The molten sand, a mixture of calcia, magnesia, alumina, and silicate, known as CMAS, is characterized by its high viscosity, density, and surface tension. The unique properties of CMAS make it a challenging material to deal with in high-temperature applications, requiring innovative solutions and materials to prevent its buildup and damage to critical equipment. Here, we use multiphase many-body dissipative particle dynamics (mDPD) simulations to study the wetting dynamics of highly viscous molten CMAS droplets. The simulations are performed in three dimensions, with varying initial droplet sizes and equilibrium contact angles. We propose a coarse parametric ordinary differential equation (ODE) that captures the spreading radius behavior of the CMAS droplets. The ODE parameters are then identified based on the Physics-Informed Neural Network (PINN) framework. Subsequently, the closed form dependency of parameter values found by PINN on the initial radii and contact angles are given using symbolic regression. Finally, we employ Bayesian PINNs (B-PINNs) to assess and quantify the uncertainty associated with the discovered parameters. In brief, this study provides insight into spreading dynamics of CMAS droplets by fusing simple parametric ODE modeling and state-of-the-art machine learning techniques.
Social insects such as ants communicate via pheromones which allows them to coordinate their activity and solve complex tasks as a swarm, e.g. foraging for food. This behavior was shaped through evolutionary processes. In computational models, self-coordination in swarms has been implemented using probabilistic or simple action rules to shape the decision of each agent and the collective behavior. However, manual tuned decision rules may limit the behavior of the swarm. In this work we investigate the emergence of self-coordination and communication in evolved swarms without defining any explicit rule. We evolve a swarm of agents representing an ant colony. We use an evolutionary algorithm to optimize a spiking neural network (SNN) which serves as an artificial brain to control the behavior of each agent. The goal of the evolved colony is to find optimal ways to forage for food and return it to the nest in the shortest amount of time. In the evolutionary phase, the ants are able to learn to collaborate by depositing pheromone near food piles and near the nest to guide other ants. The pheromone usage is not manually encoded into the network; instead, this behavior is established through the optimization procedure. We observe that pheromone-based communication enables the ants to perform better in comparison to colonies where communication via pheromone did not emerge. We assess the foraging performance by comparing the SNN based model to a rule based system. Our results show that the SNN based model can efficiently complete the foraging task in a short amount of time. Our approach illustrates self coordination via pheromone emerges as a result of the network optimization. This work serves as a proof of concept for the possibility of creating complex applications utilizing SNNs as underlying architectures for multi-agent interactions where communication and self-coordination is desired.
Besov priors are nonparametric priors that can model spatially inhomogeneous functions. They are routinely used in inverse problems and imaging, where they exhibit attractive sparsity-promoting and edge-preserving features. A recent line of work has initiated the study of their asymptotic frequentist convergence properties. In the present paper, we consider the theoretical recovery performance of the posterior distributions associated to Besov-Laplace priors in the density estimation model, under the assumption that the observations are generated by a possibly spatially inhomogeneous true density belonging to a Besov space. We improve on existing results and show that carefully tuned Besov-Laplace priors attain optimal posterior contraction rates. Furthermore, we show that hierarchical procedures involving a hyper-prior on the regularity parameter lead to adaptation to any smoothness level.
Multiscale stochastic dynamical systems have been widely adopted to scientific and engineering problems due to their capability of depicting complex phenomena in many real world applications. This work is devoted to investigating the effective reduced dynamics for a slow-fast stochastic dynamical system. Given observation data on a short-term period satisfying some unknown slow-fast stochastic system, we propose a novel algorithm including a neural network called Auto-SDE to learn invariant slow manifold. Our approach captures the evolutionary nature of a series of time-dependent autoencoder neural networks with the loss constructed from a discretized stochastic differential equation. Our algorithm is also proved to be accurate, stable and effective through numerical experiments under various evaluation metrics.
We applied physics-informed neural networks to solve the constitutive relations for nonlinear, path-dependent material behavior. As a result, the trained network not only satisfies all thermodynamic constraints but also instantly provides information about the current material state (i.e., free energy, stress, and the evolution of internal variables) under any given loading scenario without requiring initial data. One advantage of this work is that it bypasses the repetitive Newton iterations needed to solve nonlinear equations in complex material models. Additionally, strategies are provided to reduce the required order of derivative for obtaining the tangent operator. The trained model can be directly used in any finite element package (or other numerical methods) as a user-defined material model. However, challenges remain in the proper definition of collocation points and in integrating several non-equality constraints that become active or non-active simultaneously. We tested this methodology on rate-independent processes such as the classical von Mises plasticity model with a nonlinear hardening law, as well as local damage models for interface cracking behavior with a nonlinear softening law. In order to demonstrate the applicability of the methodology in handling complex path dependency in a three-dimensional (3D) scenario, we tested the approach using the equations governing a damage model for a three-dimensional interface model. Such models are frequently employed for intergranular fracture at grain boundaries. We have observed a perfect agreement between the results obtained through the proposed methodology and those obtained using the classical approach. Furthermore, the proposed approach requires significantly less effort in terms of implementation and computing time compared to the traditional methods.
