Shape optimization of elasto-plastic bodies under plane strains: Sensitivity analysis and numerical implementation

Optimal shape design problems for an elastic body made from physically nonlinear material are presented. Sensitivity analysis is done by differentiating the discrete equations of equilibrium. Numerical examples are included.Notation U ^ad set of admissible continuous design parameters - U _h ^ad set of admissible discrete design parameters - function fromU _h ^ad defining shape of body - _h function fromU _h ^ad defining approximated shape of body - vector of nodal values of _h - { _n} sequence of functions tending to - () domain defined by - K bulk modulus - shear modulus - penalty parameter for contact condition - V() space of virtual displacements in() - V _h(_h) finite element approximation ofV() - J cost functional - J _h discretized cost functional - J algebraic form ofJ _h - (u) stress tensor - e(u) strain tensor - K stiffness matrix - f force vector - b(q) term arising from nonlinear boundary conditions - q vector of nodal degrees of freedom - p vector of adjoint state variables - J Jacobian of isoparametric mapping - |J| determinant ofJ - N vector of shape function values on parent element - L matrix of shape function derivatives on parent element - G matrix of Cartesian derivatives of shape functions - X matrix of nodal coordinates of element - D matrix of elastic coefficients - B strain-displacement matrix - _P part of boundary where tractions are prescribed - _u part of boundary where displacements are prescribed - variable part of boundary - strain invariant     

The co-invariant generator: An aid in deriving loop bodies

Given a loop invariant,I, and an assignment,, which decreases the variant, we define a constructive function, cg, called the co-invariant generator, which has the property thatI cg (, I) wp (, I), where wp (, I) is the weakest precondition for to establish I. Several results about the co-invariant generator are proved, important special cases are considered, and a non-trivial example of its use in deriving the body of a loop is given. We also define a function which performs a related constructive action on terms formed from binary operations. The coinvariant generator makes a useful contribution to formalising and automating a key step in program derivation.     

Optimal α-β trees with capacity constraint

Summary We consider a specific kind of binary trees with weighted edges. Each right edge has weight while each left edge has weight . Furthermore, no path in the tree is allowed to contain L or more consecutive -edges, where L 1 is fixed. Given, , , L and the number of nodes n, an optimal tree is one which minimizes the total weighted path length. Algorithms for constructing an optimal tree as well as all optimal trees for given , , L and n are proposed and analyzed. Timing and storage requirements are also discussed.     

Unextendible Product Bases and Locally Unconvertible Bound Entangled States

Mutual convertibility of bound entangled states under local quantum operations and classical communication (LOCC) is studied. We focus on states associated with unextendible product bases (UPB) in a system of three qubits. A complete classification of such UPBs is suggested. We prove that for any pair of UPBs S and T the associated bound entangled states _S and _T cannot be converted to each other by LOCC, unless S and T coincide up to local unitaries. More specifically, there exists a finite precision (S,T) > 0 such that for any LOCC protocol mapping _S into a probabilistic ensemble (p, ), the fidelity between _T and any possible final state satisfies F(_T, ) = 1 - (S,T).PACS: 03.65.Bz; 03.67.-a; 89.70+c.     

On the Characteristics of Growing Cell Structures (GCS) Neural Network

In this paper, a self-developing neural network model, namely the Growing Cell Structures (GCS) is characterized. In GCS each node (or cell) is associated with a local resource counter (t). We show that GCS has the conservation property by which the summation of all resource counters always equals , thereby s is the increment added to (t) of the wining node after each input presentation and (0 < < 1.0) is the forgetting (i.e., decay) factor applied to (t) of non-wining nodes. The conservation property provides an insight into how GCS can maximize information entropy. The property is also employed to unveil the chain-reaction effect and race-condition which can greatly influence the performance of GCS. We show that GCS can perform better in terms of equi-probable criterion if the resource counters are decayed by a smaller .     

Visualizing Newton's method on fractional exponents

Newton's method for finding complex solutions of the equationz –1=0 is investigated for real values of . The bifurcations that occur, as the power varies are illuminated with computer graphics. In particular, the appearance of an attracting 2-cycle just below even powers is investigated.     

Fuzzy measurement in the Mishnah and the Talmud

I discuss the attitude of Jewish law sources from the 2nd–:5th centuries to the imprecision of measurement. I review a problem that the Talmud refers to, somewhat obscurely, as impossible reduction. This problem arises when a legal rule specifies an object by referring to a maximized (or minimized) measurement function, e.g., when a rule applies to the largest part of a divided whole, or to the first incidence that occurs, etc. A problem that is often mentioned is whether there might be hypothetical situations involving more than one maximal (or minimal) value of the relevant measurement and, given such situations, what is the pertinent legal rule. Presumption of simultaneous occurrences or equally measured values are also a source of embarrassment to modern legal systems, in situations exemplified in the paper, where law determines a preference based on measured values. I contend that the Talmudic sources discussing the problem of impossible reduction were guided by primitive insights compatible with fuzzy logic presentation of the inevitable uncertainty involved in measurement. I maintain that fuzzy models of data are compatible with a positivistic epistemology, which refuses to assume any precision in the extra-conscious world that may not be captured by observation and measurement. I therefore propose this view as the preferred interpretation of the Talmudic notion of impossible reduction. Attributing a fuzzy world view to the Talmudic authorities is meant not only to increase our understanding of the Talmud but, in so doing, also to demonstrate that fuzzy notions are entrenched in our practical reasoning. If Talmudic sages did indeed conceive the results of measurements in terms of fuzzy numbers, then equality between the results of measurements had to be more complicated than crisp equations. The problem of impossible reduction could lie in fuzzy sets with an empty core or whose membership functions were only partly congruent. Reduction is impossible may thus be reconstructed as there is no core to the intersection of two measures. I describe Dirichlet maps for fuzzy measurements of distance as a rough partition of the universe, where for any region A there may be a non-empty set of - _A (upper approximation minus lower approximation), where the problem of impossible reduction applies. This model may easily be combined with probabilistic extention. The possibility of adopting practical decision standards based on -cuts (and therefore applying interval analysis to fuzzy equations) is discussed in this context. I propose to characterize the uncertainty that was presumably capped by the old sages as U-uncertainty, defined, for a non-empty fuzzy set A on the set of real numbers, whose -cuts are intervals of real numbers, as U(A) = 1/h(A) ₀ ^h(A) log [1+(A)]d, where h(A) is the largest membership value obtained by any element of A and (A) is the measure of the -cut of A defined by the Lebesge integral of its characteristic function.     

Searching minimax game trees under memory space constraint

Games such as CHESS, GO and OTHELLO can be represented by minimax game trees. Among various search procedures to solve such game trees,- and SSS^* are perhaps most well known. Although it is proved that SSS^* explores only a subset of the nodes explored by-, - is commonly believed to be faster in real applications, since it requires very little memory space and hence its storage management cost is low. Contrary to this folklore, however, this paper reports, using the OTHELLO game as an example, that SSS^* is much faster than-. It is also demonstrated that SSS^* can be modified to make the required memory space controllable to some extent, while retaining the high efficiency of the original SSS^*.This research was partially supported by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture of Japan, under a Scientific Grant-in-Aid.     

Reasoning about programs in continuation-passing style

Plotkin's _v -calculus for call-by-value programs is weaker than the -calculus for the same programs in continuation-passing style (CPS). To identify the call-by-value axioms that correspond to on CPS terms, we define a new CPS transformation and an inverse mapping, both of which are interesting in their own right. Using the new CPS transformation, we determine the precise language of CPS terms closed under -transformations, as well as the call-by-value axioms that correspond to the so-called administrative -reductions on CPS terms. Using the inverse mapping, we map the remaining and equalities on CPS terms to axioms on call-by-value terms. On the pure (constant free) set of -terms, the resulting set of axioms is equivalent to Moggi's computational -calculus. If the call-by-value language includes the control operatorsabort andcall-with-current-continuation, the axioms are equivalent to an extension of Felleisenet al.'s _v -C-calculus and to the equational subtheory of Talcott's logic IOCC.This article is a revised and extended version of the conference paper with the same title [42]. The technical report of the same title contains additional material.The authors were supported in part by NSF grant CCR 89-17022 and by Texas ATP grant 91-003604014.     

