Principal component analysis acceleration of rovibrational coarse-grain models for internal energy excitation and...

The present work introduces a novel approach for obtaining reduced chemistry representations of large kinetic mechanisms in strong non-equilibrium conditions. The need for accurate reduced-order models arises from compression of large ab initio quantum chemistry databases for their use in fluid codes. The method presented in this paper builds on existing physics-based strategies and proposes a new approach based on the combination of a simple coarse grain model with Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The internal energy levels of the chemical species are regrouped in distinct energy groups with a uniform lumping technique. Following the philosophy of machine learning, PCA is applied on the training data provided by the coarse grain model to find an optimally reduced representation of the full kinetic mechanism. Compared to recently published complex lumping strategies, no expert judgment is required before the application of PCA. In this work, we will demonstrate the benefits of the combined approach, stressing its simplicity, reliability, and accuracy. The technique is demonstrated by reducing the complex quantum N₂(Σg+1)-N(Su4) database for studying molecular dissociation and excitation in strong non-equilibrium. Starting from detailed kinetics, an accurate reduced model is developed and used to study non-equilibrium properties of the N₂(Σg+1)-N(Su4) system in shock relaxation simulations.