All issues

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.

The mathematical model based on the linear integro-differential Boltzmann equation is considered in this article. The model describes the radiation transfer in the scattering medium irradiated by a point source. The inverse problem for the transfer equation is defined. This problem consists of determining the scattering coefficient from the time-angular distribution of the radiation flux density at a given point in space. The Neumann series representation for solving the radiation transfer equation is analyzed in the study of the inverse problem. The zero member of the series describes the unscattered radiation, the first member of the series describes a single-scattered field, the remaining members of the series describe a multiple-scattered field. When calculating the approximate solution of the radiation transfer equation, the single scattering approximation is widespread to calculated an approximate solution of the equation for regions with a small optical thickness and a low level of scattering. An analytical formula is obtained for finding the scattering coefficient by using this approximation for problem with additional restrictions on the initial data. To verify the adequacy of the obtained formula the Monte Carlo weighted method for solving the transfer equation is constructed and software implemented taking into account multiple scattering in the medium and the space-time singularity of the radiation source. As applied to the problems of high-frequency acoustic sensing in the ocean, computational experiments were carried out. The application of the single scattering approximation is justified, at least, at a sensing range of about one hundred meters and the double and triple scattered fields make the main impact on the formula error. For larger regions, the single scattering approximation gives at the best only a qualitative evaluation of the medium structure, sometimes it even does not allow to determine the order of the parameters quantitative characteristics of the interaction of radiation with matter.

The article is devoted to the construction and investigation of an averaged mathematical model of an aluminum-cobalt-molybdenum hydrocracking catalyst oxidative regeneration. The oxidative regeneration is an effective means of restoring the activity of the catalyst when its granules are coating with coke scurf.

The mathematical model of this process is a nonlinear system of ordinary differential equations, which includes kinetic equations for reagents’ concentrations and equations for changes in the temperature of the catalyst granule and the reaction mixture as a result of isothermal reactions and heat transfer between the gas and the catalyst layer. Due to the heterogeneity of the oxidative regeneration process, some of the equations differ from the standard kinetic ones and are based on empirical data. The article discusses the scheme of chemical interaction in the regeneration process, which the material balance equations are compiled on the basis of. It reflects the direct interaction of coke and oxygen, taking into account the degree of coverage of the coke granule with carbon-hydrogen and carbon-oxygen complexes, the release of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide during combustion, as well as the release of oxygen and hydrogen inside the catalyst granule. The change of the radius and, consequently, the surface area of coke pellets is taken into account. The adequacy of the developed averaged model is confirmed by an analysis of the dynamics of the concentrations of substances and temperature.

The article presents a numerical experiment for a mathematical model of oxidative regeneration of an aluminum-cobalt-molybdenum hydrocracking catalyst. The experiment was carried out using the Kutta–Merson method. This method belongs to the methods of the Runge–Kutta family, but is designed to solve stiff systems of ordinary differential equations. The results of a computational experiment are visualized.

The paper presents the dynamics of the concentrations of substances involved in the oxidative regeneration process. A conclusion on the adequacy of the constructed mathematical model is drawn on the basis of the correspondence of the obtained results to physicochemical laws. The heating of the catalyst granule and the release of carbon monoxide with a change in the radius of the granule for various degrees of initial coking are analyzed. There are a description of the results.

In conclusion, the main results and examples of problems which can be solved using the developed mathematical model are noted.

This work analyzes the problem of traffic signs recognition in intelligent transport systems. The basic concepts of computer vision and image recognition tasks are considered. The most effective approach for solving the problem of analyzing and recognizing images now is the neural network method. Among all kinds of neural networks, the convolutional neural network has proven itself best. Activation functions such as Relu and SoftMax are used to solve the classification problem when recognizing traffic signs. This article proposes a technology for recognizing traffic signs. The choice of an approach for solving the problem based on a convolutional neural network due to the ability to effectively solve the problem of identifying essential features and classification. The initial data for the neural network model were prepared and a training sample was formed. The Google Colaboratory cloud service with the external libraries for deep learning TensorFlow and Keras was used as a platform for the intelligent system development. The convolutional part of the network is designed to highlight characteristic features in the image. The first layer includes 512 neurons with the Relu activation function. Then there is the Dropout layer, which is used to reduce the effect of overfitting the network. The output fully connected layer includes four neurons, which corresponds to the problem of recognizing four types of traffic signs. An intelligent traffic sign recognition system has been developed and tested. The used convolutional neural network included four stages of convolution and subsampling. Evaluation of the efficiency of the traffic sign recognition system using the three-block cross-validation method showed that the error of the neural network model is minimal, therefore, in most cases, new images will be recognized correctly. In addition, the model has no errors of the first kind, and the error of the second kind has a low value and only when the input image is very noisy.

