Physicomechanical characteristics of a disperse-filled polytetrafluoroethylene

Composite polymer materials based on PTFE containing ultradisperse -sialon (1–10 wt.%) as the cross-linking agent are studied. It is shown that the injection of small amounts of fillers (1–2 wt.%) increases the degree of composite crystallinity. A correlation between the structure, element distribution on the surface layers of samples, and tribotechnical characteristics of composites is found. The change in the physicomechanical characteristics is associated with the effect of the interstructural plasticization.Ammosov Yakutsk State University, Yakutsk, Russia. Translated from Mekhanika Kompozitnykh Materialov, Vol. 35, No. 6, pp. 797–806, November–December, 1999.     

Generalization of the interaction between Haar approximation and polynomial operators to higher order methods

In applications it is useful to compute the local average empirical statistics on u. A very simple relation exists when of a function f（u） of an input u from the local averages are given by a Haar approximation. The question is to know if it holds for higher order approximation methods. To do so, it is necessary to use approximate product operators defined over linear approximation spaces. These products are characterized by a Strang and Fix like condition. An explicit construction of these product operators is exhibited for piecewise polynomial functions, using Hermite interpolation. The averaging relation which holds for the Haar approximation is then recovered when the product is defined by a two point Hermite interpolation.     

On the weakening of the convergence of Newton’s method using recurrent functions

We use Newton’s method to approximate a locally unique solution of an equation in a Banach space setting. We introduce recurrent functions to provide a weaker semilocal convergence analysis for Newton’s method than before [J. Appell, E. De Pascale, J.V. Lysenko, P.P. Zabrejko, New results on Newton–Kantorovich approximations with applications to nonlinear integral equations, Numer. Funct. Anal. Optim. 18 (1997) 1–17; I.K. Argyros, The theory and application of abstract polynomial equations, in: Mathematics Series, St. Lucie/CRC/Lewis Publ., Boca Raton, Florida, USA, 1998; I.K. Argyros, Concerning the “terra incognita” between convergence regions of two Newton methods, Nonlinear Anal. 62 (2005) 179–194; I.K. Argyros, Convergence and Applications of Newton-Type Iterations, Springer-Verlag Publ., New York, 2008; S. Chandrasekhar, Radiative Transfer, Dover Publ., New York, 1960; F. Cianciaruso, E. De Pascale, Newton–Kantorovich approximations when the derivative is Hölderian: Old and new results, Numer. Funct. Anal. Optim. 24 (2003) 713–723; N.T. Demidovich, P.P. Zabrejko, Ju.V. Lysenko, Some remarks on the Newton–Kantorovich method for nonlinear equations with Hölder continuous linearizations, Izv. Akad. Nauk Belorus 3 (1993) 22–26. (in Russian); E. De Pascale, P.P. Zabrejko, Convergence of the Newton–Kantorovich method under Vertgeim conditions: A new improvement, Z. Anal. Anwendvugen 17 (1998) 271–280; L.V. Kantorovich, G.P. Akilov, Functional Analysis, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1982; J.V. Lysenko, Conditions for the convergence of the Newton–Kantorovich method for nonlinear equations with Hölder linearizations, Dokl. Akad. Nauk BSSR 38 (1994) 20–24. (in Russian); B.A. Vertgeim, On conditions for the applicability of Newton’s method, (Russian), Dokl. Akad. Nauk., SSSR 110 (1956) 719–722; B.A. Vertgeim, On some methods for the approximate solution of nonlinear functional equations in Banach spaces, Uspekhi Mat. Nauk 12 (1957) 166–169. (in Russian); English transl.:; Amer. Math. Soc. Transl. 16 (1960) 378–382] provided that the Fréchet-derivative of the operator involved is p$p$-Hölder continuous (p∈(0,1]$p\in (0,1]$).     

