In order to use the method of asymptotic matching for low frequencies, the equations of plane elastostatics are reformulated in terms of the two scalar potentials commonly used in plane elastodynamics. It is shown that the resulting equations of plane elastostatics can be reduced to those first obtained by Muskhelishvili. The use of the formulation is illustrated by considering the case of the plane diffraction of a P wave by a circular, cylindrical cavity of small radius. The results agree with those obtained from the exact solution of the problem.

Here we discuss the stability and convergence of a quadrature method for Symm's integral equation on an open smooth arc. The method is an adaptation of an approach considered by Sloan and Burn for closed curves. Before applying the quadrature scheme, we use a cosine substitution to remove the endpoint singularity of the solution. The family of methods includes schemes with any order O(hp) of convergence.

There is increasing interest in the cost of railway infrastructure access as a variety of private companies operate trains with different lengths over a common rail network. It is important to have a method for evaluating the cost of adding an additional train to a railway timetable. This is particularly so for single line track with occasional passing loops. The concept of a fixed loop capacity is extended to one that is dependent on the trains. We develop a model for scheduling a heterogeneous set of trains on single line systems with loops. Our method minimizes the total weighted delay. A Lagrangian relaxation technique is used that relaxes the capacity constraints for track segments and super segments. We measure the delay for each train and the total weighted delay for the heterogeneous set of trains. Our model allows us to investigate the robustness of the weighted delay to variation in the departure time of individual trains. The paper demonstrates that a Lagrangian relaxation heuristic provides optimal train schedules for instances of small heterogeneous train sets. The method is used primarily to check the effectiveness of heuristic algorithms commonly used to find schedules for practical problems.

This paper is concerned with surface water waves produced by small oscillations of a thin vertical plate submerged in deep water. Green's integral theorem in the fluid region is used in a suitable manner to obtain the amplitude for the radiated waves at infinity. Particular results for roll and sway of the plate, and for a line source in the presence of a fixed vertical plate, are deduced.

A model is developed for the seif-organisation of zones of enzymatic activity along a liver capillary (hepatic sinusoid) lined with cells of two types, which contain different enzymes and compete for sites on the wall of the sinusoid. An effectively non-local interaction between the cells arises from local consumption of oxygen from blood flowing throug1 the sinusoid, which gives rise to gradients of oxygen concentration in turn influencing rates of division and of death of the two cell-types. The process is modelled by a pair of coupled non-linear integro-differential equations for the cell-densities as functions of time and position along the sinusoid. Existence of a unique, bounded, non-negative solution of the equations is proved, for prescribed initial values. The equations admit infinitely many stationary solutions, but it is shown that all except one are unstable, for any given set of the model parameters. The remaining solution is shown to be asymptotically stable against a large class of perturbations. For certain ranges of the model parameters, the asymptotically stable stationaxy solution has a zonal structure, with cells of one type located entirely upstream of cells of the other type, and with jump discontinuities in the cell densities at a certain distance along the sinusoid. Such sinusoidal zones can account for zones of enzymatic activity observed in the intact liver. Exceptional cases are found for singular choices of model parameters, such that stationary cell-densities cannot be asymptotically stable individually, but together form an asymptotically stable set. Certain mathematical questions are left open, notably the behaviour of large deviations from stationary solutions, and the global stability of such solutions. Possible generalisations of the model are described.

A numerical procedure for calculating the evolution of a periodic interface between two immiscible fluids flowing in a two-dimensional porous medium or Hele-Shaw cell is described. The motion of the interface is determined in a stepwise manner with its new velocity at exach time step being derived as a numerical solution of a boundary integral equation. Attention is focused on the case of unstable displacement charaterised physically by the “fingering” of the interface and computationally by the growth of numerical errors regardless of the numerical method employed. Here the growth of such error is reduced and the usable part of the calculation extended to finite amplitudes. Numerical results are compared with an exact “finger” solution and the calculated behaviour of an initial sinusoidal displacement, as a function of interfacial tension, initial amplitude and wavelength, is discussed.

