All issues

The work is devoted to the development of a computational algorithm of the Cartesian grid method for studying the interaction of a shock wave with moving bodies with a piecewise linear boundary. The interest in such problems is connected with direct numerical simulation of two-phase media flows. The effect of the particle shape can be important in the problem of dust layer dispersion behind a passing shock wave. Experimental data on the coefficient of aerodynamic drag of non-spherical particles are practically absent.

Mathematical model is based on the two-dimensional Euler equations, which are solved in a region with varying boundaries. The defining system of equations is integrated using an explicit scheme and the Cartesian grid method. The computational algorithm at the time integration step includes: determining the step value, calculating the dynamics of the body movement (determining the force and moment acting on the body; determining the linear and angular velocities of the body; calculating the new coordinates of the body), calculating the gas parameters. At each time step, all cells are divided into two classes – external (inside the body or intersected by its boundaries) and internal (completely filled with gas). The solution of the Euler equations is constructed only in the internal ones. The main difficulty is the calculation of the numerical flux through the edges common to the internal and external cells intersected by the moving boundaries of the bodies. To calculate this flux, we use a two-wave approximation for solving the Riemann problem and the Steger-Warming scheme. A detailed description of the numerical algorithm is presented.

The efficiency of the algorithm is demonstrated on the problem of lifting a cylinder with a base in the form of a circle, ellipse and rectangle behind a passing shock wave. A circular cylinder test was considered in many papers devoted to the immersed boundary methods development. A qualitative and quantitative analysis of the trajectory of the cylinder center mass is carried out on the basis of comparison with the results of simulations presented in eight other works. For a cylinder with a base in the form of an ellipse and a rectangle, a satisfactory agreement was obtained on the dynamics of its movement and rotation in comparison with the available few literary sources. Grid convergence of the results is investigated for the rectangle. It is shown that the relative error of mass conservation law fulfillment decreases with a linear rate.

In this paper, we introduce a new version of Gauss–Newton method for solving a system of nonlinear equations based on ideas of the residual upper bound for a system of nonlinear equations and a quadratic regularization term. The introduced Gauss–Newton method in practice virtually forms the whole parameterized family of the methods solving systems of nonlinear equations and regression problems. The developed family of Gauss–Newton methods completely consists of iterative methods with generalization for cases of non-euclidean normed spaces, including special forms of Levenberg–Marquardt algorithms. The developed methods use the local model based on a parameterized proximal mapping allowing us to use an inexact oracle of «black–box» form with restrictions for the computational precision and computational complexity. We perform an efficiency analysis including global and local convergence for the developed family of methods with an arbitrary oracle in terms of iteration complexity, precision and complexity of both local model and oracle, problem dimensionality. We present global sublinear convergence rates for methods of the proposed family for solving a system of nonlinear equations, consisting of Lipschitz smooth functions. We prove local superlinear convergence under extra natural non-degeneracy assumptions for system of nonlinear functions. We prove both local and global linear convergence for a system of nonlinear equations under Polyak–Lojasiewicz condition for proposed Gauss– Newton methods. Besides theoretical justifications of methods we also consider practical implementation issues. In particular, for conducted experiments we present effective computational schemes for the exact oracle regarding to the dimensionality of a problem. The proposed family of methods unites several existing and frequent in practice Gauss–Newton method modifications, allowing us to construct a flexible and convenient method implementable using standard convex optimization and computational linear algebra techniques.

