Assessing Vircators’ Reliability Through Uncertainty and Sensitivity Analyses Using a Surrogate Model

The performances of Vircators have been reported in different studies showing that a high discrepancy between the simulated and measured output peak power and radiating frequency can be encountered. Limited investigations have been reported where the one-variable-at-a-time methodology was applied. Performing a full analysis requires to apply statistical methods over a large number of experiments (simulation or measurement) which has been a challenge due to the computation time required to simulate Vircators. Recently, an surrogate model has been proposed to drastically reduce the computation time. In this paper, we propose to evaluate the performance variability of a Vircator considering mechanical manufacturing tolerances as well as the Pulsed Power source variability. The analysis is performed by means of well-spread stochastic methods (classical Monte Carlo, spectral techniques), and alternative sensitivity analysis approaches.