Accurately model the Kuramoto--Sivashinsky dynamics with holistic discretisation

We analyse the nonlinear Kuramoto--Sivashinsky equation to develop accurate discretisations modeling its dynamics on coarse grids. The analysis is based upon centre manifold theory so we are assured that the discretisation accurately models the dynamics and may be constructed systematically. The theory is applied after dividing the physical domain into small elements by introducing isolating internal boundaries which are later removed. Comprehensive numerical solutions and simulations show that the holistic discretisations excellently reproduce the steady states and the dynamics of the Kuramoto--Sivashinsky equation. The Kuramoto--Sivashinsky equation is used as an example to show how holistic discretisation may be successfully applied to fourth order, nonlinear, spatio-temporal dynamical systems. This novel centre manifold approach is holistic in the sense that it treats the dynamical equations as a whole, not just as the sum of separate terms.Comment: Without figures. See http://www.sci.usq.edu.au/staff/aroberts/ksdoc.pdf to download a version with the figure

Use the information dimension, not the Hausdorff

Multi-fractal patterns occur widely in nature. In developing new algorithms to determine multi-fractal spectra of experimental data I am lead to the conclusion that generalised dimensions $D_q$ of order $q\leq0$, including the Hausdorff dimension, are effectively \emph{irrelevant}. The reason is that these dimensions are extraordinarily sensitive to regions of low density in the multi-fractal data. Instead, one should concentrate attention on generalised dimensions $D_q$ for $q\geq 1$, and of these the information dimension $D_1$ seems the most robustly estimated from a finite amount of data.Comment: 11 page