The article presents the results of a numerical study of the flow structure in a two-dimensional flat diffuser. A feature of diffusers is that they have a complex anisotropic turbulent flow, which occurs due to recirculation flows. The turbulent RANS models, which are based on the Boussinesq hypothesis, are not able to describe the flow in diffusers with sufficient accuracy. Because the Boussinesq hypothesis is based on isotropic turbulence. Therefore, to calculate anisotropic turbulent flows, models are used that do not use this hypothesis. One of such directions in turbulence modeling is the methods of Reynolds stresses. These methods are complex and require rather large computational resources. In this work, a relatively recently developed two-fluid turbulence model was used to study the flow in a flat diffuser. This model is developed on the basis of a two-fluid approach to the problem of turbulence. In contrast to the Reynolds approach, the two-fluid approach allows one to obtain a closed system of turbulence equations using the dynamics of two fluids. Consequently, if empirical equations are used in RANS models for closure, then in the two-fluid model the equations used are exact equations of dynamics. One of the main advantages of the two-fluid model is that it is capable of describing complex anisotropic turbulent flows. In this work, the obtained numerical results for the profiles of the longitudinal velocity, turbulent stresses in various sections of the channel, as well as the friction coefficient are compared with the known experimental data. To demonstrate the advantages of the used turbulence model, the numerical results of the Reynolds stress method EARSM are also presented. For the numerical implementation of the systems of equations of the two-fluid model, a non-stationary system of equations was used, the solution of which asymptotically approached the stationary solution. For this purpose, a finite-difference scheme was used, where the viscosity terms were approximated by the central difference implicitly, and for the convective terms, an explicit scheme against the flow of the second order of accuracy was used. The results are obtained for the Reynolds number Re = 20 000. It is shown that the two-fluid model, despite the use of a uniform computational grid without thickening near the walls, is capable of giving a more accurate solution than the rather complex Reynolds stress method with a high resolution of computational grids.

A mathematical model is formulated for the coastal slope erosion of sandy channel, which occurs under the action of a passing flood wave. The moving boundaries of the computational domain — the bottom surface and the free surface of the hydrodynamic flow — are determined from the solution of auxiliary differential equations. A change in the hydrodynamic flow section area for a given law of change in the flow rate requires a change in time of the turbulent viscosity averaged over the section. The bottom surface movement is determined from the Exner equation solution together with the equation of the bottom material avalanche movement. The Exner equation is closed by the original analytical model of traction loads movement. The model takes into account transit, gravitational and pressure mechanisms of bottom material movement and does not contain phenomenological parameters.

Based on the finite element method, a discrete analogue of the formulated problem is obtained and an algorithm for its solution is proposed. An algorithm feature is control of the free surface movement influence of the flow and the flow rate on the process of determining the flow turbulent viscosity. Numerical calculations have been carried out, demonstrating qualitative and quantitative influence of these features on the determining process of the flow turbulent viscosity and the channel bank slope erosion.

Data comparison on bank deformations obtained as a result of numerical calculations with known flume experimental data showed their agreement.

The gradual incorporation of automated vehicles into the global transport networks leads to the need to develop tools to assess the impact of this process on various aspects of traffic. This implies a more organized movement of automated vehicles which can form uniformly moving platoons. The influence of the formation and movement of these platoons on the dynamics of traffic flow is of great interest. The currently most developed traffic flow models are based on the cellular automaton approach. They are mainly developed in the direction of increasing accuracy. This inevitably leads to the complication of models, which in their modern form have significantly moved away from the original philosophy of cellular automata, which implies simplicity and schematicity of models at the level of evolution rules, leading, however, to a complex organized behavior of the system. In the present paper, a simulation model of connected automated vehicles platoon dynamics in a heterogeneous transport system is proposed, consisting of two types of agents (vehicles): human-driven and automated. The description of the temporal evolution of the system is based on modified rules 184 and 240 for elementary cellular automata. Human-driven vehicles move according to rule 184 with the addition of accidental braking, the probability of which depends on the distance to the vehicle in front. For automated vehicles, a combination of rules is used depending on the type of nearest neighbors, regardless of the distance to them, which brings non-local interaction to the model. At the same time, it is considered that a group of sequentially moving connected automated vehicles can form an organized platoon. The influence of the ratio of types of vehicles in the system on the characteristics of the traffic flow during free movement on a circular one-lane and two-lane roads, as well as in the presence of a traffic light, is studied. The simulation results show that the effect of platoon formation is significant for a freeway traffic flow; the presence of a traffic light reduces the positive effect by about half. The movement of platoons of connected automated vehicles on two-lane roads with the possibility of lane changing was also studied. It is shown that considering the types of neighboring vehicles (automated or human-driven) when changing lanes for automated vehicles has a positive effect on the characteristics of the traffic flow.

