Groundwater fluxes and flow paths within coastal barriers: Observations from a large-scale laboratory experiment (BARDEX II)

The dynamics of groundwater at the beach face land�ocean boundary have important implications to the exchange of water, nutrients, and pollutants between the ocean and coastal aquifers, and more subtly, varying groundwater levels may induce differing morphological response at the beach face. As a component of the multi-institution Barrier Dynamics Experiment (BARDEX II), groundwater fluxes and flow paths within a prototype-scale sandy barrier are quantified and reported at the three fundamental spatio-temporal scales (individual waves, the beach face, and total barrier), under controlled wave and water level conditions. A particular feature of the experimental programme was the inclusion of a back-barrier �lagoon�, that via a pump system and an intermediate water reservoir enabled the forcing of contrasting hydraulic gradients across the barrier. It was observed that the groundwater level, flow paths, and fluxes within the beach face region of the sand barrier were predominantly controlled by the action of waves at the beach face, regardless of the overall seaward- or landward-directed barrier-scale hydraulic gradients. In the presence of waves, all tests undertaken to complete this study developed a seaward gradient in this zone under the influence of waves. As a further result of wave forcing at the beach face boundary, localised groundwater flow divides were observed to develop, further partitioning the circulation and flow paths of groundwater within the prototype-scale sand barrier

