a new cloud based hp finite element method a hybrid computational method for solving boundary value problems is introduced which combines features of the meshless hp cloud methods with features of conventional finite elements the method admits straightforward nonuniform hp type approximations easy implementation of essential boundary conditions is robust under severe distortions of the mesh and can deliver exponential rates of convergence results of numerical experiments are presented

fixed points koebe uniformization and circle packings a domain in the riemann sphere hat mathbb c is called a circle domain if every connected component of its boundary is either a circle or a point in 1908 p koebe ko1 posed the following conjecture known as koebe s kreisnormierungsproblem any plane domain is conformally homeomorphic to a circle domain in hat mathbb c when the domain is simply connected this is the content of the riemann mapping theorem

stable gfem sgfem improved conditioning and accuracy of gfem xfem for three dimensional fracture mechanics abstract in this paper we present an extension of the stable generalized fem sgfem for 3 d fracture mechanics problems numerical experiments show that the use of available singular enrichment bases derived from the 2 d asymptotic crack tip solution leads to a severe loss of accuracy in the sgfem an enrichment scheme based on singular bases and linear polynomials is shown to recover the optimal convergence of the sgfem the proposed sgfem for 3 d fractures delivers the same rate of growth in condition number as the standard fem for proper choice of singular enrichment functions the accuracy and conditioning obtained with the sgfem is compared with the generalized fem gfem for different types of singular enrichment bases a fully 3 d fracture mechanics problem is considered to highlight issues that arise only in 3 d problems the convergence of stress intensity factors sifs extracted from gfem and sgfem solutions and the effect of the size of enrichment sub domains on the accuracy of extracted sifs are also studied it is shown that the accuracy of sifs may deteriorate with mesh refinement when the topological enrichment strategy is adopted the proposed sgfem delivers much better accuracy than the gfem for both geometrical and topological enrichment strategies

stable enrichment and local preconditioning in the particle partition of unity method this paper is concerned with the stability and approximation properties of enriched meshfree and generalized finite element methods in particular we focus on the particle partition of unity method ppum yet the presented results hold for any partition of unity based enrichment scheme the goal of our enrichment scheme is to recover the optimal convergence rate of the uniform h version independent of the regularity of the solution hence we employ enrichment not only for modeling purposes but rather to improve the approximation properties of the numerical scheme to this end we enrich our ppum function space in an enrichment zone hierarchically near the singularities of the solution this initial enrichment however can lead to a severe ill conditioning and can compromise the stability of the discretization to overcome the ill conditioning of the enriched shape functions we present an appropriate local preconditioner which yields a stable and well conditioned basis independent of the employed initial enrichment the construction of this preconditioner is of linear complexity with respect to the number of discretization points we obtain optimal error bounds for an enriched ppum discretization with local preconditioning that are independent of the regularity of the solution globally and within the employed enrichment zone we observe a kind of super convergence the results of our numerical experiments clearly show that our enriched ppum with local preconditioning recovers the optimal convergence rate of o h p of the uniform h version globally for the considered model problems from linear elastic fracture mechanics we obtain an improved convergence rate of o h p with delta geq frac 1 2 for p 1 the convergence rate of our multilevel solver is essentially the same for a purely polynomial approximation and an enriched approximation

on the enrichment zone size for optimal convergence rate of the generalized extended finite element method singular enrichment functions are broadly used in generalized or extended finite element methods gfem xfem for linear elastic fracture mechanics problems these functions are used at finite element nodes within an enrichment zone around the crack tip front in 2 and 3 d problems respectively small zones lead to suboptimal convergence rate of the method while large ones lead to ill conditioning of the system of equations and to a large number of degrees of freedom this paper presents an a priori estimate for the minimum size of the enrichment zone required for optimal convergence rate of the gfem xfem the estimate shows that the minimum size of the enrichment zone for optimal convergence rate depends on the element size and polynomial order of the gfem xfem shape functions detailed numerical verification of these findings is also presented

