An integrated experimental, computational, and non-deterministic approach is demonstrated to predict the damage tolerance of an aluminum plate reinforced with a co-cured bonded quasi-isotropic E-glass/epoxy composite overlay and to determine the most sensitive material parameters and their ranges of influence on the damage tolerance of the hybrid system. To simulate the complex progressive damage in the repaired structure, a high fidelity three-dimensional finite element model is developed and validated using four-point bend testing to investigate potential damage mechanisms. A surrogate model is then generated to explore the complex parameter space of this model. Global sensitivity analysis and uncertainty quantification are performed for non-deterministic analysis to characterize the energy absorption capability of the patched structure relative to these influential design properties. Additionally, correlating the data quality of the material parameters with the sensitivity analysis results provides practical guidelines for model improvement and the design optimization of the patched structure.
In this paper we present a general, axiomatical framework for the rigorous approximation of invariant densities and other important statistical features of dynamics. We approximate the system trough a finite element reduction, by composing the associated transfer operator with a suitable finite dimensional projection (a discretization scheme) as in the well-known Ulam method. We introduce a general framework based on a list of properties (of the system and of the projection) that need to be verified so that we can take advantage of a so-called ``coarse-fine'' strategy. This strategy is a novel method in which we exploit information coming from a coarser approximation of the system to get useful information on a finer approximation, speeding up the computation. This coarse-fine strategy allows a precise estimation of invariant densities and also allows to estimate rigorously the speed of mixing of the system by the speed of mixing of a coarse approximation of it, which can easily be estimated by the computer. The estimates obtained here are rigourous, i.e., they come with exact error bounds that are guaranteed to hold and take into account both the discretiazation and the approximations induced by finite-precision arithmetic. We apply this framework to several discretization schemes and examples of invariant density computation from previous works, obtaining a remarkable reduction in computation time. We have implemented the numerical methods described here in the Julia programming language, and released our implementation publicly as a Julia package.
Simulating propagation of acoustic waves via solving a system of three-coupled first-order linear differential equations using a k-space pseudo-spectral method is popular for biomedical applications, firstly because of availability of an open-source toolbox for implementation of this numerical approach, and secondly because of its efficiency. The k-space pseudo-spectral method is efficient, because it allows coarser computational grids and larger time steps than finite difference and finite element methods for the same accuracy. The goal of this study is to compare this numerical wave solver with an analytical solution to the wave equation using the Green's function for computing propagation of acoustic waves in homogeneous media. This comparison is done in the frequency domain. Using the k-Wave solver, a match to the Green's function is obtained after modifying the approach taken for including mass source in the linearised equation of continuity (conservation of mass) in the associated system of wave equations.
Charge dynamics play essential role in many practical applications such as semiconductors, electrochemical devices and transmembrane ion channels. A Maxwell-Amp\`{e}re Nernst-Planck (MANP) model that describes charge dynamics via concentrations and the electric displacement is able to take effects beyond mean-field approximations into account. To obtain physically faithful numerical solutions, we develop a structure-preserving numerical method for the MANP model whose solution has several physical properties of importance. By the Slotboom transform with entropic-mean approximations, a positivity preserving scheme with Scharfetter-Gummel fluxes is derived for the generalized Nernst-Planck equations. To deal with the curl-free constraint, the dielectric displacement from the Maxwell-Amp\`{e}re equation is further updated with a local relaxation algorithm of linear computational complexity. We prove that the proposed numerical method unconditionally preserves the mass conservation and the solution positivity at the discrete level, and satisfies the discrete energy dissipation law with a time-step restriction. Numerical experiments verify that our numerical method has expected accuracy and structure-preserving properties. Applications to ion transport with large convection, arising from boundary-layer electric field and Born solvation interactions, further demonstrate that the MANP formulation with the proposed numerical scheme has attractive performance and can effectively describe charge dynamics with large convection of high numerical cell P\'{e}clet numbers.
Mathematical models are essential for understanding and making predictions about systems arising in nature and engineering. Yet, mathematical models are a simplification of true phenomena, thus making predictions subject to uncertainty. Hence, the ability to quantify uncertainties is essential to any modelling framework, enabling the user to assess the importance of certain parameters on quantities of interest and have control over the quality of the model output by providing a rigorous understanding of uncertainty. Peridynamic models are a particular class of mathematical models that have proven to be remarkably accurate and robust for a large class of material failure problems. However, the high computational expense of peridynamic models remains a major limitation, hindering outer-loop applications that require a large number of simulations, for example, uncertainty quantification. This contribution provides a framework to make such computations feasible. By employing a Multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) framework, where the majority of simulations are performed using a coarse mesh, and performing relatively few simulations using a fine mesh, a significant reduction in computational cost can be realised, and statistics of structural failure can be estimated. The results show a speed-up factor of 16x over a standard Monte Carlo estimator, enabling the forward propagation of uncertain parameters in a computationally expensive peridynamic model. Furthermore, the multilevel method provides an estimate of both the discretisation error and sampling error, thus improving the confidence in numerical predictions. The performance of the approach is demonstrated through an examination of the statistical size effect in quasi-brittle materials.