Evaluation of a surrogate contact model of TKA

INTRODUCTION: Simultaneous prediction of body-level dynamics and detailed joint mechanics in the frame of musculoskeletal (MS) modeling represents still a highly computationally demanding task. Marra et al. (2014) recently presented and validated a MS model capable of concurrent prediction of muscle forces, knee ligament forces, tibiofemoral (TF) and patellofemoral (PF) contact forces in a MS model of Total Knee Arthroplasty (TKA) [1]. Simulation time for one complete gait cycle was in the order of 3 hours, and the iterative process that solved the equilibrium in the knee joint was thought to be the main source of overhead. Surrogate modeling techniques were suggested [2]. In this study, we develop a surrogate contact model of TKA to decrease the simulation time in the MS simulation. We hypothesize that the algorithm that allows the muscle fibers to wrap around the bones constitutes another source of overhead in the MS model. Therefore, we will also evaluate the performances of the surrogate model with and without muscle wrapping. METHODS: The original tibial component from our TKA model [1] was split in a medial and lateral hemi-part and fixed to the ground, whereas the femoral part was left with 6 degrees of freedom (DOF). The contacting pairs exchanged three forces and three moments, which were assumed functions of the relative pose only. Translations (X, Y, Z) were defined relative to the tibial component frame and rotations of the femoral component (RotX, RotY, RotZ) were described with Cardan angles, using the z-y-x rotation sequence. Similarly to Lin et al (2010) [3] we identified two sensitive directions, Y and RotX and, therefore, we defined a sample point as composed by four pose parameters and the two loads in the sensitive directions: X, Fy, Z, Tx, RotY, RotZ. Reference load-pose data were obtained from four simulations of gait, squat, chair-rise, and right-turn trials using the original contact model. The design space was populated using the Hammersley quasi-random sequence and adopting a multi-domain approach, as proposed by Eskinazi and Fregly (2015) [2]. One domain consisted of 20 data points per each frame of the four dynamic simulations, spanning the boundaries of ± 1 standard deviation from the time-varying reference envelopes. A second domain of 2500 points was generated in the principal component space of the reference load-pose data of each dynamic simulation, with boundaries enlarged by 50%. A third domain of 1000 data points represented one-side-contact situations, in which Tx was bounded to ± 4 Nm. In total, 36000 data points were sampled in the three different domains. Data points were evaluated using the original contact model (Fig. 1) by repeated Force-Dependent Kinematics (FDK) analyses. Data points which did not lead to equilibrium were discarded. The remaining 27620 points were randomly subdivided into a training (70%) and testing (30%) group. Three separate Feed-Forward Artificial Neural Networks (FFANN), consisting of four inner layers of 20 hyperbolic tangent sigmoid neurons each, were configured within the Neural Network Toolbox in MATLAB 8.1 (The MathWorks Inc., Natick, MA, 2013). The first network was trained to learn the relationships between the four –two medial and two lateral– sensitive loads (output) and the six pose parameters (input). Two other networks –one medial and one lateral– were trained separately to learn the relationships between the remaining loads of each side (output) and all the pose parameters plus the two sensitive loads from each side (input). We used the popular Levenberg-Marquardt training algorithm in conjunction with Bayesian regularization to avoid over-fitting. Stopping criterion was a training time of two hours for each network. The trained networks were translated to custom C++ DLL functions for successive inclusion in our MS model. The surrogate contact model replaced the original contact model and one gait trial was simulated with 4 different combination of the following model settings: original versus surrogate contact model, wrapping enabled versus disabled. RESULTS: The contact sampling model required 238 hours to evaluate the 36000 data points. Predicted tibiofemoral compressive forces under all simulated cases are shown in Fig. 2. A comparison with experimental measurements (eTibia line) is also shown. Surrogate model predictions showed a very good agreement with the original model counterparts. Fig. 3 summarizes the computation times: simulations took the longest when muscle wrapping was enabled and the benefits of using the surrogate model became evident only when the wrapping algorithm was switched off, leading to a 6x speed-up. Simulation time with the original contact model decreased by a factor of 8 by switching off the wrapping algorithm. DISCUSSION: The use of FFANN-based surrogate contact model, in place of the original rigid contact model, could substantially reduce the simulation time of a full gait cycle down to 3 minutes, when the wrapping algorithm was turned off. Such improvement could not be achieved when using the wrapping algorithm. This enlightens another important source of overhead in MS modeling –the muscle wrapping algorithm– which unexpectedly was found to dominate the simulation time. At each FDK iteration, the wrapping algorithm needs to be solved as well, introducing overhead. If the wrapping algorithm is slower than the contact algorithm, then the computation time of each step will be dominated by the former, leaving only a small fraction to be gained from the latter. SIGNIFICANCE: We showed that surrogate contact model could reduce the simulation time in a MS model of TKA down to a level which allows parametric studies and/or optimization to be feasible. We also discovered that the muscle wrapping algorithm constituted an unexpectedly large source of overhead during dynamic simulations. These represent new and important findings for the MS modeling community. REFERENCES: [1] M. A. Marra, V. Vanheule, R. Fluit, B. H. F. J. M. Koopman, J. Rasmussen, N. J. J. Verdonschot, and M. S. Andersen, “A Subject-Specific Musculoskeletal Modeling Framework to Predict in Vivo Mechanics of Total Knee Arthroplasty.,” J. Biomech. Eng., Nov. 2014. [2] I. Eskinazi and B. J. Fregly, “Surrogate modeling of deformable joint contact using artificial neural networks.,” Med. Eng. Phys., Jul. 2015. [3] Y.-C. Lin, R. T. Haftka, N. V Queipo, and B. J. Fregly, “Surrogate articular contact models for computationally efficient multibody dynamic simulations.,” Med. Eng. Phys., vol. 32, no. 6, pp. 584–94, Jul. 2010. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: This study was conducted within the ERC ‘BioMechTools’ project, funded by the European Research Council

The seismic response to Faroe basalts from integrated borehole and wide-angle seismic data

We study the seismic response of layered basalts in the Faroe Islands using borehole data and\ud vertical seismic profiles from the Vestmanna borehole, combined with reflection and wideangle\ud seismic data recorded into arrays of both borehole and land multicomponent receivers.\ud Imaging through the basalt cover in the Faroe-Shetland Basin is a challenge for conventional\ud seismic surveys: scattering caused by the high reflectivity of the basalt as well as intra-basalt\ud multiples and high attenuation from the layered sequence make it difficult to image within\ud and beneath the basalts. This project allows us to correlate ultrasonic-scale velocity and\ud density measurements from the borehole together with ground-truthing from borehole logs\ud and core samples with the seismic-scale velocities and reflection images derived from VSP\ud and surface data. We find a good match of observed travel-times of borehole and wide-angle\ud P-wave data with those predicted from the borehole measurements, suggesting lateral\ud homogeneity over horizontal distances on the kilometre scale, and restricted transverse\ud anisotropy of the layered basalts. A pronounced intra-basalt reflector identified on the\ud multichannel surface seismic can be correlated with lithostratigraphic interpretation of the\ud borehole logs as caused by thick flows near the top of the Lower Basalt formation