We consider the numerical evaluation of a class of double integrals with respect to a pair of self-similar measures over a self-similar fractal set (the attractor of an iterated function system), with a weakly singular integrand of logarithmic or algebraic type. In a recent paper [Gibbs, Hewett and Moiola, Numer. Alg., 2023] it was shown that when the fractal set is "disjoint" in a certain sense (an example being the Cantor set), the self-similarity of the measures, combined with the homogeneity properties of the integrand, can be exploited to express the singular integral exactly in terms of regular integrals, which can be readily approximated numerically. In this paper we present a methodology for extending these results to cases where the fractal is non-disjoint but non-overlapping (in the sense that the open set condition holds). Our approach applies to many well-known examples including the Sierpinski triangle, the Vicsek fractal, the Sierpinski carpet, and the Koch snowflake.
This paper introduces a formulation of the variable density incompressible Navier-Stokes equations by modifying the nonlinear terms in a consistent way. For Galerkin discretizations, the formulation leads to full discrete conservation of mass, squared density, momentum, angular momentum and kinetic energy without the divergence-free constraint being strongly enforced. In addition to favorable conservation properties, the formulation is shown to make the density field invariant to global shifts. The effect of viscous regularizations on conservation properties is also investigated. Numerical tests validate the theory developed in this work. The new formulation shows superior performance compared to other formulations from the literature, both in terms of accuracy for smooth problems and in terms of robustness.
We prove a discrete analogue for the composition of the fractional integral and Caputo derivative. This result is relevant in numerical analysis of fractional PDEs when one discretizes the Caputo derivative with the so-called L1 scheme. The proof is based on asymptotic evaluation of the discrete sums with the use of the Euler-Maclaurin summation formula.
Longitudinal cohort studies, which follow a group of individuals over time, provide the opportunity to examine causal effects of complex exposures on long-term health outcomes. Utilizing data from multiple cohorts has the potential to add further benefit by improving precision of estimates through data pooling and allowing examination of effect heterogeneity. However, the interpretation of findings can be complicated by biases that may: i) be compounded when pooling data; or, ii) contribute to discrepant findings when analyses are replicated across cohorts. The 'target trial' is a well-established and powerful tool for guiding causal inference in single-cohort studies. Here we extend this conceptual framework to address the specific challenges that can arise in the multi-cohort setting. By representing a clear definition of the target estimand, the target trial provides a central point of reference against which bias arising in each study and from data pooling can be systematically assessed. Consequently, analyses can be designed to reduce these biases and the resulting findings appropriately interpreted in light of potential remaining biases. We use a case study to demonstrate the framework and its potential to strengthen causal inference in multi-cohort studies through improved analysis design and clarity in the interpretation of findings.
We consider the problem of minimizing the makespan on batch processing identical machines, subject to compatibility constraints, where two jobs are compatible if they can be processed simultaneously in a same batch. These constraints are modeled by an undirected graph $G$, in which compatible jobs are represented by adjacent vertices. We show that several subproblems are polynomial. We propose some exact polynomial algorithms to solve these subproblems. To solve the general case, we propose a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) formulation alongside with heuristic approaches. Furthermore, computational experiments are carried out to measure the performance of the proposed methods.
In this paper, two novel classes of implicit exponential Runge-Kutta (ERK) methods are studied for solving highly oscillatory systems. Firstly, we analyze the symplectic conditions for two kinds of exponential integrators and obtain the symplectic method. In order to effectively solve highly oscillatory problems, we try to design the highly accurate implicit ERK integrators. By comparing the Taylor series expansion of numerical solution with exact solution, it can be verified that the order conditions of two new kinds of exponential methods are identical to classical Runge-Kutta (RK) methods, which implies that using the coefficients of RK methods, some highly accurate numerical methods are directly formulated. Furthermore, we also investigate the linear stability properties for these exponential methods. Finally, numerical results not only display the long time energy preservation of the symplectic method, but also present the accuracy and efficiency of these formulated methods in comparison with standard ERK methods.