Fiber metal laminates (FML) are of high interest for lightweight structures as they combine the advantageous material properties of metals and fiber-reinforced polymers. However, low-velocity impacts can lead to complex internal damage. Therefore, structural health monitoring with guided ultrasonic waves (GUW) is a methodology to identify such damage. Numerical simulations form the basis for corresponding investigations, but experimental validation of dispersion diagrams over a wide frequency range is hardly found in the literature. In this work the dispersive relation of GUWs is experimentally determined for an FML made of carbon fiber-reinforced polymer and steel. For this purpose, multi-frequency excitation signals are used to generate GUWs and the resulting wave field is measured via laser scanning vibrometry. The data are processed by means of a non-uniform discrete 2d Fourier transform and analyzed in the frequency-wavenumber domain. The experimental data are in excellent agreement with data from a numerical solution of the analytical framework. In conclusion, this work presents a highly automatable method to experimentally determine dispersion diagrams of GUWs in FML over large frequency ranges with high accuracy.
Mixtures of regression are a powerful class of models for regression learning with respect to a highly uncertain and heterogeneous response variable of interest. In addition to being a rich predictive model for the response given some covariates, the parameters in this model class provide useful information about the heterogeneity in the data population, which is represented by the conditional distributions for the response given the covariates associated with a number of distinct but latent subpopulations. In this paper, we investigate conditions of strong identifiability, rates of convergence for conditional density and parameter estimation, and the Bayesian posterior contraction behavior arising in finite mixture of regression models, under exact-fitted and over-fitted settings and when the number of components is unknown. This theory is applicable to common choices of link functions and families of conditional distributions employed by practitioners. We provide simulation studies and data illustrations, which shed some light on the parameter learning behavior found in several popular regression mixture models reported in the literature.
An implicit variable-step BDF2 scheme is established for solving the space fractional Cahn-Hilliard equation, involving the fractional Laplacian, derived from a gradient flow in the negative order Sobolev space $H^{-\alpha}$, $\alpha\in(0,1)$. The Fourier pseudo-spectral method is applied for the spatial approximation. The proposed scheme inherits the energy dissipation law in the form of the modified discrete energy under the sufficient restriction of the time-step ratios. The convergence of the fully discrete scheme is rigorously provided utilizing the newly proved discrete embedding type convolution inequality dealing with the fractional Laplacian. Besides, the mass conservation and the unique solvability are also theoretically guaranteed. Numerical experiments are carried out to show the accuracy and the energy dissipation both for various interface widths. In particular, the multiple-time-scale evolution of the solution is captured by an adaptive time-stepping strategy in the short-to-long time simulation.
We investigate an anisotropic weakly over-penalised symmetric interior penalty method for the Stokes equation. The method is one of the discontinuous Galerkin methods, simple and similar to the Crouzeix--Raviart finite element method. The main contributions of this paper are to show new proof for the consistency term. It allows us to obtain an anisotropic consistency error estimate. The idea of the proof is to use the relation between the Raviart--Thomas finite element space and the discontinuous space. In many papers, the inf-sup stable schemes of the discontinuous Galerkin method have been discussed on shape-regular mesh partitions. Our result shows that the Stokes pair, which is treated in this paper, satisfies the inf-sup condition on anisotropic meshes. Furthermore, we show an error estimate in an energy norm on anisotropic meshes. In numerical experiments, we have compared the calculation results for standard and anisotropic mesh partitions. The effectiveness of using anisotropic meshes can be confirmed for problems with boundary layers.
This paper focuses on the problem of testing the null hypothesis that the regression functions of several populations are equal under a general nonparametric homoscedastic regression model. It is well known that linear kernel regression estimators are sensitive to atypical responses. These distorted estimates will influence the test statistic constructed from them so the conclusions obtained when testing equality of several regression functions may also be affected. In recent years, the use of testing procedures based on empirical characteristic functions has shown good practical properties. For that reason, to provide more reliable inferences, we construct a test statistic that combines characteristic functions and residuals obtained from a robust smoother under the null hypothesis. The asymptotic distribution of the test statistic is studied under the null hypothesis and under root$-n$ contiguous alternatives. A Monte Carlo study is performed to compare the finite sample behaviour of the proposed test with the classical one obtained using local averages. The reported numerical experiments show the advantage of the proposed methodology over the one based on Nadaraya--Watson estimators for finite samples. An illustration to a real data set is also provided and enables to investigate the sensitivity of the $p-$value to the bandwidth selection.
We propose a new wavelet-based method for density estimation when the data are size-biased. More specifically, we consider a power of the density of interest, where this power exceeds 1/2. Warped wavelet bases are employed, where warping is attained by some continuous cumulative distribution function. A special case is the conventional orthonormal wavelet estimation, where the warping distribution is the standard continuous uniform. We show that both linear and nonlinear wavelet estimators are consistent, with optimal and/or near-optimal rates. Monte Carlo simulations are performed to compare four special settings which are easy to interpret in practice. An application with a real dataset on fatal traffic accidents involving alcohol illustrates the method. We observe that warped bases provide more flexible and superior estimates for both simulated and real data. Moreover, we find that estimating the power of a density (for instance, its square root) further improves the results.