Violation of the Wiedemann-Franz Law in a Large-N Solution of the t-J Model

We show that the Wiedemann-Franz law, which holds for Landau Fermi liquids, breaks down in a large-n treatment of the t-J model. The calculated ratio of the in-plane thermal and electrical conductivities agrees quantitatively with experiments on the normal state of the electron-doped Pr_{2-x}Ce_xCuO_4 (x = 0.15) cuprate superconductor. The violation of the Wiedemann-Franz law in the uniform phase contrasts with other properties of the phase that are Fermi liquid like.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Typos corrected, one added reference, revised discussion of experiment on 214 cuprate material (x = 0.06

Modeling of complex oxide materials from the first principles: systematic applications to vanadates RVO3 with distorted perovskite structure

"Realistic modeling" is a new direction of electronic structure calculations, where the main emphasis is made on the construction of some effective low-energy model entirely within a first-principle framework. Ideally, it is a model in form, but with all the parameters derived rigorously, on the basis of first-principles electronic structure calculations. The method is especially suit for transition-metal oxides and other strongly correlated systems, whose electronic and magnetic properties are predetermined by the behavior of some limited number of states located near the Fermi level. After reviewing general ideas of realistic modeling, we will illustrate abilities of this approach on the wide series of vanadates RVO3 (R= La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Sm, Gd, Tb, Yb, and Y) with distorted perovskite structure. Particular attention will be paid to computational tools, which can be used for microscopic analysis of different spin and orbital states in the partially filled t2g-band. We will explicitly show how the lifting of the orbital degeneracy by the monoclinic distortion stabilizes C-type antiferromagnetic (AFM) state, which can be further transformed to the G-type AFM state by changing the crystal distortion from monoclinic to orthorhombic one. Two microscopic mechanisms of such a stabilization, associated with the one-electron crystal field and electron correlation interactions, are discussed. The flexibility of the orbital degrees of freedom is analyzed in terms of the magnetic-state dependence of interatomic magnetic interactions.Comment: 23 pages, 13 figure

Structure optimization effects on the electronic properties of Bi2_2Sr2_2CaCu2_2O8_8

We present detailed first-principles calculations for the normal state electronic properties of the high T$_C$ superconductor Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CaCu$_2$O$_8$, by means of the linearized augmented plane wave (LAPW) method within the framework of density functional theory (DFT). As a first step, the body centered tetragonal (BCT) cell has been adopted, and optimized regarding its volume, $c/a$ ratio and internal atomic positions by total energy and force minimizations. The full optimization of the BCT cell leads to small but visible changes in the topology of the Fermi surface, rounding the shape of CuO$_2$ barrels, and causing both the BiO bands, responsible for the pockets near the \textit{\=M} 2D symmetry point, to dip below the Fermi level. We have then studied the influence of the distortions in the BiO plane observed in nature by means of a $\sqrt{2}\times\sqrt{2}$ orthorhombic cell (AD-ORTH) with $Bbmb$ space group. Contrary to what has been observed for the Bi-2201 compound, we find that for Bi-2212 the distortion does not sensibly shift the BiO bands which retain their metallic character. As a severe test for the considered structures we present Raman-active phonon frequencies ($q = 0$) and eigenvectors calculated within the frozen-phonon approximation. Focussing on the totally symmetric A$_{g}$ modes, we observe that for a reliable attribution of the peaks observed in Raman experiments, both $c$- and a-axis vibrations must be taken into account, the latter being activated by the in-plane orthorhombic distortion.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figure