The article deals with the development of a methodological approach to forecasting and modeling the socioeconomic consequences of viral epidemics in conditions of heterogeneous economic development of territorial systems. The relevance of the research stems from the need for rapid mechanisms of public management and stabilization of adverse epidemiological situation, taking into account the spatial heterogeneity of the spread of COVID-19, accompanied by a concentration of infection in large metropolitan areas and territories with high economic activity. The aim of the work is to substantiate a methodology to assess the spatial heterogeneity of the spread of coronavirus infection, find poles of its growth, emerging spatial clusters and zones of their influence with the assessment of inter-territorial relationships, as well as simulate the effects of worsening epidemiological situation on the dynamics of economic development of regional systems. The peculiarity of the developed approach is the spatial clustering of regional systems by the level of COVID-19 incidence, conducted using global and local spatial autocorrelation indices, various spatial weight matrices, and L.Anselin mutual influence matrix based on the statistical information of the Russian Federal State Statistics Service. The study revealed a spatial cluster characterized by high levels of infection with COVID-19 with a strong zone of influence and stable interregional relationships with surrounding regions, as well as formed growth poles which are potential poles of further spread of coronavirus infection. Regression analysis using panel data not only confirmed the impact of COVID-19 incidence on the average number of employees in enterprises, the level of average monthly nominal wages, but also allowed to form a model for scenario prediction of the consequences of the spread of coronavirus infection. The results of this study can be used to form mechanisms to contain the coronavirus infection and stabilize socio-economic at macroeconomic and regional level and restore the economy of territorial systems, depending on the depth of the spread of infection and the level of economic damage caused.

In this paper, compared fundamentally different turbulence models for calculating a strongly swirling flow in an abrupt expanding pipe. This task is not only of great importance in practice, but also in theoretical terms. Because in such a flow a very complex anisotropic turbulence with recirculation zones arises and the study of the ongoing processes allows us to find an answer to many questions about turbulence. The flow under consideration has been well studied experimentally. Therefore, it is a very complex and interesting test problem for turbulence models. In the paper compared the numerical results of the one-parameter v_t-92 model, the SSG/LRR-RSMw2012 Reynolds stress method and the new two-fluid model. These models are very different from each other. Because the Boussinesq hypothesis is used in the one-parameter v_t-92 model, in the SSG/LRR-RSM-w2012 model, its own equation is written for each stress, and for the new two-fluid model, the basis is a completely different approach to turbulence. A feature of the approach to turbulence for the new two-fluid model is that it allows one to obtain a closed system of equations. Comparison of these models is carried out not only by the correspondence of their results with experimental data, but also by the computational resources expended on the numerical implementation of these models. Therefore, in this work, for all models, the same technique was used to numerically calculate the turbulent swirling flow at the Reynolds number $Re=3\cdot 10^4$ and the swirl parameter $S_w=0.6$. In the paper showed that the new two-fluid model is effective for the study of turbulent flows, because has good accuracy in describing complex anisotropic turbulent flows and is simple enough for numerical implementation.

Laser damage to transparent solids is a major limiting factor output power of laser systems. For laser rangefinders, the most likely destruction cause of elements of the optical system (lenses, mirrors) actually, as a rule, somewhat dusty, is not an optical breakdown as a result of avalanche, but such a thermal effect on the dust speck deposited on an element of the optical system (EOS), which leads to its ignition. It is the ignition of a speck of dust that initiates the process of EOS damage.

The corresponding model of this process leading to the ignition of a speck of dust takes into account the nonlinear Stefan –Boltzmann law of thermal radiation and the infinite thermal effect of periodic radiation on the EOS and the speck of dust. This model is described by a nonlinear system of differential equations for two functions: the EOS temperature and the dust particle temperature. It is proved that due to the accumulating effect of periodic thermal action, the process of reaching the dust speck ignition temperature occurs almost at any a priori possible changes in this process of the thermophysical parameters of the EOS and the dust speck, as well as the heat exchange coefficients between them and the surrounding air. Averaging these parameters over the variables related to both the volume and the surfaces of the dust speck and the EOS is correct under the natural constraints specified in the paper. The entire really significant spectrum of thermophysical parameters is covered thanks to the use of dimensionless units in the problem (including numerical results).

A thorough mathematical study of the corresponding nonlinear system of differential equations made it possible for the first time for the general case of thermophysical parameters and characteristics of the thermal effect of periodic laser radiation to find a formula for the value of the permissible radiation intensity that does not lead to the destruction of the EOS as a result of the ignition of a speck of dust deposited on the EOS. The theoretical value of the permissible intensity found in the general case in the special case of the data from the Grasse laser ranging station (south of France) almost matches that experimentally observed in the observatory.