A REPRESENTATION FORMULA RELATED TO SCHR(O)DINGER OPERATORS

Schr(o)dinger operator is a central subject in the mathematical study of quantum mechanics.Consider the Schrodinger operator H = -△ V on R, where △ = d2/dx2 and the potential function V is real valued. In Fourier analysis, it is well-known that a square integrable function admits an expansion with exponentials as eigenfunctions of -△. A natural conjecture is that an L2 function admits a similar expansion in terms of "eigenfunctions" of H, a perturbation of the Laplacian (see [7], Ch. Ⅺ and the notes), under certain condition on V.     

Staircase transportation problems with superadditive rewards and cumulative capacities

A cumulative-capacitated transportation problem is studied. The supply nodes and demand nodes are each chains. Shipments from a supply node to a demand node are possible only if the pair lies in a sublattice, or equivalently, in a staircase disjoint union of rectangles, of the product of the two chains. There are (lattice) superadditive upper bounds on the cumulative flows in all leading subrectangles of each rectangle. It is shown that there is a greatest cumulative flow formed by the natural generalization of the South-West Corner Rule that respects cumulative-flow capacities; it has maximum reward when the rewards are (lattice) superadditive; it is integer if the supplies, demands and capacities are integer; and it can be calculated myopically in linear time. The result is specialized to earlier work of Hoeffding (1940), Fréchet (1951), Lorentz (1953), Hoffman (1963) and Barnes and Hoffman (1985). Applications are given to extreme constrained bivariate distributions, optimal distribution with limited one-way product substitution and, generalizing results of Derman and Klein (1958), optimal sales with age-dependent rewards and capacities.To our friend, Philip Wolfe, with admiration and affection, on the occasion of his 65th birthday.Research was supported respectively by the IBM T.J. Watson and IBM Almaden Research Centers and is a minor revision of the IBM Research Report [6].     

Creep of polymer concrete in the nonlinear region

Two polyester-based polymer concretes with various volume content of diabase as an extender and aggregate are tested in creep under compression at different stress levels. The phenomenological and structural approaches are both used to analyze the experimental data. Common features of changes in the instantaneous and creep compliances are clarified, and a phenomenological creep model which accounts for the changes in the instantaneous compliance and in the retardation spectrum depending on the stress level is developed. It is shown that the model can be used to describe the experimental results of stress relaxation and creep under repeated loading. Modeling of the composite structure and subsequent solution of the optimization problem confirm the possibility of the existence of an interphase layer more compliant than the binder. A direct correlation between the interphase volume content and the instantaneous compliance of the composite is revealed. It is found that the distinction in nonlinearity of the viscoelastic behavior of the two polymer concretes under investigation can be due to the difference in their porosity. Submitted to the 11th International Conference on Mechanics of Composite Materials (Riga, June 11–15, 2000.) Translated from Mekhanika Kompozitnykh Materialov, Vol. 36, No. 2, pp. 147–164, 2000.     

A model for predicting the shear bearing capacity of FRP-strengthened beams

The shear failure of reinforced concrete beams needs more attention than the bending failure since no or only small warning precedes the failure. For this reason, it is of utmost importance to understand the shear bearing capacity and also to be able to undertake significant rehabilitation work if necessary. In this paper, a design model for the shear strengthening of concrete beams by using fiber-reinforced polymers (FRP) is presented, and the limitations of the truss model analogy are highlighted. The fracture mechanics approach is used in analyzing the bond behavior between the FRP composites and concrete. The fracture energy of concrete and the axial rigidity of the FRP are considered to be the most important parameters. The effective strain in the FRP when the debonding occurs is determined. The limitations of the anchorage length over the cross section are analyzed. A simple iterative design method for the shear debonding is finally proposed. Russian translation published in Mekhanika Kompozitnykh Materialov, Vol. 44, No. 3, pp. 357–372, May–June, 2008.     

