Various works from the literature aimed at accelerating Bayesian inference in inverse problems. Stochastic spectral methods have been recently proposed as surrogate approximations of the forward uncertainty propagation model over the support of the prior distribution. These representations are efficient because they allow affordable simulation of a large number of samples from the posterior distribution. Unfortunately, they do not perform well when the forward model exhibits strong nonlinear behavior with respect to its input.

In this work, we first relate the fast (exponential) L2-convergence of the forward approximation to the fast (exponential) convergence (in terms of Kullback-Leibler divergence) of the approximate posterior. In particular, we prove that in case the prior distribution is uniform, the posterior is at least twice as fast as the convergence rate of the forwardmodel in those norms. The Bayesian inference strategy is developed in the framework of a stochastic spectral projectionmethod. The predicted convergence rates are then demonstrated for simple nonlinear inverse problems of varying smoothness.

We then propose an efficient numerical approach for the Bayesian solution of inverse problems presenting strongly nonlinear or discontinuous systemresponses. This comes with the improvement of the forward model that is adaptively approximated by an iterative generalized Polynomial Chaos-based representation. The numerical approximations and predicted convergence rates of the former approach are compared to the new iterative numericalmethod for nonlinear time-dependent test cases of varying dimension and complexity, which are relevant regarding our hydrodynamics motivations and therefore regarding hyperbolic conservation laws and the apparition of discontinuities in finite time.

In this paper, we derive a multi-symplectic Fourier pseudospectral scheme for the Kawahara equation with special attention to the relationship between the spectral differentiation matrix and discrete Fourier transform. The relationship is crucial for implementing the scheme efficiently. By using the relationship, we can apply the Fast Fourier transform to solve the Kawahara equation. The effectiveness of the proposed methods will be demonstrated by a number of numerical examples. The numerical results also confirm that the global energy and momentum are well preserved.

Red blood cells undergo substantial shape changes in vivo. Modeled as a viscoelastic capsule, their deformation and equilibrium behavior has been extensively studied. We consider how 2D capsules recover their shape, after having been deformed to ‘equilibrium’ behavior by shear flow. The fluid-structure interaction is modeled using the multiple-relaxation time lattice Boltzmann (LBM) and immersed boundary (IBM) methods. Characterizing the capsule’s shape recovery with the Taylor deformation parameter, we find that a single exponential decay model suffices to describe the recovery of a circular capsule. However, for biconcave capsules whose equilibrium behaviors are tank-treading and tumbling, we posit a two-part recovery, modeled with a pair of exponential decay functions. We consider how these two recovery modes depend on the capsule’s shear elasticity, membrane viscosity, and bending stiffness, along with the ratio of the viscosity of the fluid inside the capsule to the ambient fluid viscosity. We find that the initial recovery mode for a tank-treading biconcave capsule is dominated by shear elasticity and membrane viscosity. On the other hand, the latter recovery mode for both tumbling and tank-treading capsules, depends clearly on shear elasticity, bending stiffness, and the viscosity ratio.

A new representation of spatio-temporal random processes is proposed in this work. In practical applications, such processes are used to model velocity fields, temperature distributions, response of vibrating systems, to name a few. Finding an efficient representation for any random process leads to encapsulation of information which makes it more convenient for a practical implementations, for instance, in a computational mechanics problem. For a single-parameter process such as spatial or temporal process, the eigenvalue decomposition of the covariance matrix leads to the well-known Karhunen-Loève (KL) decomposition. However, for multiparameter processes such as a spatio-temporal process, the covariance function itself can be defined in multiple ways. Here the process is assumed to be measured at a finite set of spatial locations and a finite number of time instants. Then the spatial covariance matrix at different time instants are considered to define the covariance of the process. This set of square, symmetric, positive semi-definite matrices is then represented as a third-order tensor. A suitable decomposition of this tensor can identify the dominant components of the process, and these components are then used to define a closed-form representation of the process. The procedure is analogous to the KL decomposition for a single-parameter process, however, the decompositions and interpretations vary significantly. The tensor decompositions are successfully applied on (i) a heat conduction problem, (ii) a vibration problem, and (iii) a covariance function taken from the literature that was fitted to model a measured wind velocity data. It is observed that the proposed representation provides an efficient approximation to some processes. Furthermore, a comparison with KL decomposition showed that the proposed method is computationally cheaper than the KL, both in terms of computer memory and execution time.

The immersed interface technique is incorporated into CIP method to solve one-dimensional hyperbolic equations with piecewise constant coefficients. The proposed method achieves the third order of accuracy in time and space in the vicinity of the interface where the coefficients have jump discontinuities, which is the same order of accuracy of the standard CIP scheme. Some numerical tests are given to verify the accuracy of the proposed method.

