Structural sensitivity analysis of flexible multibody systems modeled with the floating frame of reference approach using the adjoint variable method

For the efficient analysis and optimization of flexible multibody systems, gradient information is often required. Next to simple and easy-to-implement finite difference approaches, analytical methods, such as the adjoint variable method, have been developed and are now well established for the sensitivity analysis in multibody dynamics. They allow the computation of exact gradients and require normally less computational effort for large-scale problems. In the current work, we apply the adjoint variable method to flexible multibody systems with kinematic loops, which are modeled using the floating frame of reference formulation. Thereby, in order to solve ordinary differential equations only, the equations of motion are brought into minimal form using coordinate partitioning, and the constraint equations at position and velocity level are incorporated in the adjoint dynamics. For testing and illustrative purposes, the procedure is applied to compute the structural gradient for a flexible piston rod of a slider–crank mechanism.     

Computational performance of a parallelized three-dimensional high-order spectral element toolbox

In this paper, a comprehensive performance review of an MPI-based high-order three-dimensional spectral element method C++ toolbox is presented. The focus is put on the performance evaluation of several aspects with a particular emphasis on the parallel efficiency. The performance evaluation is analyzed with the help of a time prediction model based on a parameterization of the application and the hardware resources. Two tailor-made benchmark cases in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) are introduced and used to carry out this review, stressing the particular interest for clusters with up to thousands of cores. Some problems in the parallel implementation have been detected and corrected. The theoretical complexities with respect to the number of elements, to the polynomial degree, and to communication needs are correctly reproduced. It is concluded that this type of code has a nearly perfect speedup on machines with thousands of cores, and is ready to make the step to next-generation petaFLOP machines.     

Parametric Sequence Alignment with Constraints

Approximate matching techniques based on string alignment are important tools for investigating similarities between strings, such as those representing DNA and protein sequences. We propose a constraint based approach for parametric sequence alignment which allows for more general string alignment queries where the alignment cost can itself be parameterized as a query with some initial constraints. Thus, the costs need not be fixed in a parametric alignment query unlike the case in normal alignment. The basic dynamic programming string edit distance algorithm is generalized to a naive algorithm which uses inequalities to represent the alignment score. The naive algorithm is rather costly and the remainder of the paper develops an improvement which prunes alternatives where it can and approximates the alternatives otherwise. This reduces the number of inequalities significantly and strengthens the constraint representation with equalities. We present some preliminary results using parametric alignment on some general alignment queries.     

Organizational climate in air traffic control Innovative preparedness for implementation of new technology and organizational development in a rule governed organization

A positive and innovative organizational climate is of great importance in order to manage and adapt to change. Such a climate seldom evolves in organizations closely governed by rules and regulations. Because of ongoing organizational and technical changes within the Swedish Air Navigation Services Provider, a study concerning the organizational climate for changes and innovations was conducted to investigate the organization's capacity to cope with changes. Study locations were the two Swedish main air traffic control centers and parts of the civil aviation administration headquarters. In the study 390 subjects took part and the CCQ questionnaire was used to measure the organizational climate. The results show that the organizational climate is quite positive despite the rule-governed work. The results also show that administrative personnel assess the organizational climate as more positive than operative personnel. Comparisons between management positions did not result in any differences.     

Distributed Symbolic Bounded Property Checking

In this paper we describe an algorithm for distributed, BDD-based bounded property checking and its implementation in the verification tool SymC. The distributed algorithm verifies larger models and returns results faster than the sequential version.The core algorithm distributes partitions of the state set to computation nodes after reaching a threshold size. The nodes proceed with image computation on the nodes asynchronously. The main scalability problem of this scheme is the overlap of state set partitions. We present static and dynamic overlap reduction techniques.     

Quantenprogrammiersprachen

Algorithmen für Quantenrechner wie der Faktorisierungsalgorithmus von Shor lassen sich mittels neuer Programmiersprachen formulieren, die neben konventionellen auch über für Quantenrechner spezifische Sprachkonstrukte verfügen. In Verbindung mit Simulatoren kann man so auch bereits heute Programme für Quantenrechner entwickeln und testen.     

Computing the update of the repeated median regression line in linear time

The repeated median line estimator is a highly robust method for fitting a regression line to a set of n data points in the plane. In this paper, we consider the problem of updating the estimate after a point is removed from or added to the data set. This problem occurs, e.g., in statistical online monitoring, where the computational effort is often critical. We present a deterministic algorithm for the update working in O(n) time and O(n²) space.