Efficient sensitivity analysis and interpretation of parameter correlations in chemical engineering

Xiangzhong Xie, Schenkendorf, René and Ulrike Krewer

Reliability Engineering and System Safety, 2019, vol. 187, issue C, 159-173

Abstract: Parameter uncertainties affect model-based system reliability analysis and may lead to safety issues in model-based process design. Global sensitivity analysis (GSA) is a valuable tool to quantify the influence of parameter uncertainties in the variation of the model output. However, GSA has not been widely employed in the field of chemical engineering, especially for processes with correlated model parameters. Parameter correlations, in turn, are quite common when identifying model parameters with experimental data. Thus, we propose and critically compare (co)variance-based and moment-independent GSA techniques for analyzing chemical processes in the absence and presence of parameter correlations. Technically, polynomial chaos expansion is used to reduce the computational burden for GSA. The proposed methods are demonstrated for a continuous synthesis process. Here, the results show significant differences in the parameter sensitivity rankings when parameter correlations are considered or not while the moment-independent technique provides a universal and easy-to-interpret sensitivity measure.

Keywords: Sensitivity analysis; Polynomial chaos expansion; Parameter correlation; Gaussian copula; Chemical processes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0951832018300541
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:reensy:v:187:y:2019:i:c:p:159-173

DOI: 10.1016/j.ress.2018.06.010

Access Statistics for this article

Reliability Engineering and System Safety is currently edited by Carlos Guedes Soares

More articles in Reliability Engineering and System Safety from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().