1,541 research outputs found
A variational justification of the assumed natural strain formulation of finite elements
The objective is to study the assumed natural strain (ANS) formulation of finite elements from a variational standpoint. The study is based on two hybrid extensions of the Reissner-type functional that uses strains and displacements as independent fields. One of the forms is a genuine variational principle that contains an independent boundary traction field, whereas the other one represents a restricted variational principle. Two procedures for element level elimination of the strain field are discussed, and one of them is shown to be equivalent to the inclusion of incompatible displacement modes. Also, the 4-node C(exp 0) plate bending quadrilateral element is used to illustrate applications of this theory
Emergent behavior of soil fungal dynamics:influence of soil architecture and water distribution
Macroscopic measurements and observations in two-dimensional soil-thin sections indicate that fungal hyphae invade preferentially the larger, air-filled pores in soils. This suggests that the architecture of soils and the microscale distribution of water are likely to influence significantly the dynamics of fungal growth. Unfortunately, techniques are lacking at present to verify this hypothesis experimentally, and as a result, factors that control fungal growth in soils remain poorly understood. Nevertheless, to design appropriate experiments later on, it is useful to indirectly obtain estimates of the effects involved. Such estimates can be obtained via simulation, based on detailed micron-scale X-ray computed tomography information about the soil pore geometry. In this context, this article reports on a series of simulations resulting from the combination of an individual-based fungal growth model, describing in detail the physiological processes involved in fungal growth, and of a Lattice Boltzmann model used to predict the distribution of air-liquid interfaces in soils. Three soil samples with contrasting properties were used as test cases. Several quantitative parameters, including Minkowski functionals, were used to characterize the geometry of pores, air-water interfaces, and fungal hyphae. Simulation results show that the water distribution in the soils is affected more by the pore size distribution than by the porosity of the soils. The presence of water decreased the colonization efficiency of the fungi, as evinced by a decline in the magnitude of all fungal biomass functional measures, in all three samples. The architecture of the soils and water distribution had an effect on the general morphology of the hyphal network, with a "looped" configuration in one soil, due to growing around water droplets. These morphologic differences are satisfactorily discriminated by the Minkowski functionals, applied to the fungal biomass
Zooming-in on the SU(2) fundamental domain
For SU(2) gauge theories on the three-sphere we analyse the Gribov horizon
and the boundary of the fundamental domain in the 18 dimensional subspace that
contains the tunnelling path and the sphaleron and on which the energy
functional is degenerate to second order in the fields. We prove that parts of
this boundary coincide with the Gribov horizon with the help of bounds on the
fundamental modular domain.Comment: 19p., 6 figs. appended in PostScript (uuencoded), preprint
INLO-PUB-12/93. Revision: ONLY change is a much more economic PostScript code
for figures 1-4 (with apologies
Computational Problems in Metric Fixed Point Theory and their Weihrauch Degrees
We study the computational difficulty of the problem of finding fixed points
of nonexpansive mappings in uniformly convex Banach spaces. We show that the
fixed point sets of computable nonexpansive self-maps of a nonempty, computably
weakly closed, convex and bounded subset of a computable real Hilbert space are
precisely the nonempty, co-r.e. weakly closed, convex subsets of the domain. A
uniform version of this result allows us to determine the Weihrauch degree of
the Browder-Goehde-Kirk theorem in computable real Hilbert space: it is
equivalent to a closed choice principle, which receives as input a closed,
convex and bounded set via negative information in the weak topology and
outputs a point in the set, represented in the strong topology. While in finite
dimensional uniformly convex Banach spaces, computable nonexpansive mappings
always have computable fixed points, on the unit ball in infinite-dimensional
separable Hilbert space the Browder-Goehde-Kirk theorem becomes
Weihrauch-equivalent to the limit operator, and on the Hilbert cube it is
equivalent to Weak Koenig's Lemma. In particular, computable nonexpansive
mappings may not have any computable fixed points in infinite dimension. We
also study the computational difficulty of the problem of finding rates of
convergence for a large class of fixed point iterations, which generalise both
Halpern- and Mann-iterations, and prove that the problem of finding rates of
convergence already on the unit interval is equivalent to the limit operator.Comment: 44 page
Non-adiabatic Effects in the Dissociation of Oxygen Molecules at the Al(111) Surface
The measured low initial sticking probability of oxygen molecules at the
Al(111) surface that had puzzled the field for many years was recently
explained in a non-adiabatic picture invoking spin-selection rules [J. Behler
et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 036104 (2005)]. These selection rules tend to
conserve the initial spin-triplet character of the free O2 molecule during the
molecule's approach to the surface. A new locally-constrained
density-functional theory approach gave access to the corresponding
potential-energy surface (PES) seen by such an impinging spin-triplet molecule
and indicated barriers to dissociation which reduce the sticking probability.
Here, we further substantiate this non-adiabatic picture by providing a
detailed account of the employed approach. Building on the previous work, we
focus in particular on inaccuracies in present-day exchange-correlation
functionals. Our analysis shows that small quantitative differences in the
spin-triplet constrained PES obtained with different gradient-corrected
functionals have a noticeable effect on the lowest kinetic energy part of the
resulting sticking curve.Comment: 17 pages including 11 figures; related publications can be found at
http://www.fhi-berlin.mpg.de/th/th.htm
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