isogeometric analysis using t splines we explore t splines a generalization of nurbs enabling local refinement as a basis for isogeometric analysis we review t splines as a surface design methodology and then develop it for engineering analysis applications we test t splines on some elementary two dimensional and three dimensional fluid and structural analysis problems and attain good results in all cases we summarize the current status of t splines their limitations and future possibilities

the cutoff rate of time correlated fading channels the cutoff rate of rician and rayleigh channels characterized by time correlated fading is derived for m ary phase shift keying mpsk modulation it is useful for situations where perfect interleaving cannot be achieved it indicates the practical achievable information rate of the channel when coding is employed it is used to determine the potential coding gains of coded modulation over the correlated fading channel

a stable and conservative finite difference scheme for the cahn hilliard equation we propose a stable and conservative finite difference scheme to solve numerically the cahn hilliard equation which describes a phase separation phenomenon numerical solutions to the equation is hard to obtain because it is a nonlinear and nearly ill posed problem we design a new difference scheme based on a general strategy proposed recently by furihata and mori the new scheme inherits characteristic properties the conservation of mass and the decrease of the total energy from the equation the decrease of the total energy implies boundedness of discretized sobolev norm of the solution this in turn implies by discretized sobolev s lemma boundedness of max norm of the solution and hence the stability of the solution an error estimate for the solution is obtained and the order is o delta x 2 delta t 2 numerical examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme

three dimensional stochastic analysis of macrodispersion in aquifers the dispersive mixing resulting from complex flow in three dimensionally heterogeneous porous media is analyzed using stochastic continuum theory stochastic solutions of the perturbed steady flow and solute transport equations are used to construct the macroscopic dispersive flux and evaluate the resulting macrodispersivity tensor in terms of a three dimensional statistically anisotropic input covariance describing the hydraulic conductivity with a statistically isotropic input covariance the longitudinal macrodispersivity is convectively controlled but the transverse macrodispersivity is proportional to the local dispersivity and is several orders of magnitude smaller than the longitudinal term with an arbitrarily oriented anisotropic conductivity covariance all components of the macrodispersivity tensor are convectively controlled and the ratio of transverse to longitudinal dispersivity is of the order of 10 1 in this case the off diagonal components of the dispersivity tensor are significant being numerically larger than the diagonal transverse terms and the transverse dispersion process can be highly anisotropic dispersivities predicted by the stochastic theory are shown to be consistent with controlled field experiments and monte carlo simulations the theory which treats the asymptotic condition of large displacement indicates that a classical gradient transport fickian relationship is valid for large scale displacements

finite element approximation of the cahn hilliard equation with degenerate mobility we consider a fully practical finite element approximation of the cahn hilliard equation with degenerate mobility textstyle frac partial u partial t del b u del gamma lap u psi u where b cdot geq 0 is a diffusional mobility and psi cdot is a homogeneous free energy in addition to showing well posedness and stability bounds for our approximation we prove convergence in one space dimension furthermore an iterative scheme for solving the resulting nonlinear discrete system is analyzed we also discuss how our approximation has to be modified in order to be applicable to a logarithmic homogeneous free energy finally some numerical experiments are presented

a second order splitting method for the cahn hilliard equation a semi discrete finite element method requiring only continuous element is presented for the approximation of the solution of the evolutionary fourth order in space cahn hilliard equation optimal order error bounds are derived in various norms for an implementation which uses mass lumping the continuous problem has an energy based lyapunov functional it is proved that this property holds for the discrete problem

