In this work, we present and analyse a system of coupled partial differential equations, which models tumour growth under the influence of subdiffusion, mechanical effects, nutrient supply, and chemotherapy. The subdiffusion of the system is modelled by a time fractional derivative in the equation governing the volume fraction of the tumour cells. The mass densities of the nutrients and the chemotherapeutic agents are modelled by reaction diffusion equations. We prove the existence and uniqueness of a weak solution to the model via the Faedo--Galerkin method and the application of appropriate compactness theorems. Lastly, we propose a fully discretised system and illustrate the effects of the fractional derivative and the influence of the fractional parameter in numerical examples.
Modeling the unusual mechanical properties of metamaterials is a challenging topic for the mechanics community and enriched continuum theories are promising computational tools for such materials. The so-called relaxed micromorphic model has shown many advantages in this field. In this contribution, we present the significant aspects related to the relaxed micromorphic model realization with the finite element method. The variational problem is derived and different FEM-formulations for the two-dimensional case are presented. These are a nodal standard formulation $H^1({\cal B}) \times H^1({\cal B})$ and a nodal-edge formulation $H^1({\cal B}) \times H(\operatorname{curl}, {\cal B})$, where the latter employs the N\'ed\'elec space. However, the implementation of higher-order N\'ed\'elec elements is not trivial and requires some technicalities which are demonstrated. We discuss the convergence behavior of Lagrange-type and tangential-conforming finite element discretizations. Moreover, we analyze the characteristic length effect on the different components of the model and reveal how the size-effect property is captured via this characteristic length.
We introduce a novel minimal order hybrid Discontinuous Galerkin (HDG) and a novel mass conserving mixed stress (MCS) method for the approximation of incompressible flows. For this we employ the $H(\operatorname{div})$-conforming linear Brezzi-Douglas-Marini space and the lowest order Raviart-Thomas space for the approximation of the velocity and the vorticity, respectively. Our methods are based on the physically correct diffusive flux $-\nu \varepsilon(u)$ and provide exactly divergence-free discrete velocity solutions, optimal (pressure robust) error estimates and a minimal number of coupling degrees of freedom. For the stability analysis we introduce a new Korn-like inequality for vector-valued element-wise $H^1$ and normal continuous functions. Numerical examples conclude the work where the theoretical findings are validated and the novel methods are compared in terms of condition numbers with respect to discrete stability parameters.
Gradient flows are a powerful tool for optimizing functionals in general metric spaces, including the space of probabilities endowed with the Wasserstein metric. A typical approach to solving this optimization problem relies on its connection to the dynamic formulation of optimal transport and the celebrated Jordan-Kinderlehrer-Otto (JKO) scheme. However, this formulation involves optimization over convex functions, which is challenging, especially in high dimensions. In this work, we propose an approach that relies on the recently introduced input-convex neural networks (ICNN) to parametrize the space of convex functions in order to approximate the JKO scheme, as well as in designing functionals over measures that enjoy convergence guarantees. We derive a computationally efficient implementation of this JKO-ICNN framework and experimentally demonstrate its feasibility and validity in approximating solutions of low-dimensional partial differential equations with known solutions. We also demonstrate its viability in high-dimensional applications through an experiment in controlled generation for molecular discovery.
We present a numerical stability analysis of the immersed boundary(IB) method for a special case which is constructed so that Fourier analysis is applicable. We examine the stability of the immersed boundary method with the discrete Fourier transforms defined differently on the fluid grid and the boundary grid. This approach gives accurate theoretical results about the stability boundary since it takes the effects of the spreading kernel of the immersed boundary method on the numerical stability into account. In this paper, the spreading kernel is the standard 4-point IB delta function. A three-dimensional incompressible viscous flow and a no-slip planar boundary are considered. The case of a planar elastic membrane is also analyzed using the same analysis framework and it serves as an example of many possible generalizations of our theory. We present some numerical results and show that the observed stability behaviors are consistent with what are predicted by our theory.
