Search

We propose a novel reduced-order methodology to describe complex multi-frequency fluid dynamics from time-resolved snapshot data. Starting point is the Cluster-based Network Model (CNM) thanks to its fully automatable development and human interpretability. Our key innovation is to model the transitions from cluster to cluster much more accurately by replacing snapshot states with short-term trajectories ("orbits") over multiple clusters, thus avoiding nonphysical intra-cluster diffusion in the dynamic reconstruction. The proposed orbital CNM (oCNM) employs functional clustering to coarse-grain the short-term trajectories. Specifically, different filtering techniques, resulting in different temporal basis expansions, demonstrate the versatility and capability of the oCNM to adapt to diverse flow phenomena. The oCNM is illustrated on the Stuart-Landau oscillator and its post-transient solution with time-varying parameters to test its ability to capture the amplitude selection mechanism and multi-frequency behaviours. Then, the oCNM is applied to the fluidic pinball across varying flow regimes at different Reynolds numbers, including the periodic, quasi-periodic, and chaotic dynamics. This orbital-focused perspective enhances the understanding of complex temporal behaviours by incorporating high-frequency behaviour into the kinematics of short-time trajectories while modelling the dynamics of the lower frequencies. In analogy to Spectral Proper Orthogonal Decomposition, which marked the transition from spatial-only modes to spatio-temporal ones, this work advances from analysing temporal local states to examining piecewise short-term trajectories, or orbits. By merging advanced analytical methods, such as the functional representation of short-time trajectories with CNM, this study paves the way for new approaches to dissect the complex dynamics characterising turbulent systems.

In this study, we propose a novel data-driven reduced-order model for complex dynamics, including nonlinear, multi-attractor, multi-frequency, and multiscale behaviours. The starting point is a fully automatable cluster-based network model (CNM) (Li et al. J. Fluid Mech. vol.906, 2021, A21) which kinematically coarse-grains the state with clusters and dynamically predicts the transitions in a network model. In the proposed dynamics-augmented CNM (dCNM), the prediction error is reduced with trajectory-based clustering using the same number of centroids. The dCNM is first exemplified for the Lorenz system and then implemented for the three-dimensional sphere wake featuring periodic, quasi-periodic and chaotic flow regimes. For both plants, the dCNM significantly outperforms the CNM in resolving the multi-frequency and multiscale dynamics. This increased prediction accuracy is obtained by stratification of the state space aligned with the direction of the trajectories. Thus, the dCNM has numerous potential applications to a large spectrum of shear flows, even for complex dynamics.

As one of the most intriguing wake patterns of two side-by-side circular cylinders at an intermediate gap spacing, the flip-flopping (FF) flow has attracted great attention of fundamental research interest. This FF flow is featured by the intermittently and randomly switching gap flow with correspondingly changing forces of the two cylinders. In this paper, we first present a partition map of the wake patterns behind two side-by-side circular cylinders and briefly introduce intrinsic features of each flow pattern. We focus on the FF flow aiming to explain: (i) the origin of the FF flow between laminar and turbulent regimes, (ii) their connections in different flow regimes, and (iii) mechanisms of the significantly varying flip-over time scale of the FF flows. In the laminar regime, we further divide the FF flow into the sub-classed I (FF1) and II (FF2), based on their different origins from the in-phase and anti-phase synchronized vortex shedding instabilities, respectively. By exploring the vortex interactions, we show that the FF flow in the turbulent regime has the same origin and similar vortex dynamics as the FF2 wake in the laminar regime, despite some minor disparities. Thus, a connection is established between the FF2 pattern in the laminar flow and the FF pattern in the turbulent flow. For the FF flow in the laminar regime (Re < 150-200), the mildly decreasing switching time, is several vortex shedding periods. However, for the FF flow in the weak turbulence regime (150-200 < Re < 1000-1700), the switching time scale increases significantly with Re owing to the increased vortex formation length. The FF in the strong turbulence regime (Re > 1000-1700) has a switching time scale of several orders of magnitude longer than the vortex shedding period, where the switching scale decreases gradually with Re due to the stronger Kelvin-Helmholtz vortices.

