Toward reducing uncertainty quantification costs in DEM models of particulate flow: Testing simple, sensitivity-based, forward uncertainty propagation techniques

• Published in: Powder technology 2022-01, Vol.398 (C)
• Main Authors: Dahl, Steven R., LaMarche, W. Casey Q., Liu, Peiyuan, Fullmer, William D., Hrenya, Christine M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: CFD-DEM; DEM; ENGINEERING; Uncertainty quantification; VV&UQ
• ISSN: 0032-5910; 1873-328X

The performance of two conceptually-simple uncertainty quantification techniques are tested against the rigorous nested-loop sampling technique of Roy and Oberkampf (Comput Methods Appl Mech Eng, 200: 2131–2144, 2011) (herein called full-sampling) using two very small-scale DEM-based models of particulate flow (one gas-solid flow and one granular flow). The first simplified forward uncertainty propagation technique, reduced-sampling, uses a sensitivity analysis to eliminate uncertain inputs that have little impact on the model output prior to nested-loop sampling. The second technique, boundary-sampling, uses a sensitivity analysis to inform the selection of two bounding cases for each key model output. In conclusion, the uncertainties in the model outputs obtained via the reduced- and boundary-sampling methods agree well with those from full-sampling for both the gas-solid and granular flow models while yielding computational savings of 65–75% (reduced sampling) and 94–97% (boundary sampling).