Zero-dimensional subschemes of ruled varieties

Here we study zero-dimensional subschemes of ruled varieties, mainly Hirzebruch surfaces and rational normal scrolls, by applying the Horace method and the Terracini method This research is part of the T.A.S.C.A. project of I.N.d.A.M., supported by P.A.T. (Trento) and M.I.U.R. (Italy)     

Superapproximation and Commutator Properties of Discrete Orthogonal Projections for Continuous Splines

This paper builds upon the L_p-stability results for discrete orthogonal projections on the spaces S_h of continuous splines of order r obtained by R. D. Grigorieff and I. H. Sloan in (1998, Bull. Austral. Math. Soc.58, 307–332). Properties of such projections were proved with a minimum of assumptions on the mesh and on the quadrature rule defining the discrete inner product. The present results, which include superapproximation and commutator properties, are similar to those derived by I. H. Sloan and W. Wendland (1999, J. Approx. Theory97, 254–281) for smoothest splines on uniform meshes. They are expected to have applications (as in I. H. Sloan and W. Wendland, Numer. Math. (1999, 83, 497–533)) to qualocation methods for non-constant-coefficient boundary integral equations, as well as to the wide range of other numerical methods in which quadrature is used to evaluate L₂-inner products. As a first application, we consider the most basic variable-coefficient boundary integral equation, in which the constant-coefficient operator is the identity. The results are also extended to the case of periodic boundary conditions, in order to allow appplication to boundary integral equations on closed curves.     

Coordinate and subspace optimization methods for linear least squares with non-quadratic regularization

This work addresses the problem of regularized linear least squares (RLS) with non-quadratic separable regularization. Despite being frequently deployed in many applications, the RLS problem is often hard to solve using standard iterative methods. In a recent work [M. Elad, Why simple shrinkage is still relevant for redundant representations? IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory 52 (12) (2006) 5559–5569], a new iterative method called parallel coordinate descent (PCD) was devised. We provide herein a convergence analysis of the PCD algorithm, and also introduce a form of the regularization function, which permits analytical solution to the coordinate optimization. Several other recent works [I. Daubechies, M. Defrise, C. De-Mol, An iterative thresholding algorithm for linear inverse problems with a sparsity constraint, Comm. Pure Appl. Math. LVII (2004) 1413–1457; M.A. Figueiredo, R.D. Nowak, An EM algorithm for wavelet-based image restoration, IEEE Trans. Image Process. 12 (8) (2003) 906–916; M.A. Figueiredo, R.D. Nowak, A bound optimization approach to wavelet-based image deconvolution, in: IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, 2005], which considered the deblurring problem in a Bayesian methodology, also obtained element-wise optimization algorithms. We show that the last three methods are essentially equivalent, and the unified method is termed separable surrogate functionals (SSF). We also provide a convergence analysis for SSF. To further accelerate PCD and SSF, we merge them into a recently developed sequential subspace optimization technique (SESOP), with almost no additional complexity. A thorough numerical comparison of the denoising application is presented, using the basis pursuit denoising (BPDN) objective function, which leads all of the above algorithms to an iterated shrinkage format. Both with synthetic data and with real images, the advantage of the combined PCD-SESOP method is demonstrated.     

Effect of the adhesion interaction and the degree of filling on the internal stresses in finely divided crystalline fillers of epoxy composites

Two kinds of model composite materials with finely divided (1) crystal fillers—LiF or polyethylene-filled epoxy resin cured by polyethylenepolyamine — are investigated by X-ray diffractometry. It is found that tensile stresses arise in LiF crystals, which show a strong adhesion interaction with the binder, for all degrees of filling (from =2.2 to =74 vol.%) examined. Their values remain constant up to a degree of filling at which the boundary layers come into contact with one another. Then, the inner stresses decrease with increasing . In the crystalline regions of polyethylene, where the adhesion between the binder and crystals is weak, the inner stresses are compressive. It is shown that the thickness of the boundary layer of the matrix on the surface of filler particles can be evaluated by the method used.Institute of Polymer Mechanics, Latvian University, Riga, LV-1006 Latvia. Translated from Mekhanika Kompozitnykh Materialov, Vol. 35, No. 6, pp. 807–820, November–December, 1999.     

Rigid isotopy classification of real algebraic curves of bidegree (3,3) on quadrics

A rigid isotopy of nonsingular real algebraic curves on a quadric is a path in the space of such curves of a given bidegree. We obtain the rigid isotopy classification of nonsingular real algebraic curves of bidegree (3, 3) on a hyperboloid and on an ellipsoid. We also study of the space of real algebraic curves of bidegree (3, 3) with a single node or cusp. Translated fromMatematicheskie Zametki, Vol. 66, No. 6, pp. 810–815, December, 1999.     

