This paper studies the magneto-heat coupling model which describes iron loss of conductors and energy exchange between magnetic field and Ohmic heat. The temperature influences Maxwell's equations through the variation of electric conductivity, while electric eddy current density provides the heat equation with Ohmic heat source. It is in this way that Maxwell's equations and the heat equation are coupled together. The system also incorporates the heat exchange between conductors and cooling oil which is poured into and out of the transformer. We propose a weak formulation for the coupling model and establish the well-posedness of the problem. The model is more realistic than the traditional eddy current model in numerical simulations for large power transformers. The theoretical analysis of this paper paves a way for us to design efficient numerical computation of the transformer in the future.

Incorrect propagation speed of discontinuities may occur by straightforward application of standard dissipative schemes for problems that contain stiff source terms for underresolved grids even for time steps within the CFL condition. By examining the dissipative discretized counterpart of the Euler equations for a detonation problem that consists of a single reaction, detailed analysis on the spurious wave pattern is presented employing the fractional step method, which utilizes the Strang splitting. With the help of physical arguments, a threshold values method (TVM), which can be extended to more complicated stiff problems, is developed to eliminate the wrong shock speed phenomena. Several single reaction detonations as well as multispecies and multi-reaction detonation test cases with strong stiffness are examined to illustrate the performance of the TVM approach.

This paper concerns the analytic structure of the self-consistent field theory (SCFT) energy functional of multicomponent block copolymer systems which contain more than two chemically distinct blocks. The SCFT has enjoyed considered success and wide usage in investigation of the complex phase behavior of block copolymers. It is well-known that the physical solutions of the SCFT equations are saddle points, however, the analytic structure of the SCFT energy functional has received little attention over the years. A recent work by Fredrickson and collaborators [see the monograph by Fredrickson, The Equilibrium Theory of Inhomogeneous Polymers, (2006), pp. 203–209] has analysed the mathematical structure of the field energy functional for polymeric systems, and clarified the index-1 saddle point nature of the problem caused by the incompressible constraint. In this paper, our goals are to draw further attention to multicomponent block copolymers utilizing the Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation used by Fredrickson and co-workers. We firstly show that the saddle point character of the SCFT energy functional of multicomponent block copolymer systems may be high index, not only produced by the incompressible constraint, but also by the Flory-Huggins interaction parameters. Our analysis will be beneficial to many theoretical studies, such as the nucleation theory of ordered phases, the mesoscopic dynamics. As an application, we utilize the discovery to develop the gradient-based iterative schemes to solve the SCFT equations, and illustrate its performance through several numerical experiments taking ABC star triblock copolymers as an example.

This paper analyzes an abstract two-level algorithm for hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin (HDG) methods in a unified fashion. We use an extended version of the Xu-Zikatanov (X-Z) identity to derive a sharp estimate of the convergence rate of the algorithm, and show that the theoretical results also are applied to weak Galerkin (WG) methods. The main features of our analysis are twofold: one is that we only need the minimal regularity of the model problem; the other is that we do not require the triangulations to be quasi-uniform. Numerical experiments are provided to confirm the theoretical results.

Algorithms for adaptive mesh refinement using a residual error estimator are proposed for fluid flow problems in a finite volume framework. The residual error estimator, referred to as the ℜ-parameter is used to derive refinement and coarsening criteria for the adaptive algorithms. An adaptive strategy based on the ℜ-parameter is proposed for continuous flows, while a hybrid adaptive algorithm employing a combination of error indicators and the ℜ-parameter is developed for discontinuous flows. Numerical experiments for inviscid and viscous flows on different grid topologies demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms on arbitrary polygonal grids.

In this article, we discuss the stability of soft quasicrystalline phases in a coupled-mode Swift-Hohenberg model for three-component systems, where the characteristic length scales are governed by the positive-definite gradient terms. Classic two-mode approximation method and direct numerical minimization are applied to the model. In the latter approach, we apply the projection method to deal with the potentially quasiperiodic ground states. A variable cell method of optimizing the shape and size of higher-dimensional periodic cell is developed to minimize the free energy with respect to the order parameters. Based on the developed numerical methods, we rediscover decagonal and dodecagonal quasicrystalline phases, and find diverse periodic phases and complex modulated phases. Furthermore, phase diagrams are obtained in various phase spaces by comparing the free energies of different candidate structures. It does show not only the important roles of system parameters, but also the effect of optimizing computational domain. In particular, the optimization of computational cell allows us to capture the ground states and phase behavior with higher fidelity. We also make some discussions on our results and show the potential of applying our numerical methods to a larger class of mean-field free energy functionals.

