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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.

The paper is devoted to convex-concave saddle point problems where the objective is a sum of a large number of functions. Such problems attract considerable attention of the mathematical community due to the variety of applications in machine learning, including adversarial learning, adversarial attacks and robust reinforcement learning, to name a few. The individual functions in the sum usually represent losses related to examples from a data set. Additionally, the formulation admits a possibly nonsmooth composite term. Such terms often reflect regularization in machine learning problems. We assume that the dimension of one of the variable groups is relatively small (about a hundred or less), and the other one is large. This case arises, for example, when one considers the dual formulation for a minimization problem with a moderate number of constraints. The proposed approach is based on using Vaidya’s cutting plane method to minimize with respect to the outer block of variables. This optimization algorithm is especially effective when the dimension of the problem is not very large. An inexact oracle for Vaidya’s method is calculated via an approximate solution of the inner maximization problem, which is solved by the accelerated variance reduced algorithm Katyusha. Thus, we leverage the structure of the problem to achieve fast convergence. Separate complexity bounds for gradients of different components with respect to different variables are obtained in the study. The proposed approach is imposing very mild assumptions about the objective. In particular, neither strong convexity nor smoothness is required with respect to the low-dimensional variable group. The number of steps of the proposed algorithm as well as the arithmetic complexity of each step explicitly depend on the dimensionality of the outer variable, hence the assumption that it is relatively small.

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 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.

In this paper, we investigate different alternative ideas for the design of digital predistortion models for radiofrequency power amplifiers. When compared to the greedy search algorithm, these algorithms allow a faster identification of the model parameters combination while still performing reasonably well. For the subsequent implementation, different metrics of model costs and score results in the process of optimization enable us to achieve sparse selections of the model, which balance the model accuracy and model resources (according to the complexity of implementation). The results achieved in the process of simulations show that combinations obtained with explored algorithms show the best performance after a lower number of simulations.

Based on the modeling method using a mesh system, an algorithm is implemented for solving a unsteady problem with moving bodies The algorithm takes into account the movement and rotation of bodies according to a given law of motion. The algorithm is applied to analysis the flow around an infinite composed of cylinders with an elliptical cross-section, which either move across the flow or rotate with a change in the angle of attack. To simulate the flow of bodies with a sharp edge, characteristic of the profiles of gas turbine machines, an algorithm for constructing a mesh of type C with the inclusion of a certain area behind the profile is implemented. The program for modeling the flow near the profile is implemented within the framework of models of Euler equations, Navier – Stokes equations in the approximation of a thin layer with laminar viscosity and turbulent viscosity in the framework of an algebraic viscosity model. The program has also been adapted to solve the problems of internal gas dynamics of turbomachines. For this purpose, the method of setting the boundary conditions at the entrance and exit from the calculated area from the velocity to the pressure drop, as well as at the lateral boundaries from the free flow to the periodicity, was changed. This made it possible to simulate the flow of gas in the inter-blade channels of compressors and turbines of gas turbine engines. To refine the algorithm, a series of calculations of the aerodynamic parameters of several turbine cascades in various subsonic and supersonic modes and their comparison with the experiment were carried out. Calculations of turbine grating parameters were carried out within the framework of the inviscid and viscous gas model. The calculation and experiment were compared by the distribution of gas parameters near the profile, as well as by the energy losses of the flow in the cascade. Calculations have shown the applicability and correctness of the program to solve this class of problems. To test the program on the problems of external subsonic aerodynamics, calculations of the aerodynamic characteristics of an isolated airfoil in an undisturbed flow were performed. The results obtained allow us to assert the applicability of the hybrid grid method to various classes of problems of applied gas dynamics.

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.

The work is devoted to the problem of creating a model with stationary parameters using historical data under conditions of unknown disturbances. The case is considered when a representative sample of object states can be formed using historical data accumulated only over a significant period of time. It is assumed that unknown disturbances can act in a wide frequency range and may have low-frequency and trend components. In such a situation, including data from different time periods in the sample can lead to inconsistencies and greatly reduce the accuracy of the model. The paper provides an overview of approaches and methods for data harmonization. In this case, the main attention is paid to data sampling. An assessment is made of the applicability of various data sampling options as a tool for reducing the level of uncertainty. We propose a method for identifying a self-leveling object model using data accumulated over a significant period of time under conditions of unknown disturbances with a wide frequency range. The method is focused on creating a model with stationary parameters that does not require periodic reconfiguration to new conditions. The method is based on the combined use of sampling and presentation of data from individual periods of time in the form of increments relative to the initial point in time for the period. This makes it possible to reduce the number of parameters that characterize unknown disturbances with a minimum of assumptions that limit the application of the method. As a result, the dimensionality of the search problem is reduced and the computational costs associated with setting up the model are minimized. It is possible to configure both linear and, in some cases, nonlinear models. The method was used to develop a model of closed cooling of steel on a unit for continuous hot-dip galvanizing of steel strip. The model can be used for predictive control of thermal processes and for selecting strip speed. It is shown that the method makes it possible to develop a model of thermal processes from a closed cooling section under conditions of unknown disturbances, including low-frequency components.

The presence of a contact boundary between water and transformer oil greatly reduces the electrical strