察到了明显的等离子体通道分叉现象。研究发现,脉冲氙灯工作环境中的电场分布对氙灯内等离子体通道的形成与演化特性将产生十分重要的影响,其决定了等离子体通道的形态。其他影响因素则通过改变放电通道的亮度、均匀度与充盈度等特征施加其影响。