We propose a novel trajectory-optimized Cluster-based Network Model (tCNM) for nonlinear model order reduction from time-resolved data following Li et al. ["Cluster-based network model, " J. Fluid Mech. 906, A21 (2021)] and improving the accuracy for a given number of centroids. The starting point is k-means++ clustering which minimizes the representation error of the snapshots by their closest centroids. The dynamics is presented by 'flights' between the centroids. The proposed trajectory-optimized clustering aims to reduce the kinematic representation error further by shifting the centroids closer to the snapshot trajectory and refining state propagation with trajectory support points. Thus, curved trajectories are better resolved. The resulting tCNM is demonstrated for the sphere wake for three flow regimes, including the periodic, quasi-periodic, and chaotic dynamics. The representation error of tCNM is 5 times smaller as compared to the approximation by the closest centroid. Thus, the error at the same level as Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) of same order. Yet, tCNM has distinct advantages over POD modeling: it is human interpretable by representing dynamics by a handful of coherent structures and their transitions; it shows robust dynamics by design, i.e., stable long-time behavior; and its development is fully automatable, i.e., it does not require tuneable auxiliary closure and other models.

We propose a novel non-linear manifold learning from snapshot data and demonstrate its superiority over Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) for shedding-dominated shear flows. Key enablers are isometric feature mapping, Isomap (Tenenbaum et al., 2000), as encoder and K-nearest neighbours (KNN) algorithm as decoder. The proposed technique is applied to numerical and experimental datasets including the fluidic pinball, a swirling jet, and the wake behind a couple of tandem cylinders. Analyzing the fluidic pinball, the manifold is able to describe the pitchfork bifurcation and the chaotic regime with only three feature coordinates. These coordinates are linked to vortex-shedding phases and the force coefficients. The manifold coordinates of the swirling jet are comparable to the POD mode amplitudes, yet allow for a more distinct manifold identification which is less sensitive to measurement noise. As similar observation is made for the wake of two tandem cylinders (Raiola et al., 2016). The tandem cylinders are aligned in streamwise distance which corresponds to the transition between the single bluff body and the reattachment regimes of vortex shedding. Isomap unveils these two shedding regimes while the Lissajous plots of first two POD mode amplitudes feature a single circle. The reconstruction error of the manifold model is small compared to the fluctuation level, indicating that the low embedding dimensions contains the coherent structure dynamics. The proposed Isomap-KNN manifold learner is expected to be of large importance in estimation, dynamic modeling and control for large range of configurations with dominant coherent structures.

We propose a self-supervised cluster-based hierarchical reduced-order modelling methodology to model and analyse the complex dynamics arising from a sequence of bifurcations for a two-dimensional incompressible flow of the unforced fluidic pinball. The hierarchy is guided by a triple decomposition separating a slowly varying base flow, dominant shedding and secondary flow structures. All these flow components are kinematically resolved by a hierarchy of clusters, starting with the base flow in the first layer, resolving the vortex shedding in the second layer and distilling the secondary flow structures in the third layer. The transition dynamics between these clusters is described by a directed network, called the cluster-based hierarchical network model (HiCNM) in the sequel. Three consecutive Reynolds number regimes for different dynamics are considered: (i) periodic shedding at $Re=80$, (ii) quasi-periodic shedding at $Re=105$, and (iii) chaotic shedding at $Re=130$, involving three unstable fixed points, three limit cycles, two quasi-periodic attractors and a chaotic attractor. The HiCNM enables identifying the transient and post-transient dynamics between multiple invariant sets in a self-supervised manner. Both the global trends and the local structures during the transition are well resolved by a moderate number of hierarchical clusters. The proposed reduced-order modelling provides a visual representation of transient and post-transient, multi-frequency, multi-attractor behaviour and may automate the identification and analysis of complex dynamics with multiple scales and multiple invariant sets.