The bubble packing method can generate high-quality node sets in simple and complex domains. However, its efficiency remains to be improved. This study is a part of an ongoing effort to introduce several acceleration schemes to reduce the cost of simulation. Firstly, allow the viscosity coefficient c in the bubble governing equations to change according the coordinate of the bubble which are defined separately as odd and normal bubbles, and meanwhile with the saw-shape relationship with time or iterations. Then, in order to relieve the over crowded initial bubble placement, two coefficients w1 and w2 are introduced to modify the insertion criterion. The range of those two coefficients are discussed to be w1 = 1, w2 ∈ [0.5,0.8]. Finally, a self-adaptive termination condition is logically set when the stable system equilibrium is achieved. Numerical examples illustrate that the computing cost can significantly decrease by roughly 80% via adopting various combination of proper schemes (except the uniform placement example), and the average qualities of corresponding Delaunay triangulation substantially exceed 0.9. It shows that those strategies are efficient and can generate a node set with high quality.

This paper aims to study the numerical features of a coupling scheme between the immersed boundary (IB) method and the lattice Boltzmann BGK (LBGK) model by four typical test problems: the relaxation of a circular membrane, the shearing flow induced by a moving fiber in the middle of a channel, the shearing flow near a non-slip rigid wall, and the circular Couette flow between two inversely rotating cylinders. The accuracy and robustness of the IB-LBGK coupling scheme, the performances of different discrete Dirac delta functions, the effect of iteration on the coupling scheme, the importance of the external forcing term treatment, the sensitivity of the coupling scheme to flow and boundary parameters, the velocity slip near non-slip rigid wall, and the origination of numerical instabilities are investigated in detail via the four test cases. It is found that the iteration in the coupling cycle can effectively improve stability, the introduction of a second-order forcing term in LBGK model is crucial, the discrete fiber segment length and the orientation of the fiber boundary obviously affect accuracy and stability, and the emergence of both temporal and spatial fluctuations of boundary parameters seems to be the indication of numerical instability. These elaborate results shed light on the nature of the coupling scheme and may benefit those who wish to use or improve the method.

The construction of symplectic numerical schemes for stochastic Hamiltonian systems is studied. An approach based on generating functions method is proposed to generate the stochastic symplectic integration of any desired order. In general the proposed symplectic schemes are fully implicit, and they become computationally expensive for mean square orders greater than two. However, for stochastic Hamiltonian systems preserving Hamiltonian functions, the high-order symplectic methods have simpler forms than the explicit Taylor expansion schemes. A theoretical analysis of the convergence and numerical simulations are reported for several symplectic integrators. The numerical case studies confirm that the symplectic methods are efficient computational tools for long-term simulations.

Density functional theory combined with the Grüneisen approximation is used to calculate the thermal properties of single-walled boron nanotubes (BNTs). The specific heat and thermal expansion are investigated. The thermal expansion coefficient of the BNT is found to be significantly correlated with tube size and chirality. A remarkable thermal contraction is found at small tube diameters. These results indicate that BNTs would have potential applications in sensors, actuators, and memory materials.

We present a review on the accuracy of asymptotic models for the scattering problem of electromagnetic waves in domains with thin layer. These models appear as first order approximations of the electromagnetic field. They are obtained thanks to a multiscale expansion of the exact solution with respect to the thickness of the thin layer, that makes possible to replace the thin layer by approximate conditions. We present the advantages and the drawbacks of several approximations together with numerical validations and simulations. The main motivation of this work concerns the computation of electromagnetic field in biological cells. The main difficulty to compute the local electric field lies in the thinness of the membrane and in the high contrast between the electrical conductivities of the cytoplasm and of the membrane, which provides a specific behavior of the electromagnetic field at low frequencies.

The implementation of a turbulent gas-kinetic scheme into a finite-volume RANS solver is put forward, with two turbulent quantities, kinetic energy and dissipation, supplied by an allied turbulence model. This paper shows a number of numerical simulations of flow cases including an interaction between a shock wave and a turbulent boundary layer, where the shock-turbulent boundary layer is captured in a much more convincing way than it normally is by conventional schemes based on the Navier-Stokes equations. In the gas-kinetic scheme, the modeling of turbulence is part of the numerical scheme, which adjusts as a function of the ratio of resolved to unresolved scales of motion. In so doing, the turbulent stress tensor is not constrained into a linear relation with the strain rate. Instead it is modeled on the basis of the analogy between particles and eddies, without any assumptions on the type of turbulence or flow class. Conventional schemes lack multiscale mechanisms: the ratio of unresolved to resolved scales – very much like a degree of rarefaction – is not taken into account even if it may grow to non-negligible values in flow regions such as shocklayers. It is precisely in these flow regions, that the turbulent gas-kinetic scheme seems to provide more accurate predictions than conventional schemes.

Floor field methods are one of the most popular medium-scale navigation concepts in microscopic pedestrian simulators. Recently introduced dynamic floor field methods have significantly increased the realism of such simulations, i.e. agreement of spatio-temporal patterns of pedestrian densities in simulations with real world observations. These methods update floor fields continuously taking other pedestrians into account. This implies that computational times are mainly determined by the calculation of floor fields. In this work, we propose a new computational approach for the construction of dynamic floor fields. The approach is based on the one hand on adaptive grid concepts and on the other hand on a directed calculation of floor fields, i.e. the calculation is restricted to the domain of interest. Combining both techniques the computational complexity can be reduced by a factor of 10 as demonstrated by several realistic scenarios. Thus on-line simulations, a requirement of many applications, are possible for moderate realistic scenarios.