Evolution to a steady state for a rarefied gas flowing from a tank into a vacuum through a plane channel

A kinetic equation (S-model) is used to solve the nonstationary problem of a monatomic rarefied gas flowing from a tank of infinite capacity into a vacuum through a long plane channel. Initially, the gas is at rest and is separated from the vacuum by a barrier. The temperature of the channel walls is kept constant. The flow is found to evolve to a steady state. The time required for reaching a steady state is examined depending on the channel length and the degree of gas rarefaction. The kinetic equation is solved numerically by applying a conservative explicit finite-difference scheme that is firstorder accurate in time and second-order accurate in space. An approximate law is proposed for the asymptotic behavior of the solution at long times when the evolution to a steady state becomes a diffusion process.     

Locating a robber on a graph

Consider the following game of a cop locating a robber on a connected graph. At each turn, the cop chooses a vertex of the graph to probe and receives the distance from the probe to the robber. If she can uniquely locate the robber after this probe, then she wins. Otherwise the robber may either stay put or move to any vertex adjacent to his location other than the probe vertex. The cop’s goal is to minimize the number of probes required to locate the robber, while the robber’s goal is to avoid being located. This is a synthesis of the cop and robber game with the metric dimension problem. We analyse this game for several classes of graphs, including cycles and trees.     

Hydrodynamics of a particle impact on a wall

The problem of a particle impacting on a wall, a common phenomenon in particle-laden flows in the minerals and process industries, is investigated computationally using a spectral-element method with the grid adjusting to the movement of the particle towards the wall. Remeshing is required at regular intervals to avoid problems associated with mesh distortion and the constantly reducing maximum time-step associated with integration of the non-linear convective terms of the Navier–Stokes equations. Accurate interpolation between meshes is achieved using the same high-order interpolation employed by the spectral-element flow solver. This approach allows the full flow evolution to be followed from the initial approach, through impact and afterwards as the flow relaxes. The method is applied to the generic two-dimensional and three-dimensional bluff body geometries, the circular cylinder and the sphere. The principal case reported here is that of a particle colliding normally with a wall and sticking. For the circular cylinder, non-normal collisions are also considered. The impacts are studied for moderate Reynolds numbers up to approximately 1200. A cylindrical body impacting on a wall produces two vortices from its wake that convect away from the cylinder along the wall before stalling while lifting induced wall vorticity into the main flow. The situation for a sphere impact is similar, except in this case a vortex ring is formed from the wake vorticity. Again, secondary vorticity from the wall and particle plays a role. At higher Reynolds number, the secondary vorticity tends to form a semi-annular structure encircling the primary vortex core. At even higher Reynolds numbers, the secondary annular structure fragments into semi-discrete structures, which again encircle and orbit the primary core. Vorticity fields and passive tracer particles are used to characterize the interaction of the vortical structures. The evolution of the pressure and viscous drag coefficients during a collision are provided for a typical sphere impact. For a Reynolds number greater than approximately 1000 for a sphere and 400 for a cylinder, the primary vortex core produced by the impacting body undergoes a short-wavelength instability in the azimuthal/spanwise direction. Experimental visualisation using dye carried out in water is presented to validate the predictions.     

The rolling of a wheel with a pneumatic tyre on a planet

A model of a pneumatic tyre as a system with an infinite number of degrees of freedom is proposed, when its surface is represented by the deformed surface of a torus. Using a number of hypotheses a functional of the potential energy of the deformations of the tyre is obtained as a function of the deformations of its tread. A complete system of equations of motion is obtained, assuming that the wheel rolls without slipping in the area of contact of the tread with the plane, with respect to the previously unknown part of the tread. In two special cases of the rolling of a wheel with breakaway and on a banking, all the characteristics of the motion (the contact area, the tyre deformation, and the forces and moments applied to the disc of the wheel) are obtained.     

On moving a sofa around a corner

A necessary condition is given for a region of the plane to have the greatest possible area of any region able to move around a right-angled corner in a hallway of unit width. A region is constructed, with area 2.2195... and bounded by 18 analytic pieces, which satisfies this condition. It is conjectured that this is the unique region of maximum area.     