Conditions for the Light-Traffic Insensitivity to Loss Probability in a GI/G/m/0 Queueing System

A loss queueing system GI/G/m/0 is considered. Let a(x) be a p.d.f. of interarrival intervals. Assume that this function behaves like cx^-1 for small x. Further let B(x) be a d.f. of service time; (1/) be the mean service time. Conditions are derived for the light-traffic insensitivity of the loss probability to the form of B(x) as (/ ) 0. In particular, the condition = 1 is necessary. Estimates for the loss probability are obtained.     

Differential geometry of a parametric family of invertible linear systems—Riemannian metric,dual affine connections,and divergence

A parametric model of systems is regarded as a geometric manifold imbedded in the enveloping manifold consisting of all the linear systems. The present paper aims at establishing a new geometrical method and framework for analyzing properties of manifolds of systems. A Riemannian metric and a pair of dual affine connections are introduced to a system manifold. They are called-connections. The duality of connections is a new concept in differential geometry. The manifold of all the linear systems is-flat so that it admits natural and invariant-divergence measures. Such geometric structures are useful for treating the problems of approximation, identification, and stochastic realization of systems. By using the-divergences, we solve the problem of approximating a given system by one included in a model. For a sequence of-flat nesting models such as AR models and MA models, it is shown that the approximation errors are decomposed additively corresponding to each dimension of the model.     

Computing Optimal Diameter-Bounded Polygon Partitions

The minimum -small partition problem is the problem of partitioning a given simple polygon into subpolygons, each with diameter at most , for a given > 0. This paper considers the version of this problem that disallows Steiner points. This problem is motivated by applications in mesh generation and collision detection. The main result in the paper is a polynomial-time algorithm that solves this problem, and either returns an optimal partition or reports the nonexistence of such a partition. This result contrasts with the recent NP-completeness result for the minimum -small partition problem for polygons with holes (C. Worman, 15th Canadian Conference on Computational Geometry, 2003). Even though the running time of our algorithm is a polynomial in the input size, it is prohibitive for most real applications and we seek faster algorithms that approximate an optimal solution. We first present a faster 2-approximation algorithm for the problem for simple polygons and then a near linear-time algorithm for convex polygons that produces, for any > 0, an (+)-small partition with no more polygons than in an optimal -small partition. We also present an exact polynomial-time algorithm for the minimum -small partition problem with the additional constraint that each piece in the partition be convex.     

Functional Estimation with Respect to a Threshold Parameter via Dynamic Split-and-Merge

We consider a class of stochastic models for which the performance measure is defined as a mathematical expectation that depends on a parameter , say (), and we are interested in constructing estimators of in functional form (i.e., entire functions of ), which can be computed from a single simulation experiment. We focus on the case where is a continuous parameter, and also consider estimation of the derivative (). One approach for doing that, when is a parameter of the probability law that governs the system, is based on the use of likelihood ratios and score functions. In this paper, we study a different approach, called split-and-merge, for the case where is a threshold parameter. This approach can be viewed as a practical way of running parallel simulations at an infinite number of values of , with common random numbers. We give several examples showing how different kinds of parameters such as the arrival rate in a queue, the probability that an arriving customer be of a given type, a scale parameter of a service time distribution, and so on, can be turned into threshold parameters. We also discuss implementation issues.     

Property preserving abstractions for the verification of concurrent systems

We study property preserving transformations for reactive systems. The main idea is the use of simulations parameterized by Galois connections (, ), relating the lattices of properties of two systems. We propose and study a notion of preservation of properties expressed by formulas of a logic, by a function mapping sets of states of a systemS into sets of states of a systemS'. We give results on the preservation of properties expressed in sublanguages of the branching time -calculus when two systemsS andS' are related via (, )-simulations. They can be used to verify a property for a system by verifying the same property on a simpler system which is an abstraction of it. We show also under which conditions abstraction of concurrent systems can be computed from the abstraction of their components. This allows a compositional application of the proposed verification method.This is a revised version of the papers [2] and [16]; the results are fully developed in [28].This work was partially supported by ESPRIT Basic Research Action REACT.Verimag is a joint laboratory of CNRS, Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, Université J. Fourier and Verilog SA associated with IMAG.     