The article focuses on the problem of mechanisms’ co-design for robotic systems to perform adaptive physical interaction with an unstructured environment, including physical human robot interaction. The co-design means simultaneous optimization of mechanics and control system, ensuring optimal behavior and performance of the system. Mechanics optimization refers to the search for optimal structure, geometric parameters, mass distribution among the links and their compliance; control refers to the search for motion trajectories for mechanism’s joints. The paper presents a generalized method of structural-parametric synthesis of underactuated mechanisms with closed kinematics for robotic systems for various purposes, e. g., it was previously used for the co-design of fingers’ mechanisms for anthropomorphic gripper and legs’ mechanisms for galloping robots. The method implements the concept of morphological computation of control laws due to the features of mechanical design, minimizing the control effort from the algorithmic component of the control system, which reduces the requirements for the level of technical equipment and reduces energy consumption. In this paper, the proposed method is used to optimize the structure and geometric parameters of the passive mechanism of the back support module of an industrial exosuit. Human movements are diverse and non-deterministic when compared with the movements of autonomous robots, which complicates the design of wearable robotic devices. To reduce injuries, fatigue and increase the productivity of workers, the synthesized industrial exosuit should not only compensate for loads, but also not interfere with the natural human motions. To test the developed exosuit, kinematic datasets from motion capture of an entire human body during industrial operations were used. The proposed method of structural-parametric synthesis was used to improve the ergonomics of a wearable robotic device. Verification of the synthesized mechanism was carried out using simulation: the passive module of the back is attached to two geometric primitives that move the chest and pelvis of the exosuit operator in accordance with the motion capture data. The ergonomics of the back module is quantified by the distance between the joints connecting the upper and bottom parts of the exosuit; minimizing deviation from the average value corresponds to a lesser limitation of the operator’s movement, i. e. greater ergonomics. The article provides a detailed description of the method of structural-parametric synthesis, an example of synthesis of an exosuit module and the results of simulation.

This paper presents the results of experimental validation of some structural issues concerning the practical use of methods to overcome catastrophic forgetting of neural networks. A comparison of current effective methods like EWC (Elastic Weight Consolidation) and WVA (Weight Velocity Attenuation) is made and their advantages and disadvantages are considered. It is shown that EWC is better for tasks where full retention of learned skills is required on all the tasks in the training queue, while WVA is more suitable for sequential tasks with very limited computational resources, or when reuse of representations and acceleration of learning from task to task is required rather than exact retention of the skills. The attenuation of the WVA method must be applied to the optimization step, i. e. to the increments of neural network weights, rather than to the loss function gradient itself, and this is true for any gradient optimization method except the simplest stochastic gradient descent (SGD). The choice of the optimal weights attenuation function between the hyperbolic function and the exponent is considered. It is shown that hyperbolic attenuation is preferable because, despite comparable quality at optimal values of the hyperparameter of the WVA method, it is more robust to hyperparameter deviations from the optimal value (this hyperparameter in the WVA method provides a balance between preservation of old skills and learning a new skill). Empirical observations are presented that support the hypothesis that the optimal value of this hyperparameter does not depend on the number of tasks in the sequential learning queue. And, consequently, this hyperparameter can be picked up on a small number of tasks and used on longer sequences.