integration of singular enrichment functions in the generalized extended finite element method for three dimensional problems a mapping method is developed to integrate weak singularities which result from enrichment functions in the generalized extended finite element method the integration scheme is applicable to 2d and 3d problems including arbitrarily shaped triangles and tetrahedra implementation of the proposed scheme in existing codes is straightforward numerical examples for 2d and 3d problems demonstrate the accuracy and convergence properties of the technique copyright 2008 john wiley sons ltd

hp generalized fem and crack surface representation for non planar 3 d cracks a high order generalized finite element method gfem for non planar three dimensional crack surfaces is presented discontinuous p hierarchical enrichment functions are applied to strongly graded tetrahedral meshes automatically created around crack fronts the gfem is able to model a crack arbitrarily located within a finite element fe mesh and thus the proposed method allows fully automated fracture analysis using an existing fe discretization without cracks we also propose a crack surface representation that is independent of the underlying gfem discretization and controlled only by the physics of the problem the representation preserves continuity of the crack surface while being able to represent non planar non smooth crack surfaces inside of elements of any size the proposed representation also provides support for the implementation of accurate robust and computationally efficient numerical integration of the weak form over elements cut by the crack surface numerical simulations using the proposed gfem show high convergence rates of extracted stress intensity factors along non planar curved crack fronts and the robustness of the method copyright 2008 john wiley sons ltd

a stable and optimally convergent generalized fem sgfem for linear elastic fracture mechanics abstract in this paper we investigate the accuracy and conditioning of the stable generalized fem sgfem and compare it with standard generalized fem gfem for a 2 d fracture mechanics problem the sgfem involves localized modifications of enrichments used in the gfem and the conditioning of the stiffness matrix in this method is of the same order as in the fem numerical experiments show that using the sgfem with only the modified heaviside functions which are used as enrichments in the gfem to approximate the solution of fracture problems in 2 d gives inaccurate results however the sgfem using an additional set of enrichment function yields accurate results while not deteriorating the conditioning of the stiffness matrix rules for the selection of the optimal set of enrichment nodes based on the definition of enrichment functions used in the sgfem are also presented this set leads to optimal convergence rates while keeping the number of degrees of freedom equal to or close to the gfem we show that it is necessary to enrich additional nodes when the crack line is located along element edges in 2 d the selection of these nodes depends on the definition of the enrichment functions at the crack discontinuity a simple and yet generic implementation strategy for the sgfem in an existing gfem xfem software is described the implementation can be used with 2 d and 3 d elements it leads to an efficient evaluation of sgfem enrichment functions

rigidity theorems for circle domains a circle domain omega in the riemann sphere is conformally rigid if every conformal map from omega onto another circle domain is the restriction of a mobius transformation we show that circle domains satisfying a certain quasihyperbolic condition which was considered by jones and smirnov ark mat 38 263 279 2000 are conformally rigid in particular holder circle domains and john circle domains are all conformally rigid this provides new evidence for a conjecture of he and schramm relating rigidity and conformal removability

a particle partition of unity method for the solution of elliptic parabolic and hyperbolic pdes in this paper we present a meshless discretization technique for instationary convection diffusion problems it is based on operator splitting the method of characteristics and a generalized partition of unity method we focus on the discretization process and its quality the method may be used as an h version or a p version even for general particle distributions the convergence behavior of the different versions corresponds to that of the respective version of the finite element method on a uniform grid we discuss the implementational aspects of the proposed method furthermore we present the results of numerical examples where we considered instationary convection diffusion instationary diffusion linear advection and elliptic problems

constructing conformal maps of triangulated surfaces abstract we describe a means of computing the uniformizing conformal map from a triangulated surface whose triangles are realized as euclidean triangles in r 3 onto a fundamental domain in the unit disc d plane c or sphere s 2 mapping such triangulated surfaces arises in a number of applications such as conformal brain flattening we use the circle packing technique of bowers hurdal stephenson et al to first create a quasiconformal approximation to the conformal map then we apply a discrete form of conformal welding to reduce the distortion and converge to the conformal map in the limit

