Mathematical Modeling and Simulation of a Flexible Shaft-Flexible Link System With End Mass

In this study, the equation of motion of a single link flexible robotic arm with end mass, which is driven by a flexible shaft, is obtained by using Hamilton's principle. The physical system is considered as a continuous system. As a first step, the kinetic energy and the potential energy terms and the term for work done by the nonconservative forces are established. Applying Hamilton's principle the variations are calculated and the time integral is constructed. After a series of mathematical manipulations the coupled equations of motion of the physical system and the related boundary conditions are obtained. Numerical solutions of equations of motion are obtained and discussed for verification of the model used.     

An ensemble of discrete differential evolution algorithms for solving the generalized traveling salesman problem

In this paper, an ensemble of discrete differential evolution algorithms with parallel populations is presented. In a single populated discrete differential evolution (DDE) algorithm, the destruction and construction (DC) procedure is employed to generate the mutant population whereas the trial population is obtained through a crossover operator. The performance of the DDE algorithm is substantially affected by the parameters of DC procedure as well as the choice of crossover operator. In order to enable the DDE algorithm to make use of different parameter values and crossover operators simultaneously, we propose an ensemble of DDE (eDDE) algorithms where each parameter set and crossover operator is assigned to one of the parallel populations. Each parallel parent population does not only compete with offspring population generated by its own population but also the offspring populations generated by all other parallel populations which use different parameter settings and crossover operators. As an application area, the well-known generalized traveling salesman problem (GTSP) is chosen, where the set of nodes is divided into clusters so that the objective is to find a tour with minimum cost passing through exactly one node from each cluster. The experimental results show that none of the single populated variants was effective in solving all the GTSP instances whereas the eDDE performed substantially better than the single populated variants on a set of problem instances. Furthermore, through the experimental analysis of results, the performance of the eDDE algorithm is also compared against the best performing algorithms from the literature. Ultimately, all of the best known averaged solutions for larger instances are further improved by the eDDE algorithm.     

Gorenstein dimensions of unbounded complexes and change of base (with an appendix by Driss Bennis)

For a commutative ring R and a faithfully flat R-algebra S we prove,under mild extra assumptions,that an R-module M is Gorenstein flat if and only if the left S-module S?_R M is Gorenstein flat,and that an R-module N is Gorenstein injective if and only if it is cotorsion and the left S-module Hom R(S,N)is Gorenstein injective.We apply these results to the study of Gorenstein homological dimensions of unbounded complexes.In particular,we prove two theorems on stability of these dimensions under faithfully flat (co-)base change.     

Application and Implementation of Incorporating Local Boundary Conditions into Nonlocal Problems

We study nonlocal equations from the area of peridynamics, an instance of nonlocal wave equation, and nonlocal diffusion on bounded domains whose governing equations contain a convolution operator based on integrals. We generalize the notion of convolution to accommodate local boundary conditions. On a bounded domain, the classical operator with local boundary conditions has a purely discrete spectrum, and hence, provides a Hilbert basis. We define an abstract convolution operator using this Hilbert basis, thereby automatically satisfying local boundary conditions. The main goal in this paper is twofold: apply the concept of abstract convolution operator to nonlocal problems and carry out a numerical study of the resulting operators. We study the corresponding initial value problems with prominent boundary conditions such as periodic, antiperiodic, Neumann, and Dirichlet. To connect to the standard convolution, we give an integral representation of the abstract convolution operator. For discretization, we use a weak formulation based on a Galerkin projection and use piecewise polynomials on each element which allows discontinuities of the approximate solution at the element borders. We study convergence order of solutions with respect to polynomial order and observe optimal convergence. We depict the solutions for each boundary condition.     

Modeling of claim exceedances over random thresholds for related insurance portfolios

Large claims in an actuarial risk process are of special importance for the actuarial decision making about several issues like pricing of risks, determination of retention treaties and capital requirements for solvency. This paper presents a model about claim occurrences in an insurance portfolio that exceed the largest claim of another portfolio providing the same sort of insurance coverages. Two cases are taken into consideration: independent and identically distributed claims and exchangeable dependent claims in each of the portfolios. Copulas are used to model the dependence situations. Several theorems and examples are presented for the distributional properties and expected values of the critical quantities under concern.