In two-phase flow simulations, a difficult issue is usually the treatment of surface tension effects. These cause a pressure jump that is proportional to the curvature of the interface separating the two fluids. Since the evaluation of the curvature incorporates second derivatives, it is prone to numerical instabilities. Within this work, the interface is described by a level-set method based on a discontinuous Galerkin discretization. In order to stabilize the evaluation of the curvature, a patch-recovery operation is employed. There are numerous ways in which this filtering operation can be applied in the whole process of curvature computation. Therefore, an extensive numerical study is performed to identify optimal settings for the patch-recovery operations with respect to computational cost and accuracy.

We study the inverse problem of recovering the scatterer shape from the far-field pattern(FFP) in the presence of noise. Furthermore, only a discrete partial aperture is usually known. This problem is ill-posed and is frequently addressed using regularization. Instead, we propose to use a direct approach denoising the FFP using a filtering technique. The effectiveness of the technique is studied on a scatterer with the shape of the ellipse with a tower. The forward scattering problem is solved using the finite element method (FEM). The numerical FFP is additionally corrupted by Gaussian noise. The shape parameters are found based on a least-square error estimator. If ũ∞ is a perturbation of the FFP then we attempt to find Γ, the scatterer shape, which minimizes ∣∣ũ∞ − ũ∞∣∣ using the conjugate gradient method for the denoised FFP

Free energy lattice Boltzmann methods are well suited for the simulation of two phase flow problems. The model for the interface is based on well understood physical grounds. In most cases a numerical interface is used instead of the physical one because of lattice resolution limitations. In this paper we present a framework where we can both follow the droplet behavior in a coarse scale and solve the interface in a fine scale simultaneously. We apply the method for the simulation of a droplet using an interface to diameter size ratio of 1 to 280. In a second simulation, a small droplet coalesces with a 42 times larger droplet producing on it only a small capillary wave that propagates and dissipates.

We present a systematic derivation of a model based on the central moment lattice Boltzmann equation that rigorously maintains Galilean invariance of forces to simulate inertial frame independent flow fields. In this regard, the central moments, i.e. moments shifted by the local fluid velocity, of the discrete source terms of the lattice Boltzmann equation are obtained by matching those of the continuous full Boltzmann equation of various orders. This results in an exact hierarchical identity between the central moments of the source terms of a given order and the components of the central moments of the distribution functions and sources of lower orders. The corresponding source terms in velocity space are then obtained from an exact inverse transformation due to a suitable choice of orthogonal basis for moments. Furthermore, such a central moment based kinetic model is further extended by incorporating reduced compressibility effects to represent incompressible flow. Moreover, the description and simulation of fluid turbulence for full or any subset of scales or their averaged behavior should remain independent of any inertial frame of reference. Thus, based on the above formulation, a new approach in lattice Boltzmann framework to incorporate turbulence models for simulation of Galilean invariant statistical averaged or filtered turbulent fluid motion is discussed.

The fine description of complex fluids can be carried out by describing the evolution of each individual constituent (e.g. each particle, each macromolecule, etc.). This procedure, despite its conceptual simplicity, involves many numerical issues, the most challenging one being that related to the computing time required to update the system configuration by describing all the interactions between the different individuals. Coarse grained approaches allow alleviating the just referred issue: the system is described by a distribution function providing the fraction of entities that at certain time and position have a particular conformation. Thus, mesoscale models involve many different coordinates, standard space and time, and different conformational coordinates whose number and nature depend on the particular system considered. Balance equation describing the evolution of such distribution function consists of an advection-diffusion partial differential equation defined in a high dimensional space. Standard mesh-based discretization techniques fail at solving high-dimensional models because of the curse of dimensionality. Recently the authors proposed an alternative route based on the use of separated representations. However, until now these approaches were unable to address the case of advection dominated models due to stabilization issues. In this paper this issue is revisited and efficient procedures for stabilizing the advection operators involved in the Boltzmann and Fokker-Planck equation within the PGD framework are proposed.