a corrected xfem approximation without problems in blending elements the extended finite element method xfem enables local enrichments of approximation spaces standard finite elements are used in the major part of the domain and enriched elements are employed where special solution properties such as discontinuities and singularities shall be captured in elements that blend the enriched areas with the rest of the domain problems arise in general these blending elements often require a special treatment in order to avoid a decrease in the overall convergence rate a modification of the xfem approximation is proposed in this work the enrichment functions are modified such that they are zero in the standard elements unchanged in the elements with all their nodes being enriched and varying continuously in the blending elements all nodes in the blending elements are enriched the modified enrichment function can be reproduced exactly everywhere in the domain and no problems arise in the blending elements the corrected xfem is applied to problems in linear elasticity and optimal convergence rates are achieved copyright 2007 john wiley sons ltd

interface solutions of partial differential equations with point singularity abstract partial differential equations pdes such as those that describe linear elastic fracture mechanics admit analytic solutions with low regularity at crack tips existing numerical methods for such pdes suffer from the constraint of this low regularity and fail to deliver an optimal high order rate of convergence we approach this problem by i choosing an artificial interface to enclose the center of low regularity and ii representing the solution in the interior of artificial interface as unknown linear combination of known low regularity modes of the solution this results in an interface formulation of the original pde and the linear combination is represented in the interface conditions by enforcing the smooth component of the numerical solution in the interior domain to be approximately zero a least squares problem is obtained for the unknown coefficients the solution of this least squares problem will provide the approximate interface conditions for the numerical solution of the pde in the exterior domain the potential of our interface formulation is favorably demonstrated by numerical experiments on one and two dimensional poisson equations with low regularity solutions high order numerical solutions of unknown coefficients and pdes are obtained this proves the potential of the proposed interface formulation as the theoretical basis for solving linear elastic fracture mechanics problems we address the relations between our interface formulation and domain decomposition methods as well as a regularization strategy for the poisson boltzmann equation with singular charge density

modular branching rules and the mullineux map for hecke algebras of type a in a series of papers 21 22 23 kleshchev has recently proved a branching rule for modular representations of the symmetric group s r on r symbols fix a field f of arbitrary characteristic p then kleshchev s branching rule gives a precise description of the socle of the restriction of an irreducible fs r module to fs r 1 in 24 kleshchev applies this branching rule to give a purely combinatorial description of the mullineux map which describes the irreducible fs r module obtained by tensoring an arbitrary irreducible fs r module with the 1 dimensional sign representation in 13 see also 3 ford and kleshchev show with some technical combinatorics that kleshchev s description of the mullineux map is equivalent to a quite different algorithm conjectured by mullineux 27 in 1979 thus proving the so called mullineux conjecture the main purpose of this paper is to prove the quantum analogues of these results replacing the group algebra fs r with the corresponding hecke algebra h r over f at an arbitrary root of unity q f our main result is the hecke algebra analogue of kleshchev s modular branching rule it turns out that the branching rule for h r only depends on the integer where is the smallest natural number such that 1 q q 1 0 in f if q 1 is precisely the characteristic p of f and our branching rule specializes to the classical case considered by kleshchev as a consequence of this branching rule combining kleshchev s argument in 24 with the known block structure of h r from 9 we are able to deduce the quantum analogue of kleshchev s description of the corresponding mullineux map for h r the proof by ford and kleshchev in 13 that this is equivalent to mullineux s original algorithm does not depend on p being prime so our result is equivalent by 13 to a quantum version of the mullineux conjecture replacing p by we remark that there is now a quite different proof that kleshchev s algorithm gives the mullineux map using crystal bases this was first observed for fields of characteristic 0 in 25 modulo a conjecture which has now been proved 17 2 relating crystal bases for a certain affine quantum group to decomposition matrices of h r over fields of characteristic 0 the result in arbitrary characteristic can be deduced from the characteristic 0 case by an