Nowadays, active development of 4th generation nuclear reactors with liquid metal coolants takes place. Therefore, simulation of their elements and units in 3D modelling software are relevant. The thermal-hydraulic analysis of reactor units with liquid metal coolant is recognized as one of the most important directions of the complex of interconnected tasks on reactor unit parameters justification. The complexity of getting necessary information about operating conditions of reactor equipment with liquid-metal coolant on the base of experimental investigations requires the involvement of numerical simulation. The domestic CFD code FlowVision has been used as a research tool. FlowVision software has a certificate of the Scientific and Engineering Centre for Nuclear and Radiation Safety for the nuclear reactor safety simulations. Previously it has been proved that this simulation code had been successfully used for modelling processes in nuclear reactors with sodium coolant. Since at the moment the nuclear industry considers plants with lead-bismuth coolant as promising reactors, it is necessary to justify the FlowVision code suitability also for modeling the flow of such coolant, which is the goal of this work. The paper presents the results of lead-bismuth eutectic flow numerical simulation in the heat exchange tube bundle of NPP steam generator. The convergence studies on a grid and step have been carried out, turbulence model has been selected, hydraulic resistance coefficients of lattices have been determined and simulations with and without $k_\theta^{}$-$e_\theta^{}$ model are compared within the framework of fluid dynamics and heat exchange modeling in the heat-exchange tube bundle. According to the results of the study, it was found that the results of the calculation using the $k_\theta^{}$-$e_\theta^{}$ turbulence model are more precisely consistent with the correlations. A cross-verification with STAR-CCM+ software has been performed as an additional verification on the accuracy of the results, the results obtained are within the error limits of the correlations used for comparison.

The article presented the computational algorithm developed to study chemical processes in the internal flows of a multicomponent gas under the influence of laser radiation. The mathematical model is the gas dynamics’ equations with chemical reactions at low Mach numbers. It takes into account dissipative terms that describe the dynamics of a viscous heat-conducting medium with diffusion, chemical reactions and energy supply by laser radiation. This mathematical model is characterized by the presence of several very different time and spatial scales. The computational algorithm is based on a splitting scheme by physical processes. Each time integration step is divided into the following blocks: solving the equations of chemical kinetics, solving the equation for the radiation intensity, solving the convection-diffusion equations, calculating the dynamic component of pressure and calculating the correction of the velocity vector. The solution of a stiff system of chemical kinetics equations is carried out using a specialized explicit second-order accuracy scheme or a plug-in RADAU5 module. Numerical Rusanov flows and a WENO scheme of an increased order of approximation are used to find convective terms in the equations. The code based on the obtained algorithm has been developed using MPI parallel computing technology. The developed code is used to calculate the pyrolysis of ethane with radical reactions. The superequilibrium concentrations’ formation of radicals in the reactor volume is studied in detail. Numerical simulation of the reaction gas flow in a flat tube with laser radiation supply is carried out, which is in demand for the interpretation of experimental results. It is shown that laser radiation significantly increases the conversion of ethane and yields of target products at short lengths closer to the entrance to the reaction zone. Reducing the effective length of the reaction zone allows us to offer new solutions in the design of ethane conversion reactors into valuable hydrocarbons. The developed algorithm and program will find their application in the creation of new technologies of laser thermochemistry.

A model of combustion of premixed mixture of gases with one global chemical reaction is considered, the model includes equations of the second order for temperature of mixture and concentrations of fuel and oxidizer, and the right-hand sides of these equations contain the reaction rate function. This function depends on five unknown parameters of the global reaction and serves as approximation to multistep reaction mechanism. The model is reduced, after replacement of variables, to one equation of the second order for temperature of mixture that transforms to a first-order equation for temperature derivative depending on temperature that contains a parameter of flame propagation velocity. Thus, for computing the parameter of burning velocity, one has to solve Dirichlet problem for first-order equation, and after that a model dependence of burning velocity on mixture equivalence ratio at specified reaction rate parameters will be obtained. Given the experimental data of dependence of burning velocity on mixture equivalence ratio, the problem of optimal selection of reaction rate parameters is stated, based on minimization of the mean square deviation of model values of burning velocity on experimental ones. The aim of our study is analysis of uniqueness of this problem solution. To this end, we apply computational experiment during which the problem of global search of optima is solved using multistart of gradient descent. The computational experiment clarifies that the inverse problem in this statement is underdetermined, and every time, when running gradient descent from a selected starting point, it converges to a new limit point. The structure of the set of limit points in the five-dimensional space is analyzed, and it is shown that this set can be described with three linear equations. Therefore, it might be incorrect to tabulate all five parameters of reaction rate based on just one match criterion between model and experimental data of flame propagation velocity. The conclusion of our study is that in order to tabulate reaction rate parameters correctly, it is necessary to specify the values of two of them, based on additional optimality criteria.