three dimensional simulation of unstable gravity driven infiltration of water into a porous medium infiltration of water in dry porous media is subject to a powerful gravity driven instability although the phenomenon of unstable infiltration is well known its description using continuum mathematical models has posed a significant challenge for several decades the classical model of water flow in the unsaturated flow the richards equation is unable to reproduce the instability here we present a computational study of a model of unsaturated flow in porous media that extends the richards equation and is capable of predicting the instability and captures the key features of gravity fingering quantitatively the extended model is based on a phase field formulation and is fourth order in space the new model poses a set of challenges for numerical discretizations such as resolution of evolving interfaces stiffness in space and time treatment of singularly perturbed equations and discretization of higher order spatial partial differential operators we develop a numerical algorithm based on isogeometric analysis a generalization of the finite element method that permits the use of globally smooth basis functions leading to a simple and efficient discretization of higher order spatial operators in variational form we illustrate the accuracy efficiency and robustness of our method with several examples in two and three dimensions in both homogeneous and strongly heterogeneous media we simulate for the first time unstable gravity driven infiltration in three dimensions and confirm that the new theory reproduces the fundamental features of water infiltration into a porous medium our results are consistent with classical experimental observations that demonstrate a transition from stable to unstable fronts depending on the infiltration flux

duality and unified analysis of discrete approximations in structural dynamics and wave propagation comparison of p method finite elements with k method nurbs we study the discretization behavior of classical finite element and nurbs approximations on problems of structural vibrations and wave propagation we find that on the basis of equal numbers of degrees of freedom and bandwidth nurbs have superior approximation properties in fact we observe that the high mode behavior of classical finite elements is divergent with the order of approximation a surprisingly negative result on the other hand nurbs offer almost spectral approximation properties and all modes converge with increasing order of approximation

an isogeometric analysis approach to gradient damage models continuum damage formulations are commonly used for the simulation of diffuse fracture processes implicit gradient damage models are employed to avoid the spurious mesh dependencies associated with local continuum damage models the c 0 continuity of traditional finite elements has hindered the study of higher order gradient damage approximations in this contribution we use isogeometric finite elements which allow for the construction of higher order continuous basis functions on complex domains we study the suitability of isogeometric finite elements for the discretization of higher order gradient damage approximations

a second order accurate linearized difference scheme for the two dimensional cahn hilliard equation the cahn hilliard equation is a nonlinear evolutionary equation that is of fourth order in space in this paper a linearized finite difference scheme is derived by the method of reduction of order it is proved that the scheme is uniquely solvable and convergent with the convergence rate of order two in a discrete l2 norm the coefficient matrix of the difference system is symmetric and positive definite so many well known iterative methods e g gauss seidel sor can be used to solve the system

robustness of isogeometric structural discretizations under severe mesh distortion abstract this paper investigates higher order and higher continuity functions in isogeometric structural analysis under distortion of the control and physical meshes first the concepts behind isogeometric analysis are briefly reviewed the effect of perturbing control points upon the geometrical mapping is observed in the one dimensional setting the concept is extended to multiple dimensions with a series of cases where the interior of a cube is distorted in different ways and patch tests are performed to assess accuracy a circular fillet patch is introduced through the appropriate degeneration of a control mesh in order to address the problem of modeling small features in finite element models the fillet patch is tested with two problems of linear elasticity and is shown to be accurate the investigation is further extended to the setting of large deformation nearly incompressible nonlinear elasticity with two examples which make use of the recently proposed f projection method

quasi incompressible cahn hilliard fluids and topological transitions one of the fundamental problems in simulating the motion of sharp interfaces between immiscible fluids is a description of the transition that occurs when the interfaces merge and reconnect it is well known that classical methods involving sharp interfaces fail to describe this type of phenomena following some previous work in this area we suggest a physically motivated regularization of the euler equations which allows topological transitions to occur smoothly in this model the sharp interface is replaced by a narrow transition layer across which the fluids may mix the model describes a flow of a binary mixture and the internal structure of the interface is determined by both diffusion and motion an advantage of our regularization is that it automatically yields a continuous description of surface tension which can play an important role in topological transitions an additional scalar field is introduced to describe the concentration of one of the fluid components and the resulting system of equations couples the euler or navier stokes and the cahn hilliard equations the model takes into account weak non locality dispersion associated with an internal length scale and localized dissipation due to mixing the non locality introduces a dimensional surface energy dissipation is added to handle the loss of regularity of solutions to the sharp interface equations and to provide a mechanism for topological changes in particular we study a non trivial limit when both components are incompressible the pressure is kinematic but the velocity field is non solenoidal quasi incompressibility to demonstrate the effects of quasi incompressibility we analyse the linear stage of spinodal decomposition in one dimension we show that when the densities of the fluids are not perfectly matched the evolution of the concentration field causes fluid motion even if the fluids are inviscid in the limit of infinitely thin and well separated interfacial layers an appropriately scaled quasi incompressible euler cahn hilliard system converges to the classical sharp interface model in order to investigate the behaviour of the model outside the range of parameters where the sharp interface approximation is sufficient we consider a simple example of a change of topology and show that the model permits the transition to occur without an associated singularity

