Browsing by Subject "Finite element methods"
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Item A continuum modeling approach for the deposition of enamel(2015-12) Kuang, Ye; Landis, Chad M.; Mear, Mark EIn this report continuum methods to analyze organogenesis on curved surfaces is devised. This initial study will investigate a basic system. Dental enamel is the example system used to study the simulation of organogenesis as well as pattern formation. It is observed that dental enamel is created by a number of ameloblast cells migrating generally outward from the dental enamel junction (DEJ). These cells also rearrange locally within the surface that they reside. In this report, the simulations are based on the postulate that the cell motion arises from changes in the local strain environment as the cells migrate. As opposed to a passive movement driven by external driving forces or energy gradients, this theory hypothesizes that motion can arise internally due to the migration of the individual cell influenced by the local cell density and the velocity of the cell relative to its contacting neighbors. To model this kinematically driven approach we first develop a set of continuum equations to describe the velocity of the cells. This consists of two components, one the governs the in-plane rearrangements of the cells based on local strain cues, and a second that governs the velocity of the cells normal to the DEJ, which depends upon if the cells are actively secreting or not. This second feature requires the knowledge of the location of the boundary between secretory and non-secretory cells, which we is called the commencement front. On the secretory side of the commencement front the normal velocity of the cells is a specified quantity, while on the non-secretory side the normal velocity is zero. In order to track the evolution of the commencement front a phase-field description is utilized that treats this boundary as a diffuse instead of a sharp interface. The numerical method that is used to solve the equations is described, and some initial preliminary results for simple surface geometries are presented.Item Coupled flow systems, adjoint techniques and uncertainty quantification(2012-08) Garg, Vikram Vinod, 1985-; Carey, Graham F.; Prudhomme, Serge M.; Dawson, Clint N.; Gamba, Irene; Ghattas, Omar; Oden, J. Tinsley; Carey, VarisCoupled systems are ubiquitous in modern engineering and science. Such systems can encompass fluid dynamics, structural mechanics, chemical species transport and electrostatic effects among other components, all of which can be coupled in many different ways. In addition, such models are usually multiscale, making their numerical simulation challenging, and necessitating the use of adaptive modeling techniques. The multiscale, multiphysics models of electrosomotic flow (EOF) constitute a particularly challenging coupled flow system. A special feature of such models is that the coupling between the electric physics and hydrodynamics is via the boundary. Numerical simulations of coupled systems are typically targeted towards specific Quantities of Interest (QoIs). Adjoint-based approaches offer the possibility of QoI targeted adaptive mesh refinement and efficient parameter sensitivity analysis. The formulation of appropriate adjoint problems for EOF models is particularly challenging, due to the coupling of physics via the boundary as opposed to the interior of the domain. The well-posedness of the adjoint problem for such models is also non-trivial. One contribution of this dissertation is the derivation of an appropriate adjoint problem for slip EOF models, and the development of penalty-based, adjoint-consistent variational formulations of these models. We demonstrate the use of these formulations in the simulation of EOF flows in straight and T-shaped microchannels, in conjunction with goal-oriented mesh refinement and adjoint sensitivity analysis. Complex computational models may exhibit uncertain behavior due to various reasons, ranging from uncertainty in experimentally measured model parameters to imperfections in device geometry. The last decade has seen a growing interest in the field of Uncertainty Quantification (UQ), which seeks to determine the effect of input uncertainties on the system QoIs. Monte Carlo methods remain a popular computational approach for UQ due to their ease of use and "embarassingly parallel" nature. However, a major drawback of such methods is their slow convergence rate. The second contribution of this work is the introduction of a new Monte Carlo method which utilizes local sensitivity information to build accurate surrogate models. This new method, called the Local Sensitivity Derivative Enhanced Monte Carlo (LSDEMC) method can converge at a faster rate than plain Monte Carlo, especially for problems with a low to moderate number of uncertain parameters. Adjoint-based sensitivity analysis methods enable the computation of sensitivity derivatives at virtually no extra cost after the forward solve. Thus, the LSDEMC method, in conjuction with adjoint sensitivity derivative techniques can offer a robust and efficient alternative for UQ of complex systems. The efficiency of Monte Carlo methods can be further enhanced by using stratified sampling schemes such as Latin Hypercube Sampling (LHS). However, the non-incremental nature of LHS has been identified as one of the main obstacles in its application to certain classes of complex physical systems. Current incremental LHS strategies restrict the user to at least doubling the size of an existing LHS set to retain the convergence properties of LHS. The third contribution of this research is the development of a new Hierachical LHS algorithm, that creates designs which can be used to perform LHS studies in a more flexibly incremental setting, taking a step towards adaptive LHS methods.Item A discontinuous Petrov-Galerkin method for seismic tomography problems(2013-05) Bramwell, Jamie Ann; Demkowicz, Leszek; Ghattas, Omar N.The imaging of the interior of the Earth using ground motion data, or seismic