The ability to accurately estimate job runtime properties allows a scheduler to effectively schedule jobs. State-of-the-art online cluster job schedulers use history-based learning, which uses past job execution information to estimate the runtime properties of newly arrived jobs. However, with fast-paced development in cluster technology (in both hardware and software) and changing user inputs, job runtime properties can change over time, which lead to inaccurate predictions. In this paper, we explore the potential and limitation of real-time learning of job runtime properties, by proactively sampling and scheduling a small fraction of the tasks of each job. Such a task-sampling-based approach exploits the similarity among runtime properties of the tasks of the same job and is inherently immune to changing job behavior. Our study focuses on two key questions in comparing task-sampling-based learning (learning in space) and history-based learning (learning in time): (1) Can learning in space be more accurate than learning in time? (2) If so, can delaying scheduling the remaining tasks of a job till the completion of sampled tasks be more than compensated by the improved accuracy and result in improved job performance? Our analytical and experimental analysis of 3 production traces with different skew and job distribution shows that learning in space can be substantially more accurate. Our simulation and testbed evaluation on Azure of the two learning approaches anchored in a generic job scheduler using 3 production cluster job traces shows that despite its online overhead, learning in space reduces the average Job Completion Time (JCT) by 1.28x, 1.56x, and 1.32x compared to the prior-art history-based predictor.

The fluidic pinball has been recently proposed as an attractive and effective flow configuration for exploring machine learning fluid flow control. In this contribution, we focus on the route to chaos in this system without actuation, as the Reynolds number is smoothly increased. It was found to be of the Newhouse-Ruelle-Takens kind, with a secondary pitchfork bifurcation that breaks the symmetry of the mean flow field on the route to quasi-periodicity., Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2104.05104

Reduced-order modelling and system identification can help us figure out the elementary degrees of freedom and the underlying mechanisms from the high-dimensional and nonlinear dynamics of fluid flow. Machine learning has brought new opportunities to these two processes and is revolutionising traditional methods. We show a framework to obtain a sparse human-interpretable model from complex high-dimensional data using machine learning and first principles.

In this work, we are interested in the transient dynamics of a fluid configuration consisting of three fixed cylinders whose axes distribute over an equilateral triangle in transverse flow << fluidic pinball >>. As the Reynolds number is increased on the route to chaos, its transient dynamics tell us about the contribution of the elementary degrees of freedom of the system to the lift and drag coefficients., Comment: in French

The fluidic pinball is a geometrically simple flow configuration with three rotating cylinders on the vertex of an equilateral triangle. Yet, it remains physically rich enough to host a range of interacting frequencies and to allow testing of control laws within minutes on a laptop. The system has multiple inputs (the three cylinders can independently rotate around their axis) and multiple outputs (downstream velocity sensors). Investigating the natural flow dynamics, we found that the first unsteady transition undergone by the wake flow, when increasing the Reynolds number, is a Hopf bifurcation leading to the usual time-periodic vortex shedding phenomenon, typical of cylinder wake flows, in which the mean flow field preserves axial symmetry. We extract dynamically consistent modes from the flow data in order to built a reduced-order model (ROM) of this flow regime. We show that the main dynamical features of the primary Hopf bifurcation can be described by a non-trivial lowest-order model made of three degrees of freedom.

We propose an aerodynamic force model associated with a Galerkin model for the unforced fluidic pinball, the two-dimensional flow around three equal cylinders with one radius distance to each other. The starting point is a Galerkin model of a bluff-body flow. The force on this body is derived as a constant-linear-quadratic function of the mode amplitudes from first principles following the pioneering work of Noca (1997, 1999) and Liang & Dong (2014). The force model is simplified for the mean-field model of the unforced fluidic pinball (Deng et al. 2020) using symmetry properties and sparse calibration. The model is successfully applied to transient and post-transient dynamics in different Reynolds number regimes: the periodic vortex shedding after the Hopf-bifurcation and the asymmetric vortex shedding after the pitchfork bifurcation comprising six different Navier-Stokes solutions. We foresee many applications of the Galerkin force model for other bluff bodies and flow control.

We propose the first least-order Galerkin model of an incompressible flow undergoing two successive supercritical bifurcations of Hopf and pitchfork type. A key enabler is a mean-field consideration exploiting the symmetry of the mean flow and the asymmetry of the fluctuation. These symmetries generalize mean-field theory, e.g. no assumption of slow growth-rate is needed. The resulting 5-dimensional Galerkin model successfully describes the phenomenogram of the fluidic pinball, a two-dimensional wake flow around a cluster of three equidistantly spaced cylinders. The corresponding transition scenario is shown to undergo two successive supercritical bifurcations, namely a Hopf and a pitchfork bifurcations on the way to chaos. The generalized mean-field Galerkin methodology may be employed to describe other transition scenarios.