on the incompatibility of richards equation and finger like infiltration in unsaturated homogeneous porous media 1 it is demonstrated by means of a mathematical proof that richards equation in principle cannot admit finger like solutions for three dimensional homogeneous unsaturated porous media flow subject to monotone boundary conditions this is demonstrated for any reasonable type of homogeneous porous material the result is not dependent on any particular form of the hydraulic conductivity or the retention curve moreover it is explained why hysteresis of the retention curve does not play any role in the proof consequently the proof is true for any type of hysteretic behavior of the retention curve an alternative approach to finger flow modeling is discussed which uses the ideas of cellular automata

isogeometric analysis of the cahn hilliard phase field model abstract the cahn hilliard equation involves fourth order spatial derivatives finite element solutions are not common because primal variational formulations of fourth order operators are only well defined and integrable if the finite element basis functions are piecewise smooth and globally c 1 continuous there are a very limited number of two dimensional finite elements possessing c 1 continuity applicable to complex geometries but none in three dimensions we propose isogeometric analysis as a technology that possesses a unique combination of attributes for complex problems involving higher order differential operators namely higher order accuracy robustness two and three dimensional geometric flexibility compact support and most importantly the possibility of c 1 and higher order continuity a nurbs based variational formulation for the cahn hilliard equation was tested on two and three dimensional problems we present steady state solutions in two dimensions and for the first time in three dimensions to achieve these results an adaptive time stepping method is introduced we also present a technique for desensitizing calculations to dependence on mesh refinement this enables the calculation of topologically correct solutions on coarse meshes opening the way to practical engineering applications of phase field methodology

provably unconditionally stable second order time accurate mixed variational methods for phase field models we introduce provably unconditionally stable mixed variational methods for phase field models our formulation is based on a mixed finite element method for space discretization and a new second order accurate time integration algorithm the fully discrete formulation inherits the main characteristics of conserved phase dynamics namely mass conservation and nonlinear stability with respect to the free energy we illustrate the theory with the cahn hilliard equation but our method may be applied to other phase field models we also propose an adaptive time stepping version of the new time integration method we present some numerical examples that show the accuracy stability and robustness of the new method

studies of refinement and continuity in isogeometric structural analysis we investigate the effects of smoothness of basis functions on solution accuracy within the isogeometric analysis framework we consider two simple one dimensional structural eigenvalue problems and two static shell boundary value problems modeled with trivariate nurbs solids we also develop a local refinement strategy that we utilize in one of the shell analyses we find that increased smoothness that is the k method leads to a significant increase in accuracy for the problems of structural vibrations over the classical c0c0 continuous p method whereas a judicious insertion of c0c0 continuous surfaces about singularities in a mesh otherwise generated by the k method usually outperforms a mesh in which all basis functions attain their maximum level of smoothness we conclude that the potential for the k method is high but smoothness is an issue that is not well understood due to the historical dominance of c0c0 continuous finite elements and therefore further studies are warranted

coarsening kinetics from a variable mobility cahn hilliard equation application of a semi implicit fourier spectral method an efficient semi implicit fourier spectral method is implemented to solve the cahn hilliard equation with a variable mobility the method is orders of magnitude more efficient than the conventional forward euler finite difference method thus allowing us to simulate large systems for longer times we studied the coarsening kinetics of interconnected two phase mixtures using a cahn hilliard equation with its mobility depending on local compositions in particular we compared the kinetics of bulk diffusion dominated and interface diffusion dominated coarsening in two phase systems results are compared with existing theories and previous computer simulations

