A new perspective on the solution of uncertainty quantification and reliability analysis of large-scale problems

Abstract This work revisits the computational performance of non-intrusive Monte Carlo versus intrusive Galerkin methods of large-scale stochastic systems in the framework of high performance computing environments. The purpose of this work is to perform an assessment of the range of the relative superiority of these approaches with regard to a variety of stochastic parameters. In both approaches, the solution of the resulting algebraic equations is performed with a combination of primal and dual domain decomposition methods implementing specifically tailored preconditioners. The solution of repeated simulations of the Monte Carlo method is accelerated with an A-orthogonalization procedure aiming at reducing the iterations of subsequent simulations, while the solution of the augmented equations of the stochastic Galerkin method is enhanced with preconditioners which combine the block diagonal features of the resulting matrices as well as the sparsity pattern of the off block-diagonal terms. Numerical results are presented, demonstrating the efficiency of the proposed implementations on a large-scale 3D problem with different stochastic characteristics and useful conclusions are derived regarding the ranges of stochastic parameters in which non-intrusive solvers have a superior performance compared to intrusive ones and vice versa.