Numerical simulation of soft palate movement and airflow in human upper airway by fluid-structure interaction method

In this paper, the authors present airflow field characteristics of human upper airway and soft palate movement attitude during breathing. On the basis of the data taken from the spiral computerized tomography images of a healthy person and a patient with Obstructive Sleep Apnea-Hypopnea Syndrome (OSAHS), three-dimensional models of upper airway cavity and soft palate are reconstructed by the method of surface rendering. Numerical simulation is performed for airflow in the upper airway and displacement of soft palate by fluid-structure interaction analysis. The reconstructed three-dimensional models precisely preserve the original configuration of upper airways and soft palate. The results of the pressure and velocity distributions in the airflow field are quantitatively determined, and the displacement of soft palate is presented. Pressure gradients of airway are lower for the healthy person and the airflow distribution is quite uniform in the case of free breathing. However, the OSAHS patient remarkably escalates both the pressure and velocity in the upper airway, and causes higher displacement of the soft palate. The present study is useful in revealing pathogenesis and quantitative mutual relationship between configuration and function of the upper airway as well as in diagnosing diseases related to anatomical structure and function of the upper airway. The project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (10672036, 10472025 and 10421002), the Natural Science Foundation of Liaoning Province (20032109). English text was polished by Yunming Chen.     

Numerical limit analysis bounds for ductile porous media with oblate voids

The paper is devoted to a numerical limit analysis of a hollow spheroidal model with a von Mises solid matrix. To this purpose, existing kinematic and static 3D-FEM codes for the case of spherical cavities have been modified and improved to account for the model of a spheroidal cavity confocal with the external spheroidal boundary. The optimized conic programming formulations and the resulting codes appear to be very efficient. This framework is then applied to the derivation of numerical upper and lower anisotropic bounds in the case of an oblate void. The numerical results obtained from a series of tests are presented and allow to assess the accuracy of closed-form expressions of the macroscopic criteria proposed by [Gologanu et al., 1994] and [Gologanu et al., 1997] for porous media with oblate voids.     

平面滑动型岩质边坡稳定性极限分析上限法

在极限分析理论框架体系的基础上,提出了平面滑动型岩质边坡极限分析上限法。该方法按照外力所做的功率等于内力所消耗的功率,即滑体处于极限状态时两功率相等的条件——虚功率方程,综合考虑作用在岩质边坡上的后缘裂缝静水压力、沿滑面扬压力、重力、水平地震作用力、锚固力等外力,按照强度折减法,推导得出了岩质边坡稳定性评价的极限分析上限解。锦屏一级水电站右岸泄洪洞引渠内侧工程边坡属于典型的多级台阶状岩质高边坡,该边坡岩体结构为层状结构,变形破坏模式为平面滑动。对引渠内侧岩质边坡稳定性分析结果表明,极限分析上限法对平面滑动型岩质边坡有较好的适用性。     

The method of upper and lower solutions and impulsive fractional differential inclusions

In this paper the concept of lower and upper solutions combined with the fixed point theorem of Bohnnenblust–Karlin is used to investigate the existence of solutions for a class of the initial value problem for impulsive differential inclusions involving the Caputo fractional derivative.     

A technique for flow-enhanced magnetic resonance angiography of the lower extremities

A two-dimensional, flow-enhanced gradient echo pulse sequence for nuclear magnetic resonance angiography is described. It employs interleaved, presaturated slices to acquire data efficiently on imagers which favor interleaved acquisition over sequential acquisition for multislice imaging. It is useful on any imager when the effective TR is extended to enhance the sensitivity to slow flow. The technique was applied to the region from aortic bifurcation to the iliac bifurcations of three normal volunteers. The right and left common iliac arteries and veins, the separation of the external and internal iliac arteries, and secondary branches were clearly depicted.     

A NOTE ON THE BACKWARD ERRORS FOR INVERSE EIGENVALUE PROBLEMS

In this note,we consider the backward errors for more general inverse eigenvalus prob-lems by extending Sun‘‘‘‘s approach.The optimal backward errors defined for diagonal-ization matrix inverse eigenvalue problem with respect to an approximate solution,and the upper and lower bounds are derived for the optimal backward errors.The results may be useful for testing the stability of practical algorithms.     

Time shifted aliasing error upper bounds for truncated sampling cardinal series

Time shifted aliasing error upper bound extremals for the sampling reconstruction procedure are fully characterized. Sharp upper bounds are found on the aliasing error of truncated cardinal series and the corresponding extremals are described for entire functions from certain specific Lp, p>1, classes. Analogous results are obtained in multidimensional regular sampling. Truncation error analysis is provided in all cases considered. Moreover, sharpness of bounding inequalities, convergence rates and various sufficient conditions are discussed.     

Stability in Generalized Differentiability Based on a Set Convergence Principle

In this paper, we are concerned with epiconvergent sequences of nonsmooth functions. From a general principle of upper set convergence of set-valued maps we derive stability results for various objects in generalized differentiability. In particular, we establish stability results for the Clarke generalized gradient of locally Lipschitz functions, respectively for the generalized Hessian of C ^1,1 functions.      

Bounded knapsack sharing

A bounded knapsack sharing problem is a maximin or minimax mathematical programming problem with one or more linear inequality constraints, an objective function composed of single variable continuous functions called tradeoff functions, and lower and upper bounds on the variables. A single constraint problem which can have negative or positive constraint coefficients and any type of continuous tradeoff functions (including multi-modal, multiple-valued and staircase functions) is considered first. Limiting conditions where the optimal value of a variable may be plus or minus infinity are explicitly considered. A preprocessor procedure to transform any single constraint problem to a finite form problem (an optimal feasible solution exists with finite variable values) is developed. Optimality conditions and three algorithms are then developed for the finite form problem. For piecewise linear tradeoff functions, the preprocessor and algorithms are polynomially bounded. The preprocessor is then modified to handle bounded knapsack sharing problems with multiple constraints. An optimality condition and algorithm is developed for the multiple constraint finite form problem. For multiple constraints, the time needed for the multiple constraint finite form algorithm is the time needed to solve a single constraint finite form problem multiplied by the number of constraints. Some multiple constraint problems cannot be transformed to multiple constraint finite form problems.