In parallel with the solution of the main problem, we derive a formula for the power absorption coefficient of laser radiation by an EOS expressed in terms of four dimensionless parameters: the relative intensity of laser radiation, the relative illumination of the EOS, the relative heat transfer coefficient from the EOS to the surrounding air, and the relative steady-state temperature of the EOS.

The paper considers the adequacy of the model developed earlier by the author for the analysis of income inequality and based on an empirically confirmed hypothesis that the relative (to the income of the richest group) income values of 20% population groups in total income can be represented as a finite functional sequence, each member of which depends on one parameter — a specially defined indicator of inequality. It is shown that in addition to the existing methods of inequality analysis, the model makes it possible to estimate with the help of analytical expressions the income shares of 20%, 10% and smaller groups of the population for different levels of inequality, as well as to identify how they change with the growth of inequality, to estimate the level of inequality for known ratios between the incomes of different groups of the population, etc.

The paper provides a more detailed confirmation of the proposed model adequacy in comparison with the previously obtained results of statistical analysis of empirical data on the distribution of income between the 20% and 10% population groups. It is based on the analysis of certain ratios between the values of quintiles and deciles according to the proposed model. The verification of these ratios was carried out using a set of data for a large number of countries and the estimates obtained confirm the sufficiently high accuracy of the model.

Data are presented that confirm the possibility of using the model to analyze the dependence of income distribution by population groups on the level of inequality, as well as to estimate the inequality indicator for income ratios between different groups, including variants when the income of the richest 20% is equal to the income of the poor 60 %, income of the middle class 40% or income of the rest 80% of the population, as well as when the income of the richest 10% is equal to the income of the poor 40 %, 50% or 60%, to the income of various middle class groups, etc., as well as for cases, when the distribution of income obeys harmonic proportions and when the quintiles and deciles corresponding to the middle class reach a maximum. It is shown that the income shares of the richest middle class groups are relatively stable and have a maximum at certain levels of inequality.

The results obtained with the help of the model can be used to determine the standards for developing a policy of gradually increasing the level of progressive taxation in order to move to the level of inequality typical of countries with social oriented economy.

The dynamics of public attention to COVID-19 epidemic is studied. The level of public attention is described by the daily number of search requests in Google made by users from a given country. In the empirical part of the work, data on the number of requests and the number of infected cases for a number of countries are considered. It is shown that in all cases the maximum of public attention occurs earlier than the maximum daily number of newly infected individuals. Thus, for a certain period of time, the growth of the epidemics occurs in parallel with the decline in public attention to it. It is also shown that the decline in the number of requests is described by an exponential function of time. In order to describe the revealed empirical pattern, a mathematical model is proposed, which is a modification of the model of the decline in attention after a one-time political event. The model develops the approach that considers decision-making by an individual as a member of the society in which the information process takes place. This approach assumes that an individual’s decision about whether or not to make a request on a given day about COVID is based on two factors. One of them is an attitude that reflects the individual’s long-term interest in a given topic and accumulates the individual’s previous experience, cultural preferences, social and economic status. The second is the dynamic factor of public attention to the epidemic, which changes during the process under consideration under the influence of informational stimuli. With regard to the subject under consideration, information stimuli are related to epidemic dynamics. The behavioral hypothesis is that if on some day the sum of the attitude and the dynamic factor exceeds a certain threshold value, then on that day the individual in question makes a search request on the topic of COVID. The general logic is that the higher the rate of infection growth, the higher the information stimulus, the slower decreases public attention to the pandemic. Thus, the constructed model made it possible to correlate the rate of exponential decrease in the number of requests with the rate of growth in the number of cases. The regularity found with the help of the model was tested on empirical data. It was found that the Student’s statistic is 4.56, which allows us to reject the hypothesis of the absence of a correlation with a significance level of 0.01.

This paper proposes the implementation of a coherent transceiver with a constant delay and the ability to select any clock frequency grid used for clocking peripheral DACs and ADCs, tasks of device synchronization and data transmission. The choice of the required clock frequency grid directly affects the data transfer rate in the network, however, it allows one to flexibly configure the network for the tasks of transmitting clock signals and subnanosecond generation of sync signals on all devices in the network. A method for increasing the synchronization accuracy to tenths of nanoseconds by using digital phase detectors and a Phase Locked Loop (PLL) system on the slave device is proposed. The use of high-speed fiber-optic communication lines (FOCL) for synchronization tasks allows simultaneously exchanging control commands and signaling data. To simplify and reduce the cost of devices of a synchronous network of transceivers, it is proposed to use a clock signal restored from a data transmission line to filter phase noise and form a frequency grid in the PLL system for heterodyne signals and clock peripheral devices, including DAC and ADC. The results of multiple synchronization tests in the proposed synchronous network are presented.