Moving mesh methods provide an efficient way of solving partial differential equations for which large, localised variations in the solution necessitate locally dense spatial meshes. In one-dimension, meshes are typically specified using the arclength mesh density function. This choice is well-justified for piecewise polynomial interpolants, but it is only justified for spectral methods when model solutions include localised steep gradients. In this paper, one-dimensional mesh density functions are presented which are based on a spatially localised measure of the bandwidth of the approximated model solution. In considering bandwidth, these mesh density functions are well-justified for spectral methods, but are not strictly tied to the error properties of any particular spatial interpolant, and are hence widely applicable. The bandwidth mesh density functions are illustrated in two ways. First, by applying them to Chebyshev polynomial approximation of two test functions, and second, through use in periodic spectral and finite-difference moving mesh methods applied to a number of model problems in acoustics. These problems include a heterogeneous advection equation, the viscous Burgers’ equation, and the Korteweg-de Vries equation. Simulation results demonstrate solution convergence rates that are up to an order of magnitude faster using the bandwidth mesh density functions than uniform meshes, and around three times faster than those using the arclength mesh density function.

A new VMD plugin that interfaces with DelPhi to provide ensemble-averaged electrostatic calculations using the Poisson-Boltzmann equation is presented. The general theory and context of this approach are discussed, and examples of the plugin interface and calculations are presented. This new tool is applied to systems of current biological interest, obtaining the ensemble-averaged electrostatic properties of the two major influenza virus glycoproteins, hemagglutinin and neuraminidase, from explicitly solvated all-atom molecular dynamics trajectories. The differences between the ensemble-averaged electrostatics and those obtained from a single structure are examined in detail for these examples, revealing how the plugin can be a powerful tool in facilitating the modeling of electrostatic interactions in biological systems.

The importance of eliminating errors in grid-metric evaluation for high-order difference schemes has been widely recognized in recent years, and it is known from the proof by Vinokur and Yee (NASA TM 209598, 2000) that when conservative derivations of grid metric are used by Thomas, Lombard and Neier (AIAA J., 1978, 17(10) and J. Spacecraft and rocket, 1990, 27(2)), errors caused by metric evaluation could be eliminated by linear schemes when flux splitting is not considered. According to the above achievement, central schemes without the use of flux splitting could fulfill the requirement of error elimination. Difficulties will arise for upwind schemes to attain the objective when the splitting is considered. In this study, further investigations are made on three aspects: Firstly, an idea of central scheme decomposition is introduced, and the procedure to derive the central scheme is proposed to evaluate grid metrics only. Secondly, the analysis has been made on the requirement of flux splitting to acquire free-stream preservation, and a Lax-Friedrichs-type splitting scheme is proposed as an example. Discussions about current study with that by Nonomura et al. (Computers and Fluids, 2015, 107) have been made. Thirdly, for half-node- or mixed-type schemes, interpolations should be used to derive variables at half nodes. The requirement to achieve metric identity on this situation is analyzed and an idea of directionally consistent interpolation is proposed, which is manifested to be indispensable to avoid violations of metric identity and to eliminate metric-caused errors thereafter. Two numerical problems are tested, i.e., the free-stream and vortex preservation on wavy, largely randomized and triangular-like grids. Numerical results validate aforementioned theoretical outcomes.

Acupuncture has been in clinical practice in China for thousands of years and its analgesia effect is worldwide accepted. However, the mechanism of acupuncture effect is not well understood. The study focus on signaling pathways induced by acupuncture, analyzes the cooperative action of the acupoints’ structure and the associated chemical mediators during acupuncture, establishes a mathematical model clarifying the roadmap of electroneurographic signal startup and transmission mechanism induced by acupuncture, quantitatively analyzing the response in acupoints to acupuncture. These work contribute to reveal the activation and transmission mechanism of neural signals induced by acupuncture from systems biology perspective, lay the foundation for the integration of acupuncture theory and modern science and further guide the clinical treatment and experimental research of acupuncture.