Valeurs d'une fonction de Picard en des points algébriques

Using geometric tools introduced by P. Cohen, H. Shiga, J. Wolfart and G. Wüstholz, we show in Theorem 1 that when a certain Gauss hypergeometric function takes an algebraic value at an algebraic point, then another Gauss hypergeometric function takes a transcendental value at a related algebraic point. Using Appell hypergeometric functions, which generalize to two variables the Gauss functions, we study values at algebraic points of a new transcendental function defined in terms of these two functions. By Theorem 2, these values correspond to abelian varieties in the same isogeny class. Using a result of Edixhoven-Yafaev [B. Edixhoven, A. Yafaev, Subvarieties of Shimura varieties, Ann. of Math. 157 (2003) 621-645], this last result is in turn related to the distribution of the moduli of such abelian varieties in certain Shimura varieties.     

Bounds for the zeros of polynomials

Let P(z)=∑↓j=0↑n ajx^j be a polynomial of degree n. In this paper we prove a more general result which interalia improves upon the bounds of a class of polynomials. We also prove a result which includes some extensions and generalizations of Enestrǒm-Kakeya theorem.     

Embeddings of the classesH ω

In this paper we study functions belonging to the classesV _ε and ΛBV, which are encountered in the theory of Fourier trigonometric series. Necessary and sufficient conditions for the embedding of the classesH _ω in the classesV _ϕ and ABV are obtained. Translated fromMatematicheskie Zametki, Vol. 64, No. 5, pp. 713–719, November, 1998. This research was supported by the program “Leading Scientific Schools” under grant No. 96/97-15-96073.     

New fixed point theorems for <Emphasis Type="Italic">P</Emphasis><Subscript>1</Subscript>-compact mappings in Banach spaces

E E. Browder and W. V. Petryshyn defined the topological degree for A- proper mappings and then W. V. Petryshyn studied a class of A-proper mappings, namely, P1-compact mappings and obtained a number of important fixed point theorems by virtue of the topological degree theory. In this paper, following W. V. Petryshyn, we continue to study P1-compact mappings and investigate the boundary condition, under which many new fixed point theorems of P1-compact mappings are obtained. On the other hand, this class of A-proper mappings with the boundedness property includes completely continuous operators and so, certain interesting new fixed point theorems for completely continuous operators are obtained immediately. As a result of it, our results generalize several famous theorems such as Leray-Schauder＇s theorem, Rothe＇s theorem, Altman＇s theorem, Petryshyn＇s theorem, etc.     

Least distance methods for the scheme of polytopes

Methods are described and APL-codes are supplied to find vertices, edges, other faces and facets of polytopes given by point sets. The basic subroutine is a simplicial decomposition version of least distance, i.e. quadratic, programming. Computational experience indicates high efficiency.     

Structure and Properties of Nanocrystalline Oxide Powders

The crystalline and porous structure of superfine powders and fibers made of alumina and zirconia doped with yttria is investigated. The particle sizes were determined by the methods of coherent dispersion and scanning transmission electron microscopy. Based on data on the sizes of crystallites of the metal oxides, which were obtained by different methods, it is found that crystalline transformations of the oxides lead to dispersion of the materials. The structural transformations of the superfine oxides are accompanied by changes in crystallite sizes and in the character and size of pores. The laws established allow one to purposefully control the process of producing nanostructured oxide powders and fibers, which can be utilized as active fillers for composite materials based on various matrices. __________ Translated from Mekhanika Kompozitnykh Materialov, Vol. 41, No. 6, pp. 831–840, November–December, 2005.     

Dendrites and light mappings

It is shown that a metric continuum is a dendrite if and only if for every compact space (continuum) and for every light confluent mapping such that there is a copy of in for which the restriction is a homeomorphism. As a corollary it follows that only dendrites have the lifting property with respect to light confluent mappings. Other classes of mappings are also discussed. This is a continuation of a previous study by the authors (2000), where open mappings were considered.