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First-order optimization methods are workhorses in a wide range of modern applications in economics, physics, biology, machine learning, control, and other fields. Among other first-order methods accelerated and momentum ones obtain special attention because of their practical efficiency. The heavy-ball method (HB) is one of the first momentum methods. The method was proposed in 1964 and the first analysis was conducted for quadratic strongly convex functions. Since then a number of variations of HB have been proposed and analyzed. In particular, HB is known for its simplicity in implementation and its performance on nonconvex problems. However, as other momentum methods, it has nonmonotone behavior, and for optimal parameters, the method suffers from the so-called peak effect. To address this issue, in this paper, we consider an averaged version of the heavy-ball method (AHB). We show that for quadratic problems AHB has a smaller maximal deviation from the solution than HB. Moreover, for general convex and strongly convex functions, we prove non-accelerated rates of global convergence of AHB, its weighted version WAHB, and for AHB with restarts R-AHB. To the best of our knowledge, such guarantees for HB with averaging were not explicitly proven for strongly convex problems in the existing works. Finally, we conduct several numerical experiments on minimizing quadratic and nonquadratic functions to demonstrate the advantages of using averaging for HB. Moreover, we also tested one more modification of AHB called the tail-averaged heavy-ball method (TAHB). In the experiments, we observed that HB with a properly adjusted averaging scheme converges faster than HB without averaging and has smaller oscillations.

The paper presents the results of three-dimensional numerical simulation of thermal-hydraulic processes in the Intermediate Heat Exchanger of the advanced Sodium-Cooled Fast-Neutron (BN) Reactor considering a developed methodological approach.

The Intermediate Heat Exchanger (IHX) is located in the reactor vessel and intended to transfer heat from the primary sodium circulating on the shell side to the secondary sodium circulating on the tube side. In case of an integral layout of the primary equipment in the BN reactor, upstream the IHX inlet windows there is a temperature stratification of the coolant due to incomplete mixing of different temperature flows at the core outlet. Inside the IHX, in the area of the input and output windows, a complex longitudinal and transverse flow of the coolant also takes place resulting in an uneven distribution of the coolant flow rate on the tube side and, as a consequence, in an uneven temperature distribution and heat transfer efficiency along the height and radius of the tube bundle.

In order to confirm the thermal-hydraulic parameters of the IHX of the advanced BN reactor applied in the design, a methodological approach for three-dimensional numerical simulation of the heat exchanger located in the reactor vessel was developed, taking into account the three-dimensional sodium flow pattern at the IHX inlet and inside the IHX, as well as justifying the recommendations for simplifying the geometry of the computational model of the IHX.

Numerical simulation of thermal-hydraulic processes in the IHX of the advanced BN reactor was carried out using the FlowVision software package with the standard $k-\varepsilon$ turbulence model and the LMS turbulent heat transfer model.

To increase the representativeness of numerical simulation of the IHX tube bundle, verification calculations of singletube and multi-tube sodium-sodium heat exchangers were performed with the geometric characteristics corresponding to the IHX design.

To determine the input boundary conditions in the IHX model, an additional three-dimensional calculation was performed taking into account the uneven flow pattern in the upper mixing chamber of the reactor.

The IHX computational model was optimized by simplifying spacer belts and selecting a sector model.

As a result of numerical simulation of the IHX, the distributions of the primary sodium velocity and primary and secondary sodium temperature were obtained. Satisfactory agreement of the calculation results with the design data on integral parameters confirmed the adopted design thermal-hydraulic characteristics of the IHX of the advanced BN reactor.

In this paper we consider the controlled motion of a helical body with three blades in an ideal fluid, which is executed by rotating three internal rotors. We set the problem of selecting control actions, which ensure the motion of the body near the predetermined trajectory. To determine controls that guarantee motion near the given curve, we propose methods based on the application of hybrid genetic algorithms (genetic algorithms with real encoding and with additional learning of the leader of the population by a gradient method) and artificial neural networks. The correctness of the operation of the proposed numerical methods is estimated using previously obtained differential equations, which define the law of changing the control actions for the predetermined trajectory.

In the approach based on hybrid genetic algorithms, the initial problem of minimizing the integral functional reduces to minimizing the function of many variables. The given time interval is broken up into small elements, on each of which the control actions are approximated by Lagrangian polynomials of order 2 and 3. When appropriately adjusted, the hybrid genetic algorithms reproduce a solution close to exact. However, the cost of calculation of 1 second of the physical process is about 300 seconds of processor time.