a phase field description of dynamic brittle fracture abstract in contrast to discrete descriptions of fracture phase field descriptions do not require numerical tracking of discontinuities in the displacement field this greatly reduces implementation complexity in this work we extend a phase field model for quasi static brittle fracture to the dynamic case we introduce a phase field approximation to the lagrangian for discrete fracture problems and derive the coupled system of equations that govern the motion of the body and evolution of the phase field we study the behavior of the model in one dimension and show how it influences material properties for the temporal discretization of the equations of motion we present both a monolithic and staggered time integration scheme we study the behavior of the dynamic model by performing a number of two and three dimensional numerical experiments we also introduce a local adaptive refinement strategy and study its performance in the context of locally refined t splines we show that the combination of the phase field model and local adaptive refinement provides an effective method for simulating fracture in three dimensions

a diffuse interface method for two phase flows with soluble surfactants a method is presented to solve two phase problems involving soluble surfactants the incompressible navier stokes equations are solved along with equations for the bulk and interfacial surfactant concentrations a nonlinear equation of state is used to relate the surface tension to the interfacial surfactant concentration the method is based on the use of a diffuse interface which allows a simple implementation using standard finite difference or finite element techniques here finite difference methods on a block structured adaptive grid are used and the resulting equations are solved using a nonlinear multigrid method results are presented for a drop in shear flow in both 2d and 3d and the effect of solubility is discussed

c1 macroelements in adaptive finite element methods some interesting properties of composite basis functions for c1 macroelements are investigated including their use for constructing conforming c1 function spaces on non conforming adaptively refined meshes of particular interest is the classical cubic hsieh clough tocher 3 split triangle because of its simplicity and convergence properties in fourth order problems as compared with the powell sabin heindl 6 split and 12 split triangles a posteriori error indicators for adaptive refinement are developed numerical experiments demonstrate convergence rates and adaptive refinement performance based on a simplified error indicator is tested extensibility to analogous three dimensional tetrahedral elements is briefly discussed copyright 2006 john wiley sons ltd

on the continuum scale modeling of gravity driven fingers in unsaturated porous media the inadequacy of the richards equation with standard monotonic constitutive relations and hysteretic equations of state we consider the ability of the continuum scale richards equation re with standard monotonic constitutive relations and hysteretic equations of state to model gravity driven fingers in unsaturated porous media and in particular the underlying nonmonotonicity observed along the vertical extent of fingers as published in a number of recent papers finger like solutions with nonmonotonic profiles can be simulated numerically using a downwind averaging method however we find these fingers to be artifacts generated by the combined effects of a truncation error induced oscillation or oversaturation at the wetting front and capillary hysteresis as the oscillation is removed either through grid refinement or the use of inherently monotone schemes the numerically generated fingers disappear and the solution becomes monotonic thus the re along with standard monotonic hydraulic properties does not contain the critical physics required to model gravity driven fingers and must be considered inadequate for unsaturated flow in initially dry highly nonlinear and hysteretic media where these fingers occur

adaptive rational spectral methods for the linear stability analysis of nonlinear fourth order problems this paper presents the application of adaptive rational spectral methods to the linear stability analysis of nonlinear fourth order problems our model equation is a phase field model of infiltration but the proposed discretization can be directly extended to similar equations arising in thin film flows the sharpness and structure of the wetting front preclude the use of the standard chebyshev pseudo spectral method due to its slow convergence in problems where the solution has steep internal layers we discuss the effectiveness and conditioning of the proposed discretization and show that it allows the computation of accurate traveling waves and eigenvalues for small values of the initial water saturation film precursor several orders of magnitude smaller than the values considered previously in analogous stability analyses of thin film flows using just a few hundred grid points

isogeometric analysis in electromagnetics b splines approximation abstract we introduce a new discretization scheme for maxwell equations in two space dimension inspired by the new paradigm of isogeometric analysis introduced in hughes et al 2005 16 we propose an algorithm based on the use of bivariate b splines spaces suitably adapted to electromagnetics we construct b splines spaces of variable interelement regularity on the parametric domain these spaces and their push forwards on the physical domain form a de rham diagram and we use them to solve the maxwell source and eigen problem our scheme has the following features i is adapted to treat complex geometries ii is spectral correct iii provides regular e g globally c 0 discrete solutions of maxwell equations