Given a distribution of earthquake-induced seafloor elevations, we present a method to compute the probability of the resulting tsunamis reaching a certain size on shore. Instead of sampling, the proposed method relies on optimization to compute the most likely fault slips that result in a seafloor deformation inducing a large tsunami wave. We model tsunamis induced by bathymetry change using the shallow water equations on an idealized slice through the sea. The earthquake slip model is based on a sum of multivariate log-normal distributions, and follows the Gutenberg-Richter law for moment magnitudes 7--9. For a model problem inspired by the Tohoku-Oki 2011 earthquake and tsunami, we quantify annual probabilities of differently sized tsunami waves. Our method also identifies the most effective tsunami mechanisms. These mechanisms have smoothly varying fault slip patches that lead to an expansive but moderately large bathymetry change. The resulting tsunami waves are compressed as they approach shore and reach close-to-vertical leading wave edge close to shore.
We propose and analyse an augmented mixed finite element method for the Navier--Stokes equations written in terms of velocity, vorticity, and pressure with non-constant viscosity and no-slip boundary conditions. The weak formulation includes least-squares terms arising from the constitutive equation and from the incompressibility condition, and we use a fixed point strategies to show the existence and uniqueness of continuous and discrete solutions under the assumption of sufficiently small data. The method is constructed using any compatible finite element pair (conforming or non-conforming) for velocity and pressure as dictated by Stokes inf-sup stability, while for vorticity any generic discrete space (of arbitrary order) can be used. We establish optimal a priori error estimates. Finally, we provide a set of numerical tests in 2D and 3D illustrating the behaviour of the scheme as well as verifying the theoretical convergence rates.
We consider a biochemical model that consists of a system of partial differential equations based on reaction terms and subject to non--homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions. The model is discretised using the gradient discretisation method (GDM) which is a framework covering a large class of conforming and non conforming schemes. Under classical regularity assumptions on the exact solutions, the GDM enables us to establish the existence of the model solutions in a weak sense, and strong convergence for the approximate solution and its approximate gradient. Numerical test employing a finite volume method is presented to demonstrate the behaviour of the solutions to the model.
We develop a rapid and accurate contour method for the solution of time-fractional PDEs. The method inverts the Laplace transform via an optimised stable quadrature rule, suitable for infinite-dimensional operators, whose error decreases like $\exp(-cN/\log(N))$ for $N$ quadrature points. The method is parallisable, avoids having to resolve singularities of the solution as $t\downarrow 0$, and avoids the large memory consumption that can be a challenge for time-stepping methods applied to time-fractional PDEs. The ODEs resulting from quadrature are solved using adaptive sparse spectral methods that converge exponentially with optimal linear complexity. These solutions of ODEs are reused for different times. We provide a complete analysis of our approach for fractional beam equations used to model small-amplitude vibration of viscoelastic materials with a fractional Kelvin-Voigt stress-strain relationship. We calculate the system's energy evolution over time and the surface deformation in cases of both constant and non-constant viscoelastic parameters. An infinite-dimensional ``solve-then-discretise'' approach considerably simplifies the analysis, which studies the generalisation of the numerical range of a quasi-linearisation of a suitable operator pencil. This allows us to build an efficient algorithm with explicit error control. The approach can be readily adapted to other time-fractional PDEs and is not constrained to fractional parameters in the range $0<\nu<1$.
This article deals with an inverse problem of identifying the fractional order in the 1D time fractional diffusion equation (TFDE in short) using the measurement at one space-time point. Based on the expression of the solution to the forward problem, the inverse problem is transformed to a nonlinear algebraic equation. By choosing suitable initial values and the measured point, the nonlinear equation has a unique solution by the monotonicity of the Mittag-Lellfer function. Theoretical testifications are presented to demonstrate the unique solvability of the inverse problem.
Approximate inference methods like the Laplace method, Laplace approximations and variational methods, amongst others, are popular methods when exact inference is not feasible due to the complexity of the model or the abundance of data. In this paper we propose a hybrid approximate method namely Low-Rank Variational Bayes correction (VBC), that uses the Laplace method and subsequently a Variational Bayes correction to the posterior mean. The cost is essentially that of the Laplace method which ensures scalability of the method. We illustrate the method and its advantages with simulated and real data, on small and large scale.