q tensor space and q weyl modules we obtain the irreducible representations of the q schur algebra motivated by the fact that these representations give all the irreducible representations of gln q in the nondescribing characteristic the irreducible polynomial representations of the general linear groups in the describing characteristic are a special case of this construction the theory of polynomial representations of general linear groups is equivalent to the representation theory of schur algebras see green s book 5 and the bibliography therein in 4 we defined q analogues of schur algebras when q 1 these are the usual schur algebras and when q is a prime power representations of q schur algebras give a substantial part of the representation theory of finite general linear groups in the nondescribing characteristic case including all irreducible representations of these groups and important information about decomposition numbers it is natural to ask what features of the classical schur algebras have qanalogues in this paper we define q analogues of tensor space of weyl modules and of weight spaces thereby generalizing the main reslllts which appear in green s book 5 for example we classify the irreducible modules for qschur algebras we determine bases for q weyl modules compatible with weight spaces and we give results on composition multiplicities of the irreducible modules in q weyl modules the proofs are largely self contained so by specializing q to 1 we recover the corresponding results in 5 this paper therefore is relevant to the representation theory of symmetric groups and to the representation theory of general linear groups in the describing and in the nondescribing characteristics 1 the q schur algebra let r be a natural number let r be an integral domain and let q be a unit in r we denote the symmetric group on r letters by er the hecke algebra z is the r free r algebra with basis twlw e er where the multiplication is determined by the following rule if a i i 1 is a basic transposition in received by the editors august 15 1989 1980 mathematics subject classification 198 5 revision primary 1 6a64 1 6a6 5 secondary 20c30 this research was supported in part by nsf grant no dms 8802290 the authors gratefully acknowledge support received from nato grant no 0222 87 r 1991 american mathematical society 0002 9947 91 1 00 25 per page

special finite element methods for a class of second order elliptic problems with rough coefficients in this paper the approximate solution of a class of second order elliptic equations with rough coefficients is considered problems of the type considered arise in the analysis of unidirectional composites where the coefficients represent the properties of the material several methods for this class of problems are presented and it is shown that they have the same accuracy as usual methods have for problems with smooth coefficients the methods are referred to as special finite element methods because they are of finite element type but employ special shape functions chosen to accurately model the unknown solution

non removability of the sierpinski gasket we prove that the sierpinski gasket is non removable for quasiconformal maps thus answering a question of bishop nsf research proposal 2015 http www math stonybrook edu bishop vita nsf15 pdf the proof involves a new technique of constructing an exceptional homeomorphism from mathbb r 2 into some non planar surface s and then embedding this surface quasisymmetrically back into the plane by using the celebrated bonk kleiner theorem bonk and kleiner in invent math 150 1 127 183 2002 we also prove that all homeomorphic copies of the sierpinski gasket are non removable for continuous sobolev functions of the class w 1 p for 1 le p le 2 thus complementing and sharpening the results of the author s previous work ntalampekos in a removability theorem for sobolev functions and detour sets arxiv 1706 07687

removability rigidity of circle domains and koebe s conjecture abstract a circle domain in the riemann sphere is conformally rigid if every conformal map of onto another circle domain is the restriction of a mobius transformation we show that two rigidity conjectures of he and schramm are in fact equivalent at least for a large family of circle domains the proof follows from a result on the removability of countable unions of certain conformally removable sets we also introduce trans quasiconformal deformation of schottky groups to prove that a circle domain is conformally rigid if and only if it is quasiconformally rigid thereby providing new evidence for the aforementioned conjectures

extended finite element method for three dimensional crack modelling an extended finite element method x fem for three dimensional crack modelling is described a discontinuous function and the two dimensional asymptotic crack tip displacement fields are added to the finite element approximation to account for the crack using the notion of partition of unity this enables the domain to be modelled by finite elements with no explicit meshing of the crack surfaces computational geometry issues associated with the representation of the crack and the enrichment of the finite element approximation are discussed stress intensity factors sifs for planar three dimensional cracks are presented which are found to be in good agreement with benchmark solutions copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

