6,420 research outputs found
An adaptive, hanging-node, discontinuous isogeometric analysis method for the first-order form of the neutron transport equation with discrete ordinate (SN) angular discretisation
In this paper a discontinuous, hanging-node, isogeometric analysis (IGA) method is developed and applied to the first-order form of the neutron transport equation with a discrete ordinate (SN) angular discretisation in two-dimensional space. The complexities involved in upwinding across curved element boundaries that contain hanging-nodes have been addressed to ensure that the scheme remains conservative. A robust algorithm for cycle-breaking has also been introduced in order to develop a unique sweep ordering of the elements for each discrete ordinates direction. The convergence rate of the scheme has been verified using the method of manufactured solutions (MMS) with a smooth solution. Heuristic error indicators have been used to drive an adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) algorithm to take advantage of the hanging-node discretisation. The effectiveness of this method is demonstrated for three test cases. The first is a homogeneous square in a vacuum with varying mean free path and a prescribed extraneous unit source. The second test case is a radiation shielding problem and the third is a 3×3 “supercell” featuring a burnable absorber. In the final test case, comparisons are made to the discontinuous Galerkin finite element method (DGFEM) using both straight-sided and curved quadratic finite elements
Adaptive Mesh Refinement for Coupled Elliptic-Hyperbolic Systems
We present a modification to the Berger and Oliger adaptive mesh refinement
algorithm designed to solve systems of coupled, non-linear, hyperbolic and
elliptic partial differential equations. Such systems typically arise during
constrained evolution of the field equations of general relativity. The novel
aspect of this algorithm is a technique of "extrapolation and delayed solution"
used to deal with the non-local nature of the solution of the elliptic
equations, driven by dynamical sources, within the usual Berger and Oliger
time-stepping framework. We show empirical results demonstrating the
effectiveness of this technique in axisymmetric gravitational collapse
simulations. We also describe several other details of the code, including
truncation error estimation using a self-shadow hierarchy, and the
refinement-boundary interpolation operators that are used to help suppress
spurious high-frequency solution components ("noise").Comment: 31 pages, 15 figures; replaced with published versio
Wavefront sensing of atmospheric phase distortions at the Palomar 200-in. telescope and implications for adaptive optics
Major efforts in astronomical instrumentation are now being made to apply the techniques of adaptive optics to the correction of phase distortions induced by the turbulent atmosphere and by quasi-static aberrations in telescopes themselves. Despite decades of study, the problem of atmospheric turbulence is still only partially understood. We have obtained video-rate (30 Hz) imaging of stellar clusters and of single-star phase distortions over the pupil of the 200" Hale telescope on Palomar Mountain. These data show complex temporal and spatial behavior, with multiple components arising at a number of scale heights in the atmosphere; we hope to quantify this behavior to ensure the feasibility of adaptive optics at the Observatory. We have implemented different wavefront sensing techniques to measure aperture phase in wavefronts from single stars, including the classical Foucault test, which measures the local gradient of phase, and the recently-devised curvature sensing technique, which measures the second derivative of pupil phase and has formed the real-time wavefront sensor for some very productive astronomical adaptive optics. Our data, though not fast enough to capture all details of atmospheric phase fluctuations, provide important information regarding the capabilities that must be met by the adaptive optics system now being built for the 200" telescope by a team at the Jet Propulsion Lab. We describe our data acquisition techniques, initial results from efforts to characterize the properties of the turbulent atmosphere at Palomar Mountain, and future plans to extract additional quantitative parameters of use for adaptive optics performance predictions
Efficient Resolution of Anisotropic Structures
We highlight some recent new delevelopments concerning the sparse
representation of possibly high-dimensional functions exhibiting strong
anisotropic features and low regularity in isotropic Sobolev or Besov scales.
Specifically, we focus on the solution of transport equations which exhibit
propagation of singularities where, additionally, high-dimensionality enters
when the convection field, and hence the solutions, depend on parameters
varying over some compact set. Important constituents of our approach are
directionally adaptive discretization concepts motivated by compactly supported
shearlet systems, and well-conditioned stable variational formulations that
support trial spaces with anisotropic refinements with arbitrary
directionalities. We prove that they provide tight error-residual relations
which are used to contrive rigorously founded adaptive refinement schemes which
converge in . Moreover, in the context of parameter dependent problems we
discuss two approaches serving different purposes and working under different
regularity assumptions. For frequent query problems, making essential use of
the novel well-conditioned variational formulations, a new Reduced Basis Method
is outlined which exhibits a certain rate-optimal performance for indefinite,
unsymmetric or singularly perturbed problems. For the radiative transfer
problem with scattering a sparse tensor method is presented which mitigates or
even overcomes the curse of dimensionality under suitable (so far still
isotropic) regularity assumptions. Numerical examples for both methods
illustrate the theoretical findings
Finite Element Simulation of Dense Wire Packings
A finite element program is presented to simulate the process of packing and
coiling elastic wires in two- and three-dimensional confining cavities. The
wire is represented by third order beam elements and embedded into a
corotational formulation to capture the geometric nonlinearity resulting from
large rotations and deformations. The hyperbolic equations of motion are
integrated in time using two different integration methods from the Newmark
family: an implicit iterative Newton-Raphson line search solver, and an
explicit predictor-corrector scheme, both with adaptive time stepping. These
two approaches reveal fundamentally different suitability for the problem of
strongly self-interacting bodies found in densely packed cavities. Generalizing
the spherical confinement symmetry investigated in recent studies, the packing
of a wire in hard ellipsoidal cavities is simulated in the frictionless elastic
limit. Evidence is given that packings in oblate spheroids and scalene
ellipsoids are energetically preferred to spheres.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures, 1 tabl
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