To increase the speed of calculation of control actions, we propose an algorithm based on artificial neural networks. As the input signal the neural network takes the components of the required displacement vector. The node values of the Lagrangian polynomials which approximately describe the control actions return as output signals . The neural network is taught by the well-known back-propagation method. The learning sample is generated using the approach based on hybrid genetic algorithms. The calculation of 1 second of the physical process by means of the neural network requires about 0.004 seconds of processor time, that is, 6 orders faster than the hybrid genetic algorithm. The control calculated by means of the artificial neural network differs from exact control. However, in spite of this difference, it ensures that the predetermined trajectory is followed exactly.

We consider one of the problems of transport modelling — searching the equilibrium distribution of traffic flows in the network. We use the classic Beckman’s model to describe time costs and flow distribution in the network represented by directed graph. Meanwhile agents’ behavior is not completely rational, what is described by the introduction of Markov logit dynamics: any driver selects a route randomly according to the Gibbs’ distribution taking into account current time costs on the edges of the graph. Thus, the problem is reduced to searching of the stationary distribution for this dynamics which is a stochastic Nash – Wardrope equilibrium in the corresponding population congestion game in the transport network. Since the game is potential, this problem is equivalent to the problem of minimization of some functional over flows distribution. The stochasticity is reflected in the appearance of the entropy regularization, in contrast to non-stochastic case. The dual problem is constructed to obtain a solution of the optimization problem. The universal primal-dual gradient method is applied. A major specificity of this method lies in an adaptive adjustment to the local smoothness of the problem, what is most important in case of the complex structure of the objective function and an inability to obtain a prior smoothness bound with acceptable accuracy. Such a situation occurs in the considered problem since the properties of the function strongly depend on the transport graph, on which we do not impose strong restrictions. The article describes the algorithm including the numerical differentiation for calculation of the objective function value and gradient. In addition, the paper represents a theoretical estimate of time complexity of the algorithm and the results of numerical experiments conducted on a small American town.

The mathematical model, finite-difference schemes and algorithms for computation of transient thermoand hydrodynamic processes involved in commissioning the unified system including the oil producing well, electrical submersible pump and fractured-porous reservoir with bottom water are developed. These models are implemented in the computer package to simulate transient processes with simultaneous visualization of their results along with computations. An important feature of the package Oil-RWP is its interaction with the special external program GCS which simulates the work of the surface electric control station and data exchange between these two programs. The package Oil-RWP sends telemetry data and current parameters of the operating submersible unit to the program module GCS (direct coupling). The station controller analyzes incoming data and generates the required control parameters for the submersible pump. These parameters are sent to Oil-RWP (feedback). Such an approach allows us to consider the developed software as the “Intellectual Well System”.

Some principal results of the simulations can be briefly presented as follows. The transient time between inaction and quasi-steady operation of the producing well depends on the well stream watering, filtration and capacitive parameters of oil reservoir, physical-chemical properties of phases and technical characteristics of the submersible unit. For the large time solution of the nonstationary equations governing the nonsteady processes is practically identical to the inverse quasi-stationary problem solution with the same initial data. The developed software package is an effective tool for analysis, forecast and optimization of the exploiting parameters of the unified oil-producing complex during its commissioning into the operating regime.

In this work we have developed a new efficient program for the numerical simulation of 3D global chemical transport on an adaptive finite-difference grid which allows us to concentrate grid points in the regions where flow variables sharply change and coarsen the grid in the regions of their smooth behavior, which significantly minimizes the grid size. We represent the adaptive grid with a combination of several dynamic (tree, linked list) and static (array) data structures. The dynamic data structures are used for a grid reconstruction, and the calculations of the flow variables are based on the static data structures. The introduction of the static data structures allows us to speed up the program by a factor of 2 in comparison with the conventional approach to the grid representation with only dynamic data structures.

We wrote and tested our program on a computer with 6 CPU cores. Using the computer microarchitecture simulator gem5, we estimated the scalability property of the program on a significantly greater number of cores (up to 32), using several models of a computer system with the design “computational cores – cache – main memory”. It has been shown that the microarchitecture of a computer system has a significant impact on the scalability property, i.e. the same program demonstrates different efficiency on different computer microarchitectures. For example, we have a speedup of 14.2 on a processor with 32 cores and 2 cache levels, but we have a speedup of 22.2 on a processor with 32 cores and 3 cache levels. The execution time of a program on a computer model in gem5 is 104–105 times greater than the execution time of the same program on a real computer and equals 1.5 hours for the most complex model.

Also in this work we describe how to configure gem5 and how to perform simulations with gem5 in the most optimal way.