a generalized finite element method for the simulation of three dimensional dynamic crack propagation this paper is aimed at presenting a partition of unity method for the simulation of three dimensional dynamic crack propagation the method is a variation of the partition of unity finite element method and hp cloud method in the context of crack simulation this method allows for modeling of arbitrary dynamic crack propagation without any remeshing of the domain in the proposed method the approximation spaces are constructed using a partition of unity pu and local enrichment functions the pu is provided by a combination of shepard and finite element partitions of unity this combination of pus allows the inclusion of arbitrary crack geometry in a model without any modification of the initial discretization it also avoids the problems associated with the integration of moving least squares or conventional shepard partitions of unity used in several meshless methods the local enrichment functions can be polynomials or customized functions these functions can efficiently approximate the singular fields around crack fronts the crack propagation is modeled by modifying the partition of unity along the crack surface and does not require continuous remeshings or mappings of solutions between consecutive meshes as the crack propagates in contrast with the boundary element method the proposed method can be applied to any class of problems solvable by the classical finite element method in addition the proposed method can be implemented into most finite element data bases several numerical examples demonstrating the main features and computational efficiency of the proposed method for dynamic crack propagation are presented

harmonic enrichment functions a unified treatment of multiple intersecting and branched cracks in the extended finite element method a unifying procedure to numerically compute enrichment functions for elastic fracture problems with the extended finite element method is presented within each element that is intersected by a crack the enrichment function for the crack is obtained via the solution of the laplace equation with dirichlet and vanishing neumann boundary conditions a single algorithm emanates for the enrichment field for multiple cracks as well as intersecting and branched cracks without recourse to special cases which provides flexibility over the existing approaches in which each case is treated separately numerical integration is rendered to be simple there is no need for partitioning of the finite elements into conforming subdivisions for the integration of discontinuous or weakly singular kernels stress intensity factor computations for different crack configurations are presented to demonstrate the accuracy and versatility of the proposed technique copyright 2010 john wiley sons ltd

rigidity of infinite disk patterns let p be a locally flnite disk pattern on the complex plane c whose combinatorics are described by the one skeleton g of a triangulation of the open topological disk and whose dihedral angles are equal to a function e 0 2 on the set of edges let p be a combinatorially equivalent disk pattern on the plane with the same dihedral angle function we show that p and p difier only by a euclidean similarity in particular when the dihedral angle function is identically zero this yields the rigidity theorems of b rodin and d sullivan and of o schramm whose arguments rely essentially on the pairwise disjointness of the interiors of the disks the approach here is analytical and uses the maximum principle the concept of vertex extremal length and the recurrency of a family of electrical networks obtained by placing resistors on the edges in the contact graph of the pattern a similar rigidity property holds for locally flnite disk patterns in the hyperbolic plane where the proof follows by a simple use of the maximum principle also we have a uniformization result for disk patterns in a future paper the techniques of this paper will be extended to the case when 0 in particular we will show a rigidity property for a class of inflnite convex polyhedra in the 3 dimensional hyperbolic space

improved implementation and robustness study of the x fem for stress analysis around cracks numerical crack propagation schemes were augmented in an elegant manner by the x fem method the use of special tip enrichment functions as well as a discontinuous function along the sides of the crack allows one to do a complete crack analysis virtually without modifying the underlying mesh which is of industrial interest especially when a numerical model for crack propagation is desired this paper improves the implementation of the x fem method for stress analysis around cracks in three ways first the enrichment strategy is revisited the conventional approach uses a topological enrichment only the elements touching the front are enriched we suggest a geometrical enrichment in which a given domain size is enriched the improvements obtained with this enrichment are discussed second the conditioning of the x fem both for topological and geometrical enrichments is studied a preconditioner is introduced so that off the shelf iterative solver packages can be used and perform as well on x fem matrices as on standard fem matrices the preconditioner uses a local nodal cholesky based decomposition third the numerical integration scheme to build the x fem stiffness matrix is dramatically improved for tip enrichment functions by the use of an ad hoc integration scheme a 2d benchmark problem is designed to show the improvements and the robustness