tomography, has been a subject of great interest for over a century. The full elastic wave equations are not typically used in standard tomography codes. Instead, the elastic waves are idealized as rays and only phase velocity and travel times are considered as input data. This results in the inability to resolve features which are on the order of one wavelength in scale. To overcome this problem, models which use the full elastic wave equation and consider total seismograms as input data have recently been developed. Unfortunately, those methods are much more computationally expensive and are only in their infancy. While the finite element method is very popular in many applications in solid mechanics, it is still not the method of choice in many seismic applications due to high pollution error. The pollution effect creates an increasing ratio of discretization to best approximation error for problems with increasing wave numbers. It has been shown that standard finite element methods cannot overcome this issue. To compensate, the meshes for solving high wave number problems in seismology must be increasingly refined, and are computationally infeasible due to the large scale requirements. A new generalized least squares method was recently introduced. The main idea is to select test spaces such that the discrete problem inherits the stability of the continuous problem. In this dissertation, a discontinuous Petrov-Galerkin method with optimal test functions for 2D time-harmonic seismic tomography problems is developed. First, the abstract DPG framework and key results are reviewed. 2D DPG methods for both static and time-harmonic elasticity problems are then introduced and results indicating the low-pollution property are shown. Finally, a matrix-free inexact-Newton method for the seismic inverse problem is developed. To conclude, results obtained from both DPG and standard continuous Galerkin discretization schemes are compared and the potential effectiveness of DPG as a practical seismic inversion tool is discussed.Item A discontinuous Petrov-Galerkin methodology for incompressible flow problems(2013-08) Roberts, Nathan Vanderkooy; Demkowicz, Leszek; Moser, Robert deLanceyIncompressible flows -- flows in which variations in the density of a fluid are negligible -- arise in a wide variety of applications, from hydraulics to aerodynamics. The incompressible Navier-Stokes equations which govern such flows are also of fundamental physical and mathematical interest. They are believed to hold the key to understanding turbulent phenomena; precise conditions for the existence and uniqueness of solutions remain unknown -- and establishing such conditions is the subject of one of the Clay Mathematics Institute's Millennium Prize Problems. Typical solutions of incompressible flow problems involve both fine- and large-scale phenomena, so that a uniform finite element mesh of sufficient granularity will at best be wasteful of computational resources, and at worst be infeasible because of resource limitations. Thus adaptive mesh refinements are required. In industry, the adaptivity schemes used are ad hoc, requiring a domain expert to predict features of the solution. A badly chosen mesh may cause the code to take considerably longer to converge, or fail to converge altogether. Typically, the Navier-Stokes solve will be just one component in an optimization loop, which means that any failure requiring human intervention is costly. Therefore, I pursue technological foundations for a solver of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations that provides robust adaptivity starting with a coarse mesh. By robust, I mean both that the solver always converges to a solution in predictable time, and that the adaptive scheme is independent of the problem -- no special expertise is required for adaptivity. The cornerstone of my approach is the discontinuous Petrov-Galerkin (DPG) finite element methodology developed by Leszek Demkowicz and Jay Gopalakrishnan. For a large class of problems, DPG can be shown to converge at optimal rates. DPG also provides an accurate mechanism for measuring the error, and this can be used to drive adaptive mesh refinements. Several approximations to Navier-Stokes are of interest, and I study each of these in turn, culminating in the study of the steady 2D incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. The Stokes equations can be obtained by neglecting the convective term; these are accurate for "creeping" viscous flows. The Oseen equations replace the convective term, which is nonlinear, with a linear approximation. The steady-state incompressible Navier-Stokes equations approximate the transient equations by neglecting time variations. Crucial to this work is Camellia, a toolbox I developed for solving DPG problems which uses the Trilinos numerical libraries. Camellia supports 2D meshes of triangles and quads of variable polynomial order, allows simple specification of variational forms, supports h- and p-refinements, and distributes the computation of the stiffness matrix, among other features. The central contribution of this dissertation is design and development of mathematical techniques and software, based on the DPG method, for solving the 2D incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in the laminar regime (Reynolds numbers up to about 1000). Along the way, I investigate approximations to these equations -- the Stokes equations and the Oseen equations -- followed by the steady-state Navier-Stokes equations.Item A DPG method for convection-diffusion problems(2013-08) Chan, Jesse L.; Demkowicz, Leszek; Moser, Robert deLanceyOver the last three decades, CFD simulations have become commonplace as a tool in the engineering and design of high-speed aircraft. Experiments are often complemented by computational simulations, and CFD technologies have proved very useful in both the reduction of aircraft development cycles, and in the simulation of conditions difficult to reproduce experimentally. Great advances have been made in the field since its introduction, especially