Gravitational Potentials of Triaxial Ellipsoids in Weyl Gravity

We present analytic expressions for the gravitational potentials associated with triaxial ellipsoids, spheroids, spheres and disks in Weyl gravity. The gravitational potentials of these configurations in Newtonian gravity, i.e. the potentials derived by integration of the Poisson equation Green's function 1/|r – r| over the volume of the configuration, are well known in the literature. Herein we present the results of the integration of |r – r|, the Green's function associated with the fourth order Laplacian ⁴ of Weyl gravity, over the volume of the configuration to obtain the resulting gravitational potentials within this specific theory. As an application of our calculations, we solve analytically Euler's equations pertaining to incompressible rotating fluids to show that, as in the case of Newtonian gravity, homogeneous prolate configurations are not allowed within Weyl gravity either.     

Application of an effective medium theory for modeling ultrasound wave propagation in healing long bones

Quantitative ultrasound has recently drawn significant interest in the monitoring of the bone healing process. Several research groups have studied ultrasound propagation in healing bones numerically, assuming callus to be a homogeneous and isotropic medium, thus neglecting the multiple scattering phenomena that occur due to the porous nature of callus. In this study, we model ultrasound wave propagation in healing long bones using an iterative effective medium approximation (IEMA), which has been shown to be significantly accurate for highly concentrated elastic mixtures. First, the effectiveness of IEMA in bone characterization is examined: (a) by comparing the theoretical phase velocities with experimental measurements in cancellous bone mimicking phantoms, and (b) by simulating wave propagation in complex healing bone geometries by using IEMA. The original material properties of cortical bone and callus were derived using serial scanning acoustic microscopy (SAM) images from previous animal studies. Guided wave analysis is performed for different healing stages and the results clearly indicate that IEMA predictions could provide supplementary information for bone assessment during the healing process. This methodology could potentially be applied in numerical studies dealing with wave propagation in composite media such as healing or osteoporotic bones in order to reduce the simulation time and simplify the study of complicated geometries with a significant porous nature.     

A numerical study on the propagation of Rayleigh and guided waves in cortical bone according to Mindlin's Form II gradient elastic theory

Cortical bone is a multiscale heterogeneous natural material characterized by microstructural effects. Thus guided waves propagating in cortical bone undergo dispersion due to both material microstructure and bone geometry. However, above 0.8 MHz, ultrasound propagates rather as a dispersive surface Rayleigh wave than a dispersive guided wave because at those frequencies, the corresponding wavelengths are smaller than the thickness of cortical bone. Classical elasticity, although it has been largely used for wave propagation modeling in bones, is not able to support dispersion in bulk and Rayleigh waves. This is possible with the use of Mindlin's Form-II gradient elastic theory, which introduces in its equation of motion intrinsic parameters that correlate microstructure with the macrostructure. In this work, the boundary element method in conjunction with the reassigned smoothed pseudo Wigner-Ville transform are employed for the numerical determination of time-frequency diagrams corresponding to the dispersion curves of Rayleigh and guided waves propagating in a cortical bone. A composite material model for the determination of the internal length scale parameters imposed by Mindlin's elastic theory is exploited. The obtained results demonstrate the dispersive nature of Rayleigh wave propagating along the complex structure of bone as well as how microstructure affects guided waves.     

Integrability of linear and nonlinear evolution equations and the associated nonlinear fourier transforms

The inverse spectral method is a nonlinear Fourier transform method for solving certain equations. Here, we emphasize that such transforms should be considered in their own right. We also elucidate further the connection between the Fourier transform and inverse spectral methods by establishing that linear equations can also be solved through the inverse spectral method.     

The Korteweg-de Vries equation and beyond

We review a new method for linearizing the initial-boundary value problem of the KdV on the semi-infinite line for decaying initial and boundary data. We also present a novel class of physically important integrable equations. These equations, which include generalizations of the KdV, of the modified KdV, of the nonlinear Schrödinger and of theN-wave interactions, are as generic as their celebrated counterparts and, furthermore it appears that they describe certain physical situations more accurately.     

The dressing method and nonlocal Riemann-Hilbert problems

Summary We consider equations in 2+1 solvable in terms of a nonlocal Riemann-Hilbert problem and show that for such an equation there exists a unified dressing method which yields: (i) a Lax pair suitable for obtaining solutions that are perturbations of an arbitrary exact solution of the given equation; (ii) certain integrable generalizations of the given equation. Using this generalized dressing method large classes of solutions of these equations, including dromions and line dromions, can be obtained. The method is illustrated by using theN-wave interactions, the Davey-Stewartson I, and the Kadomtsev-Petviashvili I equations. We also show that a careful application of the usual dressing method yields a certain generalization of theN-wave interactions.     

The dressing method, symmetries, and invariant solutions

The dressing method associates to a given nonlinear equation for q, a Riemann-Hilbert problem or a problem uniquely determined in terms of certain inverse data ƒ. Thus it generates a map from solutions of a linear system of PDEs (that for ƒ) to a nonlinear system of PDEs (that for q). We show that the corresponding tangent map can be expressed in closed form. Hence, symmetries and invariant solutions of ƒ induce symmetries and invariant solutions for q. The procedure can be used to charaterize solutions of Painlevé equations.     

Integrable Nonlinear Evolution Equations on the Half-Line

 A rigorous methodology for the analysis of initial-boundary value problems on the half-line, is applied to the nonlinear §(NLS), to the sine-Gordon (sG) in laboratory coordinates, and to the Korteweg-deVries (KdV) with dominant surface tension. Decaying initial conditions as well as a smooth subset of the boundary values are given, where n=2 for the NLS and the sG and n=3 for the KdV. For the NLS and the KdV equations, the initial condition q(x,0) = q ₀ (x) as well as one and two boundary conditions are given respectively; for the sG equation the initial conditions q(x,0) = q ₀ (x), q _t (x,0) = q ₁ (x), as well as one boundary condition are given. The construction of the solution q(x,t) of any of these problems involves two separate steps: (a) Given decaying initial conditions define the spectral (scattering) functions {a(k),b(k)}. Associated with the smooth functions , define the spectral functions {A(k),B(k)}. Define the function q(x,t) in terms of the solution of a matrix Riemann-Hilbert problem formulated in the complex k-plane and uniquely defined in terms of the spectral functions {a(k),b(k),A(k),B(k)}. Under the assumption that there exist functions such that the spectral functions satisfy a certain global algebraic relation, prove that the function q(x,t) is defined for all , it satisfies the given nonlinear PDE, and furthermore that . (b) Given a subset of the functions as boundary conditions, prove that the above algebraic relation characterizes the unknown part of this set. In general this involves the solution of a nonlinear Volterra integral equation which is shown to have a global solution. For a particular class of boundary conditions, called linearizable, this nonlinear equation can be bypassed and {A(k),B(k)} can be constructed using only the algebraic manipulation of the global relation. For the NLS, the sG, and the KdV, the following particular linearizable cases are solved: , respectively, where χ is a real constant. Received: 22 October 2001 / Accepted: 22 March 2002 Published online: 22 August 2002