Image denoising is one of the fundamental problems in digital image processing. This problem usually refers to the reconstruction of an image from an observed image degraded by noise. There are many factors that cause this degradation such as transceiver equipment, or environmental influences, etc. In order to obtain higher quality images, many methods have been proposed for image denoising problem. Most image denoising method are based on total variation (TV) regularization to develop efficient algorithms for solving the related optimization problem. TV-based models have become a standard technique in image restoration with the ability to preserve image sharpness.

In this paper, we focus on Poisson noise usually appearing in photon-counting devices. We propose an effective regularization model based on combination of first-order and fractional-order total variation for image reconstruction corrupted by Poisson noise. The proposed model allows us to eliminate noise while edge preserving. An efficient alternating minimization algorithm is employed to solve the optimization problem. Finally, provided numerical results show that our proposed model can preserve more details and get higher image visual quality than recent state-of-the-art methods.

The equilibrium configurations of charged electrons, confined in the hard disk potential, are analysed by means of the hybrid numerical algorithm. The algorithm is based on the interpolation formulas, that are obtained from the analysis of the equilibrium configurations, provided by the variational principle developed in the circular model. The solution of the nonlinear equations of the circular model yields the formation of the shell structure which is composed of the series of rings. Each ring contains a certain number of particles, which decreases as one moves from the boundary ring to the central one. The number of rings depends on the total number of electrons. The interpolation formulas provide the initial configurations for the molecular dynamics calculations. This approach makes it possible to significantly increase the speed at which an equilibrium configuration is reached for an arbitrarily chosen number of particles compared to the Metropolis annealing simulation algorithm and other algorithms based on global optimization methods.

In the present paper, we discuss the possibility of a simplified three-dimensional unsteady simulation of plasma-assisted combustion of gaseous fuel in a supersonic airflow. Simulation was performed by using FlowVision CFD software. Analysis of experimental geometry show that it has essentially 3D nature that conditioned by the discrete fuel injection into the flow as well as by the presence of the localized plasma filaments. Study proposes a variant of modeling geometry simplification based on symmetry of the aerodynamic duct and periodicity of the spatial inhomogeneities. Testing of modified FlowVision $k–\varepsilon$ turbulence model named «KEFV» was performed for supersonic flow conditions. Based on that detailed grid without wall functions was used the field of heat and near fuel injection area and surfaces remote from the key area was modeled with using of wall functions, that allowed us to significantly reduce the number of cells of the computational grid. Two steps significantly simplified a complex problem of the hydrocarbon fuel ignition by means of plasma generation. First, plasma formations were simulated by volumetric heat sources and secondly, fuel combustion is reduced to one brutto reaction. Calibration and parametric optimization of the fuel injection into the supersonic flow for IADT-50 JIHT RAS wind tunnel is made by means of simulation using FlowVision CFD software. Study demonstrates a rather good agreement between the experimental schlieren photo of the flow with fuel injection and synthetical one. Modeling of the flow with fuel injection and plasma generation for the facility T131 TSAGI combustion chamber geometry demonstrates a combustion mode for the set of experimental parameters. Study emphasizes the importance of the computational mesh adaptation and spatial resolution increasing for the volumetric heat sources that model electric discharge area. A reasonable qualitative agreement between experimental pressure distribution and modeling one confirms the possibility of limited application of such simplified modeling for the combustion in high-speed flow.

А new cloud center of parallel computing is to be created in the Laboratory of Information Technologies (LIT) of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research JINR) what is expected to improve significantly the efficiency of numerical calculations and expedite the receipt of new physically meaningful results due to the more rational use of computing resources. To optimize a scheme of parallel computations at a cloud environment it is necessary to test this scheme for various combinations of equipment parameters (processor speed and numbers, throughput оf а communication network etc). As a test problem, the parallel MPI algorithm for calculations of the long Josephson junctions (LDJ) is chosen. Problems of evaluating the impact of abovementioned factors of computing mean on the computing speed of the test problem are solved by simulation with the simulation program SyMSim developed in LIT.

The simulation of the LDJ calculations in the cloud environment enable users without a series of test to find the optimal number of CPUs with a certain type of network run the calculations in a real computer environment. This can save significant computational time in countable resources. The main parameters of the model were obtained from the results of the computational experiment conducted on a special cloud-based testbed. Computational experiments showed that the pure computation time decreases in inverse proportion to the number of processors, but depends significantly on network bandwidth. Comparison of results obtained empirically with the results of simulation showed that the simulation model correctly simulates the parallel calculations performed using the MPI-technology. Besides it confirms our recommendation: for fast calculations of this type it is needed to increase both, — the number of CPUs and the network throughput at the same time. The simulation results allow also to invent an empirical analytical formula expressing the dependence of calculation time by the number of processors for a fixed system configuration. The obtained formula can be applied to other similar studies, but requires additional tests to determine the values of variables.