We study the exciton diffusion in organic semiconductors from a macroscopic viewpoint. In a unified way, we conduct the equivalence analysis between Monte-Carlo method and diffusion equation model for photoluminescence quenching and photocurrent spectrum measurements, in both the presence and the absence of Förster energy transfer effect. Connections of these two models to Stern-Volmer method and exciton-exciton annihilation method are also specified for the photoluminescence quenching measurement.

We present a finite volume based cell-centered method for solving diffusion equations on three-dimensional unstructured grids with general tensor conduction. Our main motivation concerns the numerical simulation of the coupling between fluid flows and heat transfers. The corresponding numerical scheme is characterized by cell-centered unknowns and a local stencil. Namely, the scheme results in a global sparse diffusion matrix, which couples only the cell-centered unknowns. The space discretization relies on the partition of polyhedral cells into sub-cells and on the partition of cell faces into sub-faces. It is characterized by the introduction of sub-face normal fluxes and sub-face temperatures, which are auxiliary unknowns. A sub-cellbased variational formulation of the constitutive Fourier law allows to construct an explicit approximation of the sub-face normal heat fluxes in terms of the cell-centered temperature and the adjacent sub-face temperatures. The elimination of the sub-face temperatures with respect to the cell-centered temperatures is achieved locally at each node by solving a small and sparse linear system. This systemis obtained by enforcing the continuity condition of the normal heat flux across each sub-cell interface impinging at the node under consideration. The parallel implementation of the numerical algorithm and its efficiency are described and analyzed. The accuracy and the robustness of the proposed finite volumemethod are assessed bymeans of various numerical test cases.

By combining the characteristic method and the local discontinuous Galerkin method with carefully constructing numerical fluxes, variational formulations are established for time-dependent incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in ℝ2. The nonlinear stability is proved for the proposed symmetric variational formulation. Moreover, for general triangulations the priori estimates for the L2–norm of the errors in both velocity and pressure are derived. Some numerical experiments are performed to verify theoretical results.

Red blood cells undergo substantial shape changes in vivo. Modeled as a viscoelastic capsule, their deformation and equilibrium behavior has been extensively studied. We consider how 2D capsules recover their shape, after having been deformed to ‘equilibrium’ behavior by shear flow. The fluid-structure interaction is modeled using the multiple-relaxation time lattice Boltzmann (LBM) and immersed boundary (IBM) methods. Characterizing the capsule’s shape recovery with the Taylor deformation parameter, we find that a single exponential decay model suffices to describe the recovery of a circular capsule. However, for biconcave capsules whose equilibrium behaviors are tank-treading and tumbling, we posit a two-part recovery, modeled with a pair of exponential decay functions. We consider how these two recovery modes depend on the capsule’s shear elasticity, membrane viscosity, and bending stiffness, along with the ratio of the viscosity of the fluid inside the capsule to the ambient fluid viscosity. We find that the initial recovery mode for a tank-treading biconcave capsule is dominated by shear elasticity and membrane viscosity. On the other hand, the latter recovery mode for both tumbling and tank-treading capsules, depends clearly on shear elasticity, bending stiffness, and the viscosity ratio.

Consider the time-harmonic acoustic scattering from an extended elastic body surrounded by a finite number of point-like obstacles in a fluid. We assume point source waves are emitted from arrayed transducers and the signals of scattered near-field data are recorded by receivers not far away from the scatterers (compared to the incident wavelength). The forward scattering can be modeled as an interaction problem between acoustic and elastic waves together with a multiple scattering problem between the extend solid and point scatterers. We prove a necessary and sufficient condition that can be used simultaneously to recover the shape of the extended elastic solid and to locate the positions of point scatterers. The essential ingredient in our analysis is the outgoing-to-incoming (OtI) operator applied to the resulting near-field response matrix (or operator). In the first part, we justify the MUSIC algorithm for locating point scatterers from near-field measurements. In the second part, we apply the factorization method, the continuous analogue of MUSIC, to the two-scale scattering problem for determining both extended and point scatterers. Numerical examples in 2D are demonstrated to show the validity and accuracy of our inversion algorithms.