optimal convergence analysis for the extended finite element method we establish some optimal a priori error estimate on some variants of the extended finite element method xfem namely the xfem with a cut off function and the standard xfem with a fixed enrichment area the results are established for the lame system homogeneous isotropic elasticity and the laplace problem the convergence of the numerical stress intensity factors is also investigated we show some numerical experiments which corroborate the theoretical results

definitions of quasiconformality summary we establish that the infinitesimal h definition for quasiconforreal mappings on carnot groups implies global quasisymmetry and hence the absolute continuity on almost all lines our method is new even in r where we obtain that the limsup condition in the h definition can be replaced by a liminf condition this leads to a new removability result for quasi conformal mappings in euclidean spaces an application to parametrizations of chord arc surfaces is also given

on the convergence of circle packings to the riemann map rodin and sullivan 1987 proved thurston s conjecture that a scheme based on the circle packing theorem converges to the riemann mapping thereby providing a refreshing geometric view of riemann s mapping theorem we now present a new proof of the rodin sullivan theorem this proof is based on the argument principle and has the following virtues 1 it applies to more general packings the rodin sullivan paper deals with packings based on the hexagonal combinatorics later quantitative estimates were found which also worked for bounded valence packings here the bounded valence assumption is unnecessary and irrelevant 2 our method is rather elementary and accessible to non experts in particular quasiconformal maps are not needed consequently this gives an independent proof of riemann s conformal mapping theorem the rodin sullivan proof uses results that rely on riemann s mapping theorem 3 our approach gives the convergence of the first and second derivatives without significant additional difficulties while previous work has established the convergence of the first two derivatives for bounded valence packings now the bounded valence assumption is unnecessary

fracture analysis in plane structures with the two scale g xfem method abstract generalized or extended finite element method g xfem uses enrichment functions that holds a priori knowledge about the problem solution these enrichment functions are mostly limited to two dimensional problems a well established solution for problems without any specific types of analytically derived enrichment functions is to use numerically build functions in which they are called global local enrichment functions these functions are extracted from the solution of boundary value problems defined around the region of interest discretized by a fine mesh such solution is used to enrich the global solution space through the partition of unity framework of the g xfem here it is presented a two scale global local g xfem approach to model crack propagation in plane stress strain and reissner mindlin plate problems discontinuous functions along with the asymptotic crack tip displacement fields are used to represent the crack without explicitly represent its geometries under the linear elastic fracture mechanics approach the stress intensity factor obtained from a domain based interaction energy integral can be used to either determine the crack propagation direction or propagation status i e the crack can start to propagate or not the proposed approach is presented in detail and validated by solving several linear elastic fracture mechanics problems for both plane stress strain and reissner mindlin plate cases to demonstrate its the robustness and accuracy

high order extended finite element method for cracked domains the aim of the paper is to study the capabilities of the extended finite element method xfem to achieve accurate computations in non smooth situations such as crack problems although the xfem method ensures a weaker error than classical nite element methods the rate of convergence is not improved when the mesh parameter h is going to zero because of the presence of a singularity the di culty can be overcome by modifying the enrichment of the nite element basis with the asymptotic crack tip displacement solutions as well as with the heaviside function numerical simulations show that the modi ed xfem method achieves an optimal rate of convergence i e like in a standard nite element method for a smooth problem

analysis of three dimensional crack initiation and propagation using the extended finite element method an erratum has been published for this article in international journal for numerical methods in engineering 2005 63 8 1228 we present a new formulation and a numerical procedure for the quasi static analysis of three dimensional crack propagation in brittle and quasi brittle solids the extended finite element method xfem is combined with linear tetrahedral elements a viscosity regularized continuum damage constitutive model is used and coupled with the xfem formulation resulting in a regularized crack band version of xfem the evolving discontinuity surface is discretized through a c0 surface formed by the union of the triangles and quadrilaterals that separate each cracked element in two the element s properties allow a closed form integration and a particularly efficient implementation allowing large scale 3d problems to be studied several examples of crack propagation are shown illustrating the good results that can be achieved copyright 2005 john wiley sons ltd

