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Metal hydrides are an interesting class of chemical compounds that can reversibly bind a large amount of hydrogen and are, therefore, of interest for energy applications. Understanding the factors affecting the kinetics of hydride formation and decomposition is especially important. Features of the material, experimental setup and conditions affect the mathematical description of the processes, which can undergo significant changes during the processing of experimental data. The article proposes a general approach to numerical modeling of the formation and decomposition of metal hydrides and solving inverse problems of estimating material parameters from measurement data. The models are divided into two classes: diffusive ones, that take into account the gradient of hydrogen concentration in the metal lattice, and models with fast diffusion. The former are more complex and take the form of non-classical boundary value problems of parabolic type. A rather general approach to the grid solution of such problems is described. The second ones are solved relatively simply, but can change greatly when model assumptions change. Our experience in processing experimental data shows that a flexible software tool is needed; a tool that allows, on the one hand, building models from standard blocks, freely changing them if necessary, and, on the other hand, avoiding the implementation of routine algorithms. It also should be adapted for high-performance systems of different paradigms. These conditions are satisfied by the HIMICOS library presented in the paper, which has been tested on a large number of experimental data. It allows simulating the kinetics of formation and decomposition of metal hydrides, as well as related tasks, at three levels of abstraction. At the low level, the user defines the interface procedures, such as calculating the time layer based on the previous layer or the entire history, calculating the observed value and the independent variable from the task variables, comparing the curve with the reference. Special algorithms can be used for solving quite general parabolic-type boundary value problems with free boundaries and with various quasilinear (i.e., linear with respect to the derivative only) boundary conditions, as well as calculating the distance between the curves in different metric spaces and with different normalization. This is the middle level of abstraction. At the high level, it is enough to choose a ready tested model for a particular material and modify it in relation to the experimental conditions.

Working memory mechanisms in spiking neural networks consisting of leaky integrate-and-fire neurons with adaptive threshold and synaptic plasticity are studied in this work. Moderate size networks including thousands of neurons were explored. Working memory is a network ability to keep in its state the information about recent stimuli presented to the network such that this information is sufficient to determine which stimulus has been presented. In this study, network state is defined as the current characteristics of network activity only — without internal state of its neurons. In order to discover the neuronal structures serving as a possible substrate of the memory mechanism, optimization of the network parameters and structure using genetic algorithm was carried out. Two kinds of neuronal structures with the desired properties were found. These are neuron pairs mutually connected by strong synaptic links and long tree-like neuronal ensembles. It was shown that only the neuron pairs are suitable for efficient and reliable implementation of working memory. Properties of such memory units and structures formed by them are explored in the present study. It is shown that characteristics of the studied two-neuron memory units can be set easily by the respective choice of the parameters of its neurons and synaptic connections. Besides that, this work demonstrates that ensembles of these structures can provide the network with capability of unsupervised learning to recognize patterns in the input signal.

Industrial robots have made it possible for robotics to become a worldwide discipline both in economy and in science. However, their capabilities are limited, especially regarding contact tasks where it is required to regulate or at least limit contact forces. At one point, it was noticed that elasticity in the joint transmission, which was treated as a drawback previously, is actually helpful in this regard. This observation led to the introduction of elastic joint robots that are well-suited to contact tasks and cooperative behavior in particular, so they become more and more widespread nowadays. Many researchers try to implement such devices not with trivial series elastic actuators (SEA) but with more sophisticated variable stiffness actuators (VSA) that can regulate their own mechanical stiffness. All elastic actuators demonstrate shock robustness and safe interaction with external objects to some extent, but when stiffness may be varied, it provides additional benefits, e. g., in terms of energy efficiency and task adaptability. Here, we present a novel variable stiffness actuator with a magnetic coupler as an elastic element. Magnetic transmission is contactless and thus advantageous in terms of robustness to misalignment. In addition, the friction model of the transmission becomes less complex. It also has milder stiffness characteristic than typical mechanical nonlinear springs, moreover, the stiffness curve has a maximum after which it descends. Therefore, when this maximum torque is achieved, the coupler slips, and a new pair of poles defines the equilibrium position. As a result, the risk of damage is smaller for this design solution. The design of the joint is thoroughly described, along with its mathematical model. Finally, the control system is also proposed, and simulation tests confirm the design ideas.

