Adaptive On-the-Fly Changes in Distributed Processing Pipelines

Distributed data processing systems have become the standard means for big data analytics. These systems are based on processing pipelines where operations on data are performed in a chain of consecutive steps. Normally, the operations performed by these pipelines are set at design time, and any changes to their functionality require the applications to be restarted. This is not always acceptable, for example, when we cannot afford downtime or when a long-running calculation would lose significant progress. The introduction of variation points to distributed processing pipelines allows for on-the-fly updating of individual analysis steps. In this paper, we extend such basic variation point functionality to provide fully automated reconfiguration of the processing steps within a running pipeline through an automated planner. We have enabled pipeline modeling through constraints. Based on these constraints, we not only ensure that configurations are compatible with type but also verify that expected pipeline functionality is achieved. Furthermore, automating the reconfiguration process simplifies its use, in turn allowing users with less development experience to make changes. The system can automatically generate and validate pipeline configurations that achieve a specified goal, selecting from operation definitions available at planning time. It then automatically integrates these configurations into the running pipeline. We verify the system through the testing of a proof-of-concept implementation. The proof of concept also shows promising results when reconfiguration is performed frequently.

Vented Explosion Phenomena: Hydrogen Combustion Benchmark on Confined Vessel Experiments

Confined vented explosion is a very complex topic as many parameters affect the phenomena, mainly because the flame front develops from an ignition source and travels through a medium which may involve complex boundary conditions and obstructions of various geometries. Therefore, in the plant safety assessing step, it is important to provide correct estimates of the flame spreading rates as well as overpressures which may result from various explosion initiation scenarios. This will help designers for plant layout optimisation with the aim to minimize the risk associated with those events. Although hydrogen explosion in unvented compartments was often simulated in the past, there were not many opportunities, so far, to simulate explosion in a vented room. With this purpose, a benchmark exercise was organized, based on simple hydrogen combustion experiments, performed in a vented compartment (Chamber for View of Explosion – CVE) at the Scalbatraio laboratory of University of Pisa (Italy). In that activity, many tests were performed by varying the initial hydrogen concentration and the obstacles inside the compartment. The numerical codes used in the benchmark were lumped-parameter (LP) ones (ECART, ASTEC), which remain, for the time being, the customary tools for simulating hydrogen combustion accidents in current NPPs, because of their fast-running calculation capabilities also for large-scale scenarios.