This paper deals with the optimal tracking problem for switched systems, where the control input, the switching times and the switching index are all design variables. We propose a three-stage method for solving this problem. First, we fix the switching times and switching index sequence, which leads to a linear tracking problem, except different subsystems are defined in their respective time intervals. The optimal control and the corresponding cost function obtained depend on the switching signal. This gives rise to an optimal parameter selection problem for which the switching instants and the switching index are to be chosen optimally. In the second stage, the switching index is fixed. A reverse time transformation followed by a time scaling transform are introduced to convert this subproblem into an equivalent standard optimal parameter selection problem. The gradient formula of the cost function is derived. Then the discrete filled function is used in the third stage to search for the optimal switching index. On this basis, a computational method, which combines a gradient-based method, a local search algorithm and a filled function method, is developed for solving this problem. A numerical exampleis solved, showing the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Explicit solutions are rarely available for water wave scattering problems. An analytical procedure is presented here to solve the boundary value problem associated with wave scattering by a complete vertical porous barrier with two gaps in it. The original problem is decomposed into four problems involving vertical solid barriers. The decomposed problems are solved analytically by using a weakly singular integral equation. Explicit expressions are obtained for the scattering amplitudes and numerical results are presented. The results obtained can be used as a benchmark for other wave scattering problems involving complex geometrical structures.

We have proposed a three-species hybrid food chain model with multiple time delays. The interaction between the prey and the middle predator follows Holling type (HT) II functional response, while the interaction between the top predator and its only food, the middle predator, is taken as a general functional response with the mutual interference schemes, such as Crowley–Martin (CM), Beddington–DeAngelis (BD) and Hassell–Varley (HV) functional responses. We analyse the model system which employs HT II and CM functional responses, and discuss the local and global stability analyses of the coexisting equilibrium solution. The effect of gestation delay on both the middle and top predator has been studied. The dynamics of model systems are affected by both factors: gestation delay and the form of functional responses considered. The theoretical results are supported by appropriate numerical simulations, and bifurcation diagrams are obtained for biologically feasible parameter values. It is interesting from the application point of view to show how an individual delay changes the dynamics of the model system depending on the form of functional response.

It is usually stated that the Laplace transform cannot be applied to most superexponential functions; indeed this limitation is sometimes represented as a deficiency of the technique. It is shown here that a generalisation serves to overcome much of the force of this objection. The generalisation is based on one first proposed over fifty years ago, but which is not widely known, nor was it ever worked out in detail.

It is proved that the Neumann boundary value problem, which Mays and Norbury have recently connected with a certain fluid dynamics equation, has a positive solution for any positive value of a particular parameter. Uniform bounds for the solutions and symmetry on a given range of the parameter are also introduced. The proofs include Krasnoselskii's classical fixed-point theorem on cones of a Banach space and basic comparison techniques.

The “Hartree hybrid method” has recently been employed in one-dimensional non-linear aortic blood-flow models, and the results obtained appear to indicate that shock-waves could only form in distances which exceed physiologically meaningful values. However, when the same method is applied with greater numerical accuracy to these models, the existence of a shock-wave in the vicinity of the heart is predicted. This appears to be contrary to present belief.

The unsteady Hele-Shaw problem is a model nonlinear system that, for a certain parameter ranger, exhibits the phenomenon known as viscous fingering. While not directly applicable to multiphase porous-media flow, it does prove to be an adequate mathematical model for unstable dieplacement in laboratory parallel-plate devices. We seek here to determine, by use of an accurate boundary-integral frount-tracking scheme, the extent to which the simplified system captures the canonical nonlinear behavior of displacement flows and, in particular, to ascertain the role of noise in such systems. We choose to study a particular pattern of injection and production “wells.” The pattern chosen is the isolated “five-spot,” that is a single source surrounded by four symmetrically-placed sinks in an infinite two-dimensional “reservoir.” In cases where the “pusher” fluid has negligible viscosity, sweep efficiency is calculated for a range of values of the single dimensionless parameter τ, an inverse capillary number. As this parameter is reduced, corresponding to increased flow rate or reduced interfacial tension, this efficiency decreases continuously. For small values of τ, these stable displacements change abruptly to a regime characterized by unstable competing fingers and a significant reduction in sweep efficiency. A simple stability argument appears to correctly predict the noise level required to transit from the stable to the competing-finger regimes. Published compilations of experimental results for sweep efficiency as a function of viscosity ratio showed an unexplained divergence when the pusher fluid is less viscous. Our simulations produce a similar divergence when, for a given viscosity ratio, the parameter τ is varied.