We consider an approach based on linear algebra methods to analyze the rate of electron transport through the cytochrome $b_6 f$ complex. In the proposed approach, the dependence of the quasi-stationary electron flux through the complex on the degree of reduction of pools of mobile electron carriers is considered a response function characterizing this process. We have developed software in the Python programming language that allows us to construct the master equation for the complex according to the scheme of elementary reactions and calculate quasi-stationary electron transport rates through the complex and the dynamics of their changes during the transition process. The calculations are performed in multithreaded mode, which makes it possible to efficiently use the resources of modern computing systems and to obtain data on the functioning of the complex in a wide range of parameters in a relatively short time. The proposed approach can be easily adapted for the analysis of electron transport in other components of the photosynthetic and respiratory electron-transport chain, as well as other processes in multienzyme complexes containing several reaction centers. Cryo-electron microscopy and redox titration data were used to parameterize the model of cytochrome $b_6 f$ complex. We obtained dependences of the quasi-stationary rate of plastocyanin reduction and plastoquinone oxidation on the degree of reduction of pools of mobile electron carriers and analyzed the dynamics of rate changes in response to changes in the redox state of the plastoquinone pool. The modeling results are in good agreement with the available experimental data.

In this paper, we propose an adaptive traffic signal control method invariant to the configuration of the traffic signal. The proposed method uses one neural network model to control traffic signals of various configurations, differing both in the number of controlled lanes and in the used traffic light control cycle (set of phases). To describe the state space, both dynamic information about the current state of the traffic flow and static data about the configuration of a controlled intersection are used. To increase the speed of model training and reduce the required amount of data required for model convergence, it is proposed to use an “expert” who provides additional data for model training. As an expert, we propose to use an adaptive control method based on maximizing the weighted flow of vehicles through an intersection. Experimental studies of the effectiveness of the developed method were carried out in a microscopic simulation software package. The obtained results confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed method in different simulation scenarios. The possibility of using the developed method in a simulation scenario that is not used in the training process was shown. We provide a comparison of the proposed method with other baseline solutions, including the method used as an “expert”. In most scenarios, the developed method showed the best results by average travel time and average waiting time criteria. The advantage over the method used as an expert, depending on the scenario under study, ranged from 2% to 12% according to the criterion of average vehicle waiting time and from 1% to 7% according to the criterion of average travel time.

Heart rate (HR) is the most affordable indicator for measuring. In order to control the individual response to physical exercises of different load types heart rate is measured when the athletes perform different types of muscular work (strength machines, various types of training and competitive exercises). The magnitude of heart rate and its dynamics during muscular work and recovery can be objectively judged on the functional status of the cardiovascular system of an athlete, the level of its individual physical performance, as well as an adaptive response to a particular exercise. However, the heart rate is not an independent determinant of the physical condition of an athlete. HR size is formed by the interaction of the basic physiological mechanisms underlying cardiac hemodynamic ejection mode. Heart rate depends on one hand, on contractility of the heart, the venous return, the volumes of the atria and ventricles of the heart and from vascular heart load, the main components of which are elastic and peripheral resistance of the arterial system on the other hand. The values of arterial system vascular resistances depend on the power of muscular work and its duration. HR sensitivity to changes in heart load and vascular contraction was determined in athletes by pair regression analysis simultaneously recorded heart rate data, and peripheral $(R)$ and elastic $(E_a)$ resistance (heart vascular load), and the power $(W)$ of heartbeats (cardiac contractility). The coefficients of sensitivity and pair correlation between heart rate indicators and vascular load and contractility of left ventricle of the heart were determined in athletes at rest and during the muscular work on the cycle ergometer. It is shown that increase in both ergometer power load and heart rate is accompanied by the increase of correlation coefficients and coefficients of the heart rate sensitivity to $R$, $E_a$ and $W$.

This paper is devoted to some variants of improving the convergence rate guarantees of the gradient-type algorithms for relatively smooth and relatively Lipschitz-continuous problems in the case of additional information about some analogues of the strong convexity of the objective function. We consider two classes of problems, namely, convex problems with a relative functional growth condition, and problems (generally, non-convex) with an analogue of the Polyak – Lojasiewicz gradient dominance condition with respect to Bregman divergence. For the first type of problems, we propose two restart schemes for the gradient type methods and justify theoretical estimates of the convergence of two algorithms with adaptively chosen parameters corresponding to the relative smoothness or Lipschitz property of the objective function. The first of these algorithms is simpler in terms of the stopping criterion from the iteration, but for this algorithm, the near-optimal computational guarantees are justified only on the class of relatively Lipschitz-continuous problems. The restart procedure of another algorithm, in its turn, allowed us to obtain more universal theoretical results. We proved a near-optimal estimate of the complexity on the class of convex relatively Lipschitz continuous problems with a functional growth condition. We also obtained linear convergence rate guarantees on the class of relatively smooth problems with a functional growth condition. For a class of problems with an analogue of the gradient dominance condition with respect to the Bregman divergence, estimates of the quality of the output solution were obtained using adaptively selected parameters. We also present the results of some computational experiments illustrating the performance of the methods for the second approach at the conclusion of the paper. As examples, we considered a linear inverse Poisson problem (minimizing the Kullback – Leibler divergence), its regularized version which allows guaranteeing a relative strong convexity of the objective function, as well as an example of a relatively smooth and relatively strongly convex problem. In particular, calculations show that a relatively strongly convex function may not satisfy the relative variant of the gradient dominance condition.