analysis of a fully discrete finite element method for the phase field model and approximation of its sharp interface limits we propose and analyze a fully discrete finite element scheme for the phase field model describing the solidification process in materials science the primary goal of this paper is to establish some useful a priori error estimates for the proposed numerical method in particular by focusing on the dependence of the error bounds on the parameter e known as the measure of the interface thickness optimal order error bounds are shown for the fully discrete scheme under some reasonable constraints on the mesh size h and the time step size k in particular it is shown that all error bounds depend on 1 a only in some lower polynomial order for small e the cruxes of the analysis are to establish stability estimates for the discrete solutions to use a spectrum estimate result of chen and to establish a discrete counterpart of it for a linearized phase field operator to handle the nonlinear effect finally as a nontrivial byproduct the error estimates are used to establish convergence of the solution of the fully discrete scheme to solutions of the sharp interface limits of the phase field model under different scaling in its coefficients the sharp interface limits include the classical stefan problem the generalized stefan problems with surface tension and surface kinetics the motion by mean curvature flow and the hele shaw model

a rational spectral collocation method with adaptively transformed chebyshev grid points a spectral collocation method based on rational interpolants and adaptive grid points is presented the rational interpolants approximate analytic functions with exponential accuracy by using prescribed barycentric weights and transformed chebyshev points the locations of the grid points are adapted to singularities of the underlying solution and the locations of these singularities are approximated by the locations of poles of chebyshev pade approximants numerical experiments on two time dependent problems one with finite time blow up and one with a moving front indicate that the method far outperforms the standard chebyshev spectral collocation method for problems whose solutions have singularities in the complex plane close to 1 1

b and f projection methods for nearly incompressible linear and non linear elasticity and plasticity using higher order nurbs elements abstract this paper presents projection methods to treat the incompressibility constraint in small and large deformation elasticity and plasticity within the framework of isogeometric analysis after reviewing some fundamentals of isogeometric analysis we investigate the use of higher order non uniform rational b splines nurbs within the b projection method the higher continuity property of such functions is explored in nearly incompressible applications and shown to produce accurate and robust results a new non linear f projection method based on a modified minimum potential energy principle and inspired by the b method is proposed for the large deformation case it leads to a symmetric formulation for which the consistent linearized operator for fully non linear elasticity is derived and used in a newton raphson iterative procedure the performance of the methods is assessed on several numerical examples and results obtained are shown to compare favorably with other published techniques

a time adaptive finite volume method for the cahn hilliard and kuramoto sivashinsky equations this paper presents a complete finite volume method for the cahn hilliard and kuramoto sivashinsky type of equations the spatial discretization is high order accurate and suitable for general unstructured grids the time integration is addressed by means of implicit an implicit explicit fourth order runge kutta schemes with error control and adaptive time stepping the outcome is a practical accurate and efficient simulation tool which has been successfully applied to accuracy tests and representative simulations the use of adaptive time stepping is of paramount importance in problems governed by the cahn hilliard model an adaptive method may be several orders of magnitude more efficient than schemes using constant or heuristic time steps in addition to driving the simulations efficiently the time adaptive procedure provides a quantitative not just qualitative characterization of the rich temporal scales present in phase separation processes governed by the cahn hilliard phase field model

numerical simulation of asymptotic states of the damped kuramoto sivashinsky equation the damped kuramoto sivashinsky equation has emerged as a fundamental tool for the understanding of the onset and evolution of secondary instabilities in a wide range of physical phenomena most existing studies about this equation deal with its asymptotic states on one dimensional settings or on periodic square domains we utilize a large scale numerical simulation to investigate the asymptotic states of the damped kuramoto sivashinsky equation on annular two dimensional geometries and three dimensional domains to this end we propose an accurate efficient and robust algorithm based on a recently introduced numerical methodology namely isogeometric analysis we compared our two dimensional results with several experiments of directed percolation on square and annular geometries and found qualitative agreement