Shenfun -- automating the spectral Galerkin method

With the shenfun Python module (github.com/spectralDNS/shenfun) an effort is made towards automating the implementation of the spectral Galerkin method for simple tensor product domains, consisting of (currently) one non-periodic and any number of periodic directions. The user interface to shenfun is intentionally made very similar to FEniCS (fenicsproject.org). Partial Differential Equations are represented through weak variational forms and solved using efficient direct solvers where available. MPI decomposition is achieved through the {mpi4py-fft} module (bitbucket.org/mpi4py/mpi4py-fft), and all developed solver may, with no additional effort, be run on supercomputers using thousands of processors. Complete solvers are shown for the linear Poisson and biharmonic problems, as well as the nonlinear and time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau equation.Comment: Presented at MekIT'17, the 9th National Conference on Computational Mechanic

Reduction methods for the bienergy

This paper, in which we develop ideas introduced in \cite{MR}, focuses on \emph{reduction methods} (basically, group actions or, more generally, simmetries) for the bienergy. This type of techniques enable us to produce examples of critical points of the bienergy by reducing the study of the relevant fourth order PDE's system to ODE's. In particular, we shall study rotationally symmetric biharmonic conformal diffeomorphisms between \emph{models}. Next, we will adapt the reduction method to study an ample class of $G-$invariant immersions into the Euclidean space. At present, the known instances in these contexts are far from reaching the depth and variety of their companions which have provided fundamental solutions to classical problems in the theories of harmonic maps and minimal immersions. However, we think that these examples represent an important starting point which can inspire further research on biharmonicity. In this order of ideas, we end this paper with a discussion of some open problems and possible directions for further developments.Comment: to appear in REVUE ROUMAINE DE MATHEMATIQUES PURES ET APPLIQUEES. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1507.03964, arXiv:1109.620

Fast Ewald summation for free-space Stokes potentials

We present a spectrally accurate method for the rapid evaluation of free-space Stokes potentials, i.e. sums involving a large number of free space Green's functions. We consider sums involving stokeslets, stresslets and rotlets that appear in boundary integral methods and potential methods for solving Stokes equations. The method combines the framework of the Spectral Ewald method for periodic problems, with a very recent approach to solving the free-space harmonic and biharmonic equations using fast Fourier transforms (FFTs) on a uniform grid. Convolution with a truncated Gaussian function is used to place point sources on a grid. With precomputation of a scalar grid quantity that does not depend on these sources, the amount of oversampling of the grids with Gaussians can be kept at a factor of two, the minimum for aperiodic convolutions by FFTs. The resulting algorithm has a computational complexity of O(N log N) for problems with N sources and targets. Comparison is made with a fast multipole method (FMM) to show that the performance of the new method is competitive.Comment: 35 pages, 15 figure

An iterative regularizing method for an incomplete boundary data problem for the biharmonic equation

An incomplete boundary data problem for the biharmonic equation is considered, where the displacement is known throughout the boundary of the solution domain whilst the normal derivative and bending moment are specified on only a portion of the boundary. For this inverse ill‐posed problem an iterative regularizing method is proposed for the stable data reconstruction on the underspecified boundary part. Convergence is proven by showing that the method can be written as a Landweber‐type procedure for an operator formulation of the incomplete data problem. This reformulation renders a stopping rule, the discrepancy principle, for terminating the iterations in the case of noisy data. Uniqueness of a solution to the considered problem is also shown

Inverse boundary problems for polyharmonic operators with unbounded potentials

We show that the knowledge of the Dirichlet-to-Neumann map on the boundary of a bounded open set in $R^n$ for the perturbed polyharmonic operator $(-\Delta)^m +q$ with $q\in L^{n/2m}$, $n>2m$, determines the potential $q$ in the set uniquely. In the course of the proof, we construct a special Green function for the polyharmonic operator and establish its mapping properties in suitable weighted $L^2$ and $L^p$ spaces. The $L^p$ estimates for the special Green function are derived from $L^p$ Carleman estimates with linear weights for the polyharmonic operator

Fundamental solutions of an extended hydrodynamic model in two dimensions: derivation, theory and applications

The inability of the Navier-Stokes-Fourier equations to capture rarefaction effects motivates us to adopt the extended hydrodynamic equations. In the present work, a hydrodynamic model comprised of the conservation laws closed with the recently propounded coupled constitutive relations (CCR) -- referred to as the CCR model -- adequate for describing moderately rarefied gas is utilized. A numerical framework based on the method of fundamental solutions is developed and employed to solve the CCR model in two dimensions. To this end, the fundamental solutions of the linearized CCR model are derived in two dimensions. The significance of deriving the two-dimensional fundamental solutions is that they cannot be deduced from their three-dimensional counterparts that do exist in literature. As applications, the developed numerical framework based on the derived fundamental solutions is used to simulate (i) a rarefied gas flow confined between two coaxial cylinders with evaporating walls and (ii) a temperature-driven rarefied gas flow between two non-coaxial cylinders. The results for both problems have been validated against those obtained with the other classical approaches. Through this, it is shown that the method of fundamental solutions is an efficient tool for addressing two-dimensional multiphase microscale gas flow problems at a low computational cost. Moreover, the findings also show that the CCR model solved with the method of fundamental solutions depicts rarefaction effects, like transpiration flows and thermal stress, generally well.Comment: 14 figure