Numerical simulation of hull flow, marine propellers and other basic problems of ship hydrodynamics using Cartesian adaptive locally-refined grids is advantageous with respect to numerical setup and makes an express analysis very convenient. However, when more accurate viscous phenomena are needed, they condition some problems including a sharp increase of cell number due to high levels of main grid adaptation needed to resolve boundary layers and time step decrease in simulations with a free surface due to decrease of transit time in adapted cells. To avoid those disadvantages, additional boundary layer grids are suggested for resolution of boundary layers. The boundary layer grids are one-dimensional adaptations of main grid layers nearest to a wall, which are built along a normal direction. The boundary layer grids are additional (or chimerical), their volumes are not subtracted from main grid volumes. Governing equations of flow are integrated in both grids simultaneously, and the solutions are merged according to a special algorithm. In simulations of ship hull flow boundary layer grids are able to provide sufficient conditions for low-Reynolds turbulence models and significantly improve flow structure in continues boundary layers along smooth surfaces. When there are flow separations or other complex phenomena on a hull surface, it can be subdivided into regions, and the boundary layer grids should be applied to the regions with simple flow only. This still provides a drastic decrease of computational efforts. In simulations of marine propellers, the boundary layer grids are able to provide refuse of wall functions on blade surfaces, what leads to significantly more accurate hydrodynamic forces. Altering number and configuration of boundary grid layers, it is possible to vary a boundary layer resolution without change of a main grid. This makes the boundary layer grids a suitable tool to investigate scale effects in both problems considered.

The work is devoted to the construction and analysis of difference schemes for a system of hemodynamic equations obtained by averaging the hydrodynamic equations of a viscous incompressible fluid over the vessel cross-section. Models of blood as an ideal and as a viscous Newtonian fluid are considered. Difference schemes that approximate equations with second order on the spatial variable are proposed. The computational algorithms of the constructed schemes are based on the method of splitting on physical processes. According to this approach, at one time step, the model equations are considered separately and sequentially. The practical implementation of the proposed schemes at each time step leads to a sequential solution of two linear systems with tridiagonal matrices. It is demonstrated that the schemes are $\rho$-stable under minor restrictions on the time step in the case of sufficiently smooth solutions.

For the problem with a known analytical solution, it is demonstrated that the numerical solution has a second order convergence in a wide range of spatial grid step. The proposed schemes are compared with well-known explicit schemes, such as the Lax – Wendroff, Lax – Friedrichs and McCormack schemes in computational experiments on modeling blood flow in model vascular systems. It is demonstrated that the results obtained using the proposed schemes are close to the results obtained using other computational schemes, including schemes constructed by other approaches to spatial discretization. It is demonstrated that in the case of different spatial grids, the time of computation for the proposed schemes is significantly less than in the case of explicit schemes, despite the need to solve systems of linear equations at each step. The disadvantages of the schemes are the limitation on the time step in the case of discontinuous or strongly changing solutions and the need to use extrapolation of values at the boundary points of the vessels. In this regard, problems on the adaptation of splitting schemes for problems with discontinuous solutions and in cases of special types of conditions at the vessels ends are perspective for further research.

Numerical simulation of moving sportsman external flow is presented. The unique method is developed for obtaining integral aerodynamic characteristics, which were the function of the flow regime (i.e. angle of attack, flow speed) and body position. Individual anthropometric characteristics and moving boundaries of sportsman (or sports equipment) during the race are taken into consideration.

Numerical simulation is realized using FlowVision CFD. The software is based on the finite volume method, high-performance numerical methods and reliable mathematical models of physical processes. A Cartesian computational grid is used by FlowVision, the grid generation is a completely automated process. Local grid adaptation is used for solving high-pressure gradient and object complex shape. Flow simulation process performed by solutions systems of equations describing movement of fluid and/or gas in the computational domain, including: mass, moment and energy conservation equations; state equations; turbulence model equations. FlowVision permits flow simulation near moving bodies by means of computational domain transformation according to the athlete shape changes in the motion. Ski jumper aerodynamic characteristics are studied during all phases: take-off performance in motion, in-run and flight. Projected investigation defined simulation method, which includes: inverted statement of sportsman external flow development (velocity of the motion is equal to air flow velocity, object is immobile); changes boundary of the body technology defining; multiple calculations with the national team member data projecting. The research results are identification of the main factors affected to jumping performance: aerodynamic forces, rotating moments etc. Developed method was tested with active sportsmen. Ski jumpers used this method during preparations for Sochi Olympic Games 2014. A comparison of the predicted characteristics and experimental data shows a good agreement. Method versatility is underlined by performing swimmer and skater flow simulation. Designed technology is applicable for sorts of natural and technical objects.