Perturbation and operator methods for solving Stokes flow and heat flow problems

This research investigates a number of problems, related to Stokes flow and to heat flow. The Stokes flow is inspired by glass flow in the process of making bottles or jars. The heat flow is related to a heat conduction model problem, and a problem about hot-spots formation in the microwave heating. We will discuss the first problem. There are two phases during the industrial process of making glass, viz. the pressing phase and the blowing phase. We consider some mathematical aspects of the pressing phase. The motion of glass at temperatures above 6000C can be described by the Navier-Stokes equations. Since glass is a highly viscous fluid, those equations can be simplified to the Stokes equations. We use two different methods to solve these equations, viz. perturbation and operator methods. The perturbation method is based on the geometry being slowly varying. As a result, we obtain the velocity analytically. This result has a good agreement with numerical results based on finite element modelling. Using the velocity obtained we derive the formula for the force on the plunger. Next, we consider the operator method. Using this method, the Stokes equations can be transformed into an operator equation on the boundary ¿?? with a tangent vector field a on the boundary ¿?? as unknown. Solving this operator equation shows, that the solutions of the Stokes equations can be parameterized by aH, the harmonic extension of a to the interior of the domain ??. As an application, we present some full explicit solutions of the Stokes equations for several domains such as the interior and exterior of the unit ball and of the unit disk, an infinite strip, a half space, and a wedge. In the second problem, we consider the heat conduction problem inside two types of geometry, viz. slowly and slightly varying geometry. Using this problem, we show the difference between those geometries. An example that involves the boundary layers at the ends is presented. Finally, we consider a simplified model of the microwave heating of a one-dimensional unit slab. This slab consists of three layers that have different thermal conductivities. We consider only the steady state problem with Dirichlet boundary conditions and continuity of heat flux across the layers. Using a fundamental-mode approximation of eigenfunction expansion, we investigate the effect of thermal conductivity on the formation of hot-spots where the temperature increases catastrophically as a function of d, the amplitude of the applied electric field. First, we consider a unit slab geometry. In this geometry, we find the critical value dcr, for which slight changes in d yields a sudden jump to another stable solution, now with a much higher temperature. Next, we consider a unit slab consisting of three layers of material with different thermal conductivity (µ). We assume the inner layer has the smallest value of µ. We find the temperature in this layer is much higher than that in other layers. Then, we consider only the inner layer. For a given value of d and changing values of µ, we get a temperature jump near some values of µ. This jump shows that there is a critical value of µ and signifies the formation of a hot-spot

Self-stabilizing Leader Election in Population Protocols over Arbitrary Communication Graphs

This paper considers the fundamental problem of \emph{self-stabilizing leader election} ($\mathcal{SSLE}$) in the model of \emph{population protocols}. In this model, an unknown number of asynchronous, anonymous and finite state mobile agents interact in pairs over a given communication graph. $\mathcal{SSLE}$ has been shown to be impossible in the original model. This impossibility can been circumvented by a modular technique augmenting the system with an \emph{oracle} - an external module abstracting the added assumption about the system. Fischer and Jiang have proposed solutions to $\mathcal{SSLE}$, for complete communication graphs and rings, using an oracle $\Omega?$, called the \emph{eventual leader detector}. In this work, we present a solution for arbitrary graphs, using a \emph{composition} of two copies of $\Omega?$. We also prove that the difficulty comes from the requirement of self-stabilization, by giving a solution without oracle for arbitrary graphs, when an uniform initialization is allowed. Finally, we prove that there is no self-stabilizing \emph{implementation} of $\Omega?$ using $\mathcal{SSLE}$, in a sense we define precisely

Algorithms For Extracting Timeliness Graphs

We consider asynchronous message-passing systems in which some links are timely and processes may crash. Each run defines a timeliness graph among correct processes: (p; q) is an edge of the timeliness graph if the link from p to q is timely (that is, there is bound on communication delays from p to q). The main goal of this paper is to approximate this timeliness graph by graphs having some properties (such as being trees, rings, ...). Given a family S of graphs, for runs such that the timeliness graph contains at least one graph in S then using an extraction algorithm, each correct process has to converge to the same graph in S that is, in a precise sense, an approximation of the timeliness graph of the run. For example, if the timeliness graph contains a ring, then using an extraction algorithm, all correct processes eventually converge to the same ring and in this ring all nodes will be correct processes and all links will be timely. We first present a general extraction algorithm and then a more specific extraction algorithm that is communication efficient (i.e., eventually all the messages of the extraction algorithm use only links of the extracted graph)

Distributed Consensus, Revisited

We provide a novel model to formalize a well-known algorithm, by Chandra and Toueg, that solves Consensus among asynchronous distributed processes in the presence of a particular class of failure detectors (Diamond S or, equivalently, Omega), under the hypothesis that only a minority of processes may crash. The model is defined as a global transition system that is unambigously generated by local transition rules. The model is syntax-free in that it does not refer to any form of programming language or pseudo code. We use our model to formally prove that the algorithm is correct

Solving atomic multicast when groups crash

In this paper, we study the atomic multicast problem, a fundamental abstraction for building faulttolerant systems. In the atomic multicast problem, the system is divided into non-empty and disjoint groups of processes. Multicast messages may be addressed to any subset of groups, each message possibly being multicast to a different subset. Several papers previously studied this problem either in local area networks [3, 9, 20] or wide area networks [13, 21]. However, none of them considered atomic multicast when groups may crash. We present two atomic multicast algorithms that tolerate the crash of groups. The first algorithm tolerates an arbitrary number of failures, is genuine (i.e., to deliver a message m, only addressees of m are involved in the protocol), and uses the perfect failures detector P. We show that among realistic failure detectors, i.e., those that do not predict the future, P is necessary to solve genuine atomic multicast if we do not bound the number of processes that may fail. Thus, P is the weakest realistic failure detector for solving genuine atomic multicast when an arbitrary number of processes may crash. Our second algorithm is non-genuine and less resilient to process failures than the first algorithm but has several advantages: (i) it requires perfect failure detection within groups only, and not across the system, (ii) as we show in the paper it can be modified to rely on unreliable failure detection at the cost of a weaker liveness guarantee, and (iii) it is fast, messages addressed to multiple groups may be delivered within two inter-group message delays only

Optimistic Algorithms for Partial Database Replication

In this paper, we study the problem of partial database replication. Numerous previous works have investigated database replication, however, most of them focus on full replication. We are here interested in genuine partial replication protocols, which require replicas to permanently store only information about data items they replicate. We define two properties to characterize partial replication. The first one, Quasi-Genuine Partial Replication, captures the above idea; the second one, Non-Trivial Certification, rules out solutions that would abort transactions unnecessarily in an attempt to ensure the first property. We also present two algorithms that extend the Database State Machine to partial replication and guarantee the two aforementioned properties. Our algorithms compare favorably to existing solutions both in terms of number of messages and communication steps

On the Scalability of Snapshot Isolation

International audienceMany distributed applications require transactions. However, transactional protocols that require strong synchronization are costly in large scale environments. Two properties help with scalability of a transactional system: genuine partial replication (GPR), which leverages the intrinsic parallelism of a workload, and snapshot isolation (SI), which decreases the need for synchronization. We show that under standard assumptions (data store accesses are not known in advance, and transactions may access arbitrary objects in the data store), it is impossible to have both SI and GPR. Our impossibility result is based on a novel decomposition of SI which proves that, like serializability, SI is expressible on plain histories