Dynamics of a rod undergoing a longitudinal impact by a body

A longitudinal elastic impact caused by a body on a thin rod is considered. The results of theoretical, finite element, and experimental approaches to solving the problem are compared. The theoretical approach takes into account both the propagation of longitudinal waves in the rod and the local deformations described in the Hertz model. This approach leads to a differential equation with a delayed argument. The three-dimensional dynamic problem is considered in terms of the finite element approach in which the wave propagation and local deformation are automatically taken into account. A benchmark test of these two approaches showed a complete qualitative and satisfactory quantitative agreement of the results concerning the contact force and the impact time. In the experiments, only the impact time was determined. The comparison of the measured impact time with the theoretical and finite element method’s results was satisfactory. Owing to the fact that the tested rod was relatively short, the approximate model with two degrees of freedom was also developed to calculate the force and the impact time. The problem of excitation of transverse oscillation after the rebound of the impactor off the rod is solved. For the parametric resonance, the motion has a character of beats at which the energy of longitudinal oscillation is transferred into the energy of transverse oscillation and vice versa. The estimate for the maximum possible amplitude of transverse oscillation is obtained.     

Algorithms for projecting a point onto a level surface of a continuous function on a compact set

Given an equation f(x) = 0, the problem of finding its solution nearest to a given point is considered. In contrast to the authors’ previous works dealing with this problem, exact algorithms are proposed assuming that the function f is continuous on a compact set. The convergence of the algorithms is proved, and their performance is illustrated with test examples.     

Univariate Interpolation on a Regular Finite Grid by a Multiquadric Plus a Linear Polynomial

Univariate multiquadric interpolation to a twice continuouslydifferentiable function on a regular infinite grid enjoys secondorder convergence and some excellent localization properties,but numerical calculations suggest that, if the grid is finite,then usually the convergence rate deteriorates to first ordernear the grid boundaries, ibis conjecture is proved. It is alsoshown that one can recover superlinear convergence by addinga linear polynomial term to the multiquadric approximation.Making such additions is a standard technique, but we find thatthe usual way of choosing the polynomial fails to provide superlinearconvergence m general. Therefore some new procedures are giventhat pick a suitable polynomial automatically. Thus it is notunusual to reduce the maximum error of the interpolation bya factor of 10³. Further, it is straightforward to include oneof the new procedures in multiquadric interpolation to functionsof several variables when the data points are in general position.     

Fast computation of a rational point of a variety over a finite field

We exhibit a probabilistic algorithm which computes a rational point of an absolutely irreducible variety over a finite field defined by a reduced regular sequence. Its time-space complexity is roughly quadratic in the logarithm of the cardinality of the field and a geometric invariant of the input system. This invariant, called the degree, is bounded by the Bézout number of the system. Our algorithm works for fields of any characteristic, but requires the cardinality of the field to be greater than a quantity which is roughly the fourth power of the degree of the input variety.

     

Optimal construction of a selection of a subpopulation

Summary The problem of selecting a subpopulation from a given populationII is to be, on the basis of measurements of members ofII, achieved by choosing those members ofII who satisfy the standards determined by a given selection cirterion and rejecting those who do not. Since the optimum selection depends on the unknown parameter of the probability distribution ofII, it is here considered how to construct a decision function from the space of subsidiary sample having infor-mation on θ to the space of selections. Thus the existence of Bayes and minimax decision functions under the constraint defined by the selection criterion is proved. A necessary and sufficient condition for a decision function satisfying the constraint to be a Bayes decision function is also obtained. The Institute of Statistical Mathematics     

The motion of a body with a cavity partly filled with a viscous liquid

Many papers are concerned with the dynamics of a rigid body with a cavity filled with liquid (see the bibliography in [1]). The present paper deals with the motion of a rigid body having a cavity partly filled with a viscous incompressible liquid, and having a free surface. The shape of the cavity is arbitrary. The problem is considered in a linear formulation. The oscillations of the body with respect to its center of inertia and the motion of the liquid in the cavity are assumed small. The viscosity of the liquid is considered low. The solution of the problem of the oscillations of a body with a cavity partly filled with an ideal liquid is used as an initial approximation [1 to 6]. The viscosity is taken into consideration by the boundary layer method used before in similar problems [1 and 7 to 10). General equations are derived for the dynamics of a body filled with a liquid, for an arbitrary form of cavity. The coefficients of those integro-differential equations depend only on the solution of the problem of the oscillations of a body with a cavity of the given form filled with an ideal liquid. Since the corresponding problem has been solved for cavities of many forms [1 to 6, 11 and 12] in the case of an ideal liquid, the determination of the characteristic coefficients is reduced to the evaluation of quadratures. Several particular cases of motion are considered.     