There are many ways to define how long diffusive processes take, and an appropriate “critical time” is highly dependent on the specific application. In particular, we are interested in diffusive processes through multilayered materials, which have applications to a wide range of areas. Here we perform a comprehensive comparison of six critical time definitions, outlining their strengths, weaknesses, and potential applications. A further four definitions are also briefly considered. Equivalences between appropriate definitions are determined in the asymptotic limit as the number of layers becomes large. Relatively simple approximations are obtained for the critical time definitions. The approximations are more accessible than inverting the analytical solution for time, and surprisingly accurate. The key definitions, their behaviour and approximations are summarized in tables.

We study impatient customers’ joining strategies in a single-server Markovian queue with synchronized abandonment and multiple vacations. Customers receive the system information upon arrival, and decide whether to join or balk, based on a linear reward-cost structure under the acquired information. Waiting customers are served in a first-come-first-serve discipline, and no service is rendered during vacation. Server’s vacation becomes the cause of impatience for the waiting customers, which leads to synchronous abandonment at the end of vacation. That is, customers consider simultaneously but independent of others, whether to renege the system or to remain. We are interested to study the effect of both information and reneging choice on the balking strategies of impatient customers. We examine the customers’ equilibrium and socially optimal balking strategies under four cases of information: fully/almost observable and fully/almost unobservable cases, assuming the linear reward-cost structure. We compare the social benefits under all the information policies.

The bi-objective Cost-time Trade-off Three Axial Sums' Transportation Problem is shown to be equivalent to a single-objective standard Three Axial Sums' problem, which can be solved easily by the existing efficient methods. The equivalence is established for some specially defined solutions termed as Lexicographic optimal solutions with minimum pipe-line.

How to obtain a workable initial guess to start an optimal control (control parametrization) algorithm is an important question. In particular, for a system of multi-link vertical planar robot arms moving under the effect of gravity and applied torques (which can exhibit chaotic behaviour), a non-workable initial guess of torques may cause integration failure regardless of what numerical packages are used. In this paper, we address this problem by introducing a simple and intuitive “Blind Man” algorithm. Theoretical justification as well as a numerical example is provided.

A stochastic algorithm for bound-constrained global optimization is described. The method can be applied to objective functions that are nonsmooth or even discontinuous. The algorithm forms a partition on the search region using classification and regression trees (CART), which defines a region where the objective function is relatively low. Further points are drawn directly from the low region before a new partition is formed. Alternating between partition and sampling phases provides an effective method for nonsmooth global optimization. The sequence of iterates generated by the algorithm is shown to converge to an essential global minimizer with probability one under mild conditions. Nonprobabilistic results are also given when random sampling is replaced with points taken from the Halton sequence. Numerical results are presented for both smooth and nonsmooth problems and show that the method is effective and competitive in practice.

Carlson has shown that if the predicted price in the linear cobweb model is taken as the average of all previous actual prices, then stability results independently of parameter values provided only that the demand–curve gradient is less than that of the supply curve. This result has subsequently been generalised by Manning and by Holmes and Manning. We investigate the robustness of their results.

An analysis is made of quadrature viatwo-point formulae when the integrand is Lipschitz or of bounded variation. The error estimates are shown to be as good as those found in recent studies using Simpson (three-point) formulae.