Computing with Contexts

We investigate a representation of contexts, expressions with holes in them, that enables them to be meaningfully transformed, in particular -converted and -reduced. In particular we generalize the set of -expressions to include holes, and on these generalized entities define -reduction (i.e., substitution) and filling so that these operations preserve -congruence and commute. The theory is then applied to allow the encoding of reduction systems and operational semantics of call-by-value calculi enriched with control, imperative and concurrent features.     

Efficient Solution of Multi-Term Fractional Differential Equations Using P(EC)<Superscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">m</Emphasis></Superscript>E Methods

We investigate strategies for the numerical solution of the initial value problem with initial conditions where 0<₁<₂<<. Here y ⁽ _j ) denotes the derivative of order _j >0 (not necessarily _j ) in the sense of Caputo. The methods are based on numerical integration techniques applied to an equivalent nonlinear and weakly singular Volterra integral equation. The classical approach leads to an algorithm with very high arithmetic complexity. Therefore we derive an alternative that leads to lower complexity without sacrificing too much precision. Mathematics Subject Classification: Primary 65L05; Secondary 65L06, 65L20     

Almost surely continuous solutions of a nonlinear stochastic integral equation

A nonlinear stochastic integral equation of the Hammerstein type in the formx(t; ) = h(t, x(t; )) + _s k(t, s; )f(s, x(s; ); )d(s) is studied wheret S, a measure space with certain properties, , the supporting set of a probability measure space (,A, P), and the integral is a Bochner integral. A random solution of the equation is defined to be an almost surely continuousm-dimensional vector-valued stochastic process onS which is bounded with probability one for eacht S and which satisfies the equation almost surely. Several theorems are proved which give conditions such that a unique random solution exists. AMS (MOS) subject classifications (1970): Primary; 60H20, 45G99. Secondary: 60G99.     

Cardinality problems of compositions of morphisms and inverse morphisms

We show that we cannot effectively determine whether, for morphisms _i , _i ,card (u ₀ ^–1 ₁) =card(u ₀ ^–1 ₁) for all wordsu over the domain alphabets of the two given compositions. In contrast it is decidable for morphisms _i , _i and a regular setR whethercard(u _{0 1} ^–1 ) =card(u _{0 1} ^–1 ) for all wordsu inR. In order to prove the latter result we give a characterization of the multiplicity functions of simple finite automata by using cardinalities of compositions of the above form. Finally, we show that the above decidability result also holds when we consider rational functions rather than morphisms.     

Physically touching and tasting virtual objects enhances the realism of virtual experiences

Experiment 1 explored the impact of physically touching a virtual object on how realistic the virtual environment (VE) seemed to the user. Subjects in a no touch group picked up a 3D virtual image of a kitchen plate in a VE, using a traditional 3D wand. See and touch subjects physically picked up a virtual plate possessing solidity and weight, using a technique called tactile augmentation. Afterwards, subjects made predictions about the properties of other virtual objects they saw but did not interact with in the VE. See and touch subjects predicted these objects would be more solid, heavier, and more likely to obey gravity than the no touch group. In Experiment 2 (a pilot study), subjects physically bit a chocolate bar in one condition, and imagined biting a chocolate bar in another condition. Subjects rated the event more fun and realistic when allowed to physically bite the chocolate bar. Results of the two experiments converge with a growing literature showing the value of adding physical qualities to virtual objects. This study is the first to empirically demonstrate the effectiveness of tactile augmentation as a simple, safe, inexpensive technique with large freedom of motion for adding physical texture, force feedback cues, smell and taste to virtual objects. Examples of practical applications are discussed.Based in part on Physically touching virtual objects using tactile augmentation enhances the realism of virtual environments' by Hunter Hoffman which appeared in the Proceedings of the IEEE Virtual Reality Annual International Symposium '98, Atlanta GA, pp 59–63. ¢ 1998 IEEE.     

Automatic surface reconstruction with alpha-shape method

In this paper, we present an algorithm for the reconstruction of piecewise linear surfaces from unorganized sample points with an improved -shape. Alpha-shape provides a nice mathematical definition of the shape of a set of points, but the selection of an value is tricky in surface reconstruction. F or solving this problem and the non-uniform distribution, we scale the ball according to the points density. The method discussed in this paper might be applied for surface reconstruction, and the process is fully automatic.