On the decisiveness of a game in a tournament

In sport tournaments in which teams are matched two at a time, it is useful for a variety of reasons to be able to quantify how important a particular game is. The need for such quantitative information has been addressed in the literature by several more or less simple measures of game importance. In this paper, we point out some of the drawbacks of those measures and we propose a different approach, which rather targets how decisive a game is with respect to the final victory. We give a definition of this idea of game decisiveness in terms of the uncertainty about the eventual winner prevailing in the tournament at the time of the game. As this uncertainty is strongly related to the notion of entropy of a probability distribution, our decisiveness measure is based on entropy-related concepts. We study the suggested decisiveness measure on two real tournaments, the 1988 NBA Championship Series and the UEFA 2012 European Football Championship (Euro 2012), and we show how well it agrees with what intuition suggests. Finally, we also use our decisiveness measure to objectively analyse the recent UEFA decision to expand the European Football Championship from 16 to 24 nations in the future, in terms of the overall attractiveness of the competition.     

Modeling a supply chain using a network of queues

In this paper, a supply chain is represented as a two-input, three-stage queuing network. An input order to the supply chain is represented by two stochastic variables, one for the occurrence time and the other for the quantity of items to be delivered in each order. The objective of this paper is to compute the minimum response time for the delivery of items to the final destination along the three stages of the network. The average number of items that can be delivered with this minimum response time constitute the optimum capacity of the queuing network. After getting serviced by the last node (a queue and its server) in each stage of the queuing network, a decision is made to route the items to the appropriate node in the next stage which can produce the least response time.     

Long-term failure of a layered viscoelastic composite material with a crack under a time-dependent load

The long-term failure of a layered viscoelastic composite caused by precritical propagation of a coin-shaped crack is studied. It is assumed that the crack is located inside a viscoelastic layer (the layer of binder) parallel to the layer orientation. The crack development due to stretching of the composite massive by uniformly distributed external forces increasing with time is described. It is assumed that these forces act perpendicularly to the plane of crack propagation. The investigation is carried out within the framework of Boltzmann-Volterra linear theory for resolving integral operators with difference kernels describing the deformation of a material with time-dependent rheological properties. An irrational function of the viscoelastic integral operator is presented in the form of a proper continued fraction and transformed using the method of operator continued fractions. Numerical solutions are obtained for resolving integral operators with the kernel in the form of Rabotnov exponential-fractional function. The kinetics of crack growth with a prefailure zone commensurable with the crack length is described. A comparison with the results obtained in terms of the concept of thin structure of the crak tip is given.Timoshenko Institute of Mechanics, Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences, Kiev, Ukraine. Translated from Mekhanika Kompozitnykh Materialov, Vol. 36, No. 4, pp. 545–558, July–August, 2000.     

On a periodic motion of a rigid body carrying a material point in the presence of impacts with a horizontal plane

A material system consisting of an outer rigid body (a shell) and an inner body (a material point) is considered. The system moves in a uniform field of gravity over a fixed absolutely smooth horizontal plane. The central ellipsoid of inertia of the shell is an ellipsoid of rotation. The material point moves according to the harmonic law along a straight-line segment rigidly attached to the shell and lying on its axis of dynamical symmetry. During its motion, the shell may collide with the plane. The coefficient of restitution for an impact is supposed to be arbitrary. The periodic motion of the shell is found when its symmetry axis is situated along a fixed vertical, and the shell rotates around this vertical with an arbitrary constant angular velocity. The conditions for existence of this periodic motion are obtained, and its linear stability is studied.     