in areas of meshing, computer architecture, and solution strategies. Despite this, there still exist many computational limitations in existing CFD methods; in particular, reliable higher order and hp-adaptive methods for the Navier-Stokes equations that govern viscous compressible flow. Solutions to the equations of viscous flow can display shocks and boundary layers, which are characterized by localized regions of rapid change and high gradients. The use of adaptive meshes is crucial in such settings -- good resolution for such problems under uniform meshes is computationally prohibitive and impractical for most physical regimes of interest. However, the construction of "good" meshes is a difficult task, usually requiring a-priori knowledge of the form of the solution. An alternative to such is the construction of automatically adaptive schemes; such methods begin with a coarse mesh and refine based on the minimization of error. However, this task is difficult, as the convergence of numerical methods for problems in CFD is notoriously sensitive to mesh quality. Additionally, the use of adaptivity becomes more difficult in the context of higher order and hp methods. Many of the above issues are tied to the notion of robustness, which we define loosely for CFD applications as the degradation of the quality of numerical solutions on a coarse mesh with respect to the Reynolds number, or nondimensional viscosity. For typical physical conditions of interest for the compressible Navier-Stokes equations, the Reynolds number dictates the scale of shock and boundary layer phenomena, and can be extremely high -- on the order of 10⁷ in a unit domain. For an under-resolved mesh, the Galerkin finite element method develops large oscillations which prevent convergence and pollute the solution. The issue of robustness for finite element methods was addressed early on by Brooks and Hughes in the SUPG method, which introduced the idea of residual-based stabilization to combat such oscillations. Residual-based stabilizations can alternatively be viewed as modifying the standard finite element test space, and consequently the norm in which the finite element method converges. Demkowicz and Gopalakrishnan generalized this idea in 2009 by introducing the Discontinous Petrov-Galerkin (DPG) method with optimal test functions, where test functions are determined such that they minimize the discrete linear residual in a dual space. Under the ultra-weak variational formulation, these test functions can be computed locally to yield a symmetric, positive-definite system. The main theoretical thrust of this research is to develop a DPG method that is provably robust for singular perturbation problems in CFD, but does not suffer from discretization error in the approximation of test functions. Such a method is developed for the prototypical singular perturbation problem of convection-diffusion, where it is demonstrated that the method does not suffer from error in the approximation of test functions, and that the L² error is robustly bounded by the energy error in which DPG is optimal -- in other words, as the energy error decreases, the L² error of the solution is guaranteed to decrease as well. The method is then extended to the linearized Navier-Stokes equations, and applied to the solution of the nonlinear compressible Navier-Stokes equations. The numerical work in this dissertation has focused on the development of a 2D compressible flow code under the Camellia library, developed and maintained by Nathan Roberts at ICES. In particular, we have developed a framework allowing for rapid implementation of problems and the easy application of higher order and hp-adaptive schemes based on a natural error representation function that stems from the DPG residual. Finally, the DPG method is applied to several convection diffusion problems which mimic difficult problems in compressible flow simulations, including problems exhibiting both boundary layers and singularities in stresses. A viscous Burgers' equation is solved as an extension of DPG to nonlinear problems, and the effectiveness of DPG as a numerical method for compressible flow is assessed with the application of DPG to two benchmark problems in supersonic flow. In particular, DPG is used to solve the Carter flat plate problem and the Holden compression corner problem over a range of Mach numbers and laminar Reynolds numbers using automatically adaptive schemes, beginning with very under-resolved/coarse initial meshes.Item Fast algorithms for frequency domain wave propagation(2012-12) Tsuji, Paul Hikaru; Ying, Lexing; Ghattas, Omar N.; Engquist, Bjorn; Fomel, Sergey; Ren, KuiHigh-frequency wave phenomena is observed in many physical settings, most notably in acoustics, electromagnetics, and elasticity. In all of these fields, numerical simulation and modeling of the forward propagation problem is important to the design and analysis of many systems; a few examples which rely on these computations are the development of metamaterial technologies and geophysical prospecting for natural resources. There are two modes of modeling the forward problem: the frequency domain and the time domain. As the title states, this work is concerned with the former regime. The difficulties of solving the high-frequency wave propagation problem accurately lies in the large number of degrees of freedom required. Conventional wisdom in the computational electromagnetics commmunity suggests that about 10 degrees of freedom per wavelength be used in each coordinate direction to resolve each oscillation. If K is the width of the domain in wavelengths, the number of unknowns N grows at least by O(K^2) for surface discretizations and O(K^3) for volume discretizations in 3D. The memory requirements and asymptotic complexity estimates of direct algorithms such as the multifrontal method are too costly for such problems. Thus, iterative solvers must be used. In this dissertation, I will present fast algorithms which, in conjunction with GMRES, allow the solution of the forward problem in O(N) or O(N log N) time.