The quark-gluon plasma, turbulence, and quantum mechanics

Quark-gluon plasmas formed in heavy ion collisions at high energies are well described by ideal classical fluid equations with nearly zero viscosity. It is believed that a similar fluid permeated the entire universe at about three microseconds after the big bang. The estimated Reynolds number for this quark-gluon plasma at 3 microseconds is approximately 10^19. The possibility that quantum mechanics may be an emergent property of a turbulent proto-fluid is tentatively explored. A simple relativistic fluid equation which is consistent with general relativity and is based on a cosmic dust model is studied. A proper time transformation transforms it into an inviscid Burgers equation. This is analyzed numerically using a spectral method. Soliton-like solutions are demonstrated for this system, and these interact with the known ergodic behavior of the fluid to yield a stochastic and chaotic system which is time reversible. Various similarities to quantum mechanics are explored.Comment: 41 pages. Content changes in the azimuthal soliton sectio

Spectral and High Order Methods for Partial Differential Equations ICOSAHOM 2018

This open access book features a selection of high-quality papers from the presentations at the International Conference on Spectral and High-Order Methods 2018, offering an overview of the depth and breadth of the activities within this important research area. The carefully reviewed papers provide a snapshot of the state of the art, while the extensive bibliography helps initiate new research directions

SOLID-SHELL FINITE ELEMENT MODELS FOR EXPLICIT SIMULATIONS OF CRACK PROPAGATION IN THIN STRUCTURES

Crack propagation in thin shell structures due to cutting is conveniently simulated using explicit finite element approaches, in view of the high nonlinearity of the problem. Solidshell elements are usually preferred for the discretization in the presence of complex material behavior and degradation phenomena such as delamination, since they allow for a correct representation of the thickness geometry. However, in solid-shell elements the small thickness leads to a very high maximum eigenfrequency, which imply very small stable time-steps. A new selective mass scaling technique is proposed to increase the time-step size without affecting accuracy. New ”directional” cohesive interface elements are used in conjunction with selective mass scaling to account for the interaction with a sharp blade in cutting processes of thin ductile shells

Potential-based Formulations of the Navier-Stokes Equations and their Application

Based on a Clebsch-like velocity representation and a combination of classical variational principles for the special cases of ideal and Stokes flow a novel discontinuous Lagrangian is constructed; it bypasses the known problems associated with non-physical solutions and recovers the classical Navier-Stokes equations together with the balance of inner energy in the limit when an emerging characteristic frequency parameter tends to infinity. Additionally, a generalized Clebsch transformation for viscous flow is established for the first time. Next, an exact first integral of the unsteady, three-dimensional, incompressible Navier-Stokes equations is derived; following which gauge freedoms are explored leading to favourable reductions in the complexity of the equation set and number of unknowns, enabling a self-adjoint variational principle for steady viscous flow to be constructed. Concurrently, appropriate commonly occurring physical and auxiliary boundary conditions are prescribed, including establishment of a first integral for the dynamic boundary condition at a free surface. Starting from this new formulation, three classical flow problems are considered, the results obtained being in total agreement with solutions in the open literature. A new least-squares finite element method based on the first integral of the steady two-dimensional, incompressible, Navier-Stokes equations is developed, with optimal convergence rates established theoretically. The method is analysed comprehensively, thoroughly validated and shown to be competitive when compared to a corresponding, standard, primitive-variable, finite element formulation. Implementation details are provided, and the well-known problem of mass conservation addressed and resolved via selective weighting. The attractive positive definiteness of the resulting linear systems enables employment of a customized scalable algebraic multigrid method for efficient error reduction. The solution of several engineering related problems from the fields of lubrication and film flow demonstrate the flexibility and efficiency of the proposed method, including the case of unsteady flow, while revealing new physical insights of interest in their own right

A multi-domain implementation of the pseudo-spectral method and compact finite difference schemes for solving time-dependent differential equations

Abstract : In this dissertation, we introduce new numerical methods for solving time-dependant differential equations. These methods involve dividing the domain of the problem into multiple sub domains. The nonlinearity of the differential equations is dealt with by using a Gauss-Seidel like relaxation or quasilinearisation technique. To solve the linearized iteration schemes obtained we use either higher order compact finite difference schemes or spectral collocation methods and we call the resulting methods the multi-domain compact finite difference relaxation method (MD-CFDRM), multi-domain compact finite difference quasilinearisation method (MD-CFDQLM) and multi-domain bivariate spectral quasilinearisation method (MD-BSQLM) respectively. We test the applicability of these methods in a wide variety of differential equations. The accuracy is compared against other methods as well as other results from literature. The MD-CFDRM is used to solve famous chaotic systems and hyperchaotic systems. Chaotic and hyperchaotic systems are characterized by high sensitivity to small perturbation on initial data and rapidly changing solutions. Such rapid variations in the solution pose tremendous problems to a number of numerical approximations. We modify the CFDs to be able to deal with such systems of equations. We also used the MD-CFDQLM to solve the nonlinear evolution partial differential equations, namely, the Fisher’s equation, Burgers- Fisher equation, Burgers-Huxley equation and the coupled Burgers’ equations over a large time domain. The main advantage of this approach is that it offers better accuracy on coarser grids which significantly improves the computational speed of the method for large time domain. We also studied the generalized Kuramoto-Sivashinsky (GKS) equations. The KS equations exhibit chaotic behaviour under certain conditions. We used the multi-domain bivariate spectral quasilinearisation method (MD-BSQLM) to approximate the numerical solutions for the generalized KS equations.M.Sc. (Pure and Applied Mathematics