Numerical solutions of a model for the propagation of a surface-catalysed flame in a tube

Numerical simulations of a surface-catalysed flame in a tubeare performed, corresponding to an experiment where a premixedfuel is fed into a tube whose inner surface is coated with acatalyst. In these experiments, subsequent to ignition, a reactionwave can be seen as a red-hot region which propagates back alongthe tube towards the inlet, and is due to low temperature combustionoccurring only on the inner surface of the tube where the catalystis present. The solutions of a mathematical model for this behaviourshow that initial-value problems do indeed result in such steadilypropagating waves. The numerically obtained wave speeds andsteady solution are compared to a previous large Damköhlernumber (D_a) asymptotic analysis using a simple reaction ratemodel, and agreement is very good even for moderately largevalues of D_a. However, for such Damköhler numbers, thewave speeds are found to be much larger than observed experimentally.Indeed, the simulations show that O(1) values of D_a are requiredto obtain the lower experimental wave speeds. Nevertheless,the wave speeds as a function of flow rate through the tubedo not agree well with the preliminary experimental resultsfor any choice of the parameters. A more realistic, Arrheniusreaction rate model is then considered. The Arrhenius modelpredicts a rapid change in temperature at the wave front, inmuch better agreement with the experiments than for the simplerreaction model.     

Fracture Model for a Thin Layer of a Fibrous Composite

A model for a flat isolated layer of a unidirectional fibrous composite with a regular structure is constructed to investigate the possible variants of its failure development. An integrodifferential equation for determining the forces in fibers is obtained. Primary attention is focused on examining the failure process after the rupture of one fiber. This causes a drastic redistribution of stresses, which can lead to a failure of adjacent fibers owing to the increased load on them, to an interfacial shear fracture, and to the matrix cracking. It is shown that the development of layer failure is determined by the strength of fibers, the crack resistance of the matrix in axial tension and transverse shear, and also by the adhesion strength of the matrix-fiber interface. The sufficient conditions of applicability of the brittle fracture model are formulated.     

Aerodynamic effects caused by a train entering a tunnel

The entrance of a train head in a tunnel causes a pressure wave with a steep gradient followed by a further, but less steep increase of the pressure due to friction on the train and tunnel wall, respectively, caused by the entrance of the train body (Fig. 1). This pressure increase is terminated by the entrance of the tail of the train causing a rarefaction wave, if the tunnel is long enough, so that there are no in.uences of reflected waves from the opposite tunnel portal. Since pressure transients in a railway tunnel may cause inconveniences to passengers and tunnel workers, respectively, it is important to have a reliable method for calculating the pressure history of a train passing a tunnel. Results from full‐scale experiments show only minor variations of the pressure over the cross‐section of the tunnel, if the measuring point is not too close to the entrance portal. Therefore CFD‐programs for viscid flow onedimensional in space give rather reliable results. Such programs are applicable for the whole passage of one or more trains through a tunnel at the same time [1]. The pressure history of a passage of a train through a tunnel is dominated by the propagation and reflection of the wave of the first pressure increase due to head and body entrance. It is important to estimate these effects as simple as possible and to show the influences of the main parameters like Mach number and blockage ratio. A rather simple formula is given for the first two pressure peaks and the results are compared to results from CFD‐calculations.     

多源单汇网络资源调度路径优化探讨

在考虑队列长度的前提下 ,论文在分析多源单汇资源传输问题的基础上 ,以两源单汇网络为例 ,在资源到达终点所需时间最短约束下 ,研究、计算了最短传输时间的上下界 ,并提出了相应的算法 .论文的研究内容为进一步研究多源多汇问题建立了基础 ,提供了思路 .     

The rolling of a wheel with a reinforced tyre along a plane without slip

A model of a wheel with a reinforced tyre, whose surface is simulated by a flexible strip (tread) attached to parts of two tori (the sidewalls of the tyre) is considered. The disk of the wheel (a rigid body) has six degrees of freedom and is in contact with the plane along part of the tread. Based on several assumptions, the potential energy functional of the deformed wheel is found as a function of the deformations of the centre line of the tread. On the assumption that the wheel is rolling without slip in the region of contact of the tread with the plane along a previously unknown section of the tread, the complete system of equations of motion is obtained. The equilibrium of the wheel and the steady state of rolling in a straight line with given swivel and tilt are investigated, and all characteristics of the motion are found (the contact region, the tyre deformation, and the forces and torques applied to the wheel disk).