rigidity of schottky sets we call the complement of a union of at least three disjoint round open balls in the unit sphere bbb s n a schottky set we prove that every quasisymmetric homeomorphism of a schottky set of spherical measure zero to another schottky set is the restriction of a m obius transformation on bbb s n in the other direction we show that every schottky set in bbb s 2 of positive measure admits nontrivial quasisymmetric maps to other schottky sets these results are applied to establish rigidity statements for convex subsets of hyperbolic space that have totally geodesic boundaries

stable generalized finite element method sgfem abstract the generalized finite element method gfem is a partition of unity method pum where the trial space of standard finite element method fem is augmented with non polynomial shape functions with compact support these shape functions which are also known as the enrichments mimic the local behavior of the unknown solution of the underlying variational problem gfem has been successfully used to solve a variety of problems with complicated features and microstructure however the stiffness matrix of gfem is badly conditioned much worse compared to the standard fem and there could be a severe loss of accuracy in the computed solution of the associated linear system in this paper we address this issue and propose a modification of the gfem referred to as the stable gfem sgfem we show that sgfem retains the excellent convergence properties of gfem does not require a ramp function in the presence of blending elements and the conditioning of the associated stiffness matrix is not worse than that of the standard fem moreover sgfem is very robust with respect to the parameters of the enrichments we show these features of sgfem on several examples

a stable generalized extended fem with discontinuous interpolants for fracture mechanics abstract this paper presents numerical studies with three classes of quadratic generalized fem gfem approximations and shows that all of them lead to errors that are orders of magnitude smaller than the fem with quarter point elements provided that appropriate enrichments are selected however all of them lead to severely ill conditioned systems of equations with a condition number up to o h 10 in the case of the gfem based on a quadratic partition of unity enrichment modifications able to address the ill conditioning of quadratic gfem approximations while preserving their optimal convergence are proposed a robust enrichment modification strategy based on a discontinuous fe interpolant is proposed to control the conditioning of branch function enrichment the discontinuous fe interpolant is a generalization of the continuous one used with the stable gfem sgfem we show that sgfem spaces based on p hierarchical fem enrichments are the same as their gfem counterparts this guarantees that both gfem and sgfem spaces will lead to the same solution this is not the case for the other classes of second order spaces the robustness of the proposed approximation spaces with respect to the crack location in the mesh is also demonstrated

rigidity of infinite circle packings the nerve of a packing is a graph that encodes its combinatorics the vertices of the nerve correspond to the packed sets and an edge occurs between two vertices in the nerve precisely when the corresponding sets of the packing intersect

rigidity of circle domains whose boundary hasσ finite linear measure let be a circle domain in the riemann sphere whose boundary has finite linear measure we show that is rigid in the sense that any conformal homeomorphism of onto any other circle domain is equal to the restriction of a mobius transformation previously kaufman and bishop have independently found examples of non rigid circle domains whose boundary is a cantor set of hausdorff dimension one

three dimensional improved xfem ixfem for static crack problems abstract an improved xfem ixfem for three dimensional linear elastic fracture mechanics lefm problems is developed it utilizes an extra dof free pu approximation to fundamentally overcome the linear dependence and the ill conditioning issues of the standard xfem and the corrected xfem cxfem the introduced pu approximation is based on local least squares fitting with a one point interpolation constraint the resulting pu approximation interpolates and has no difficulties in boundary treatments detailed comparisons are made with the current xfems in 3d in terms of accuracy convergence and conditioning properties or solver efficiency better accuracy and convergence are demonstrated the remarkably better efficiency with a subspace iterative solver the de facto in large scale simulation is observed the number of iterations for the system of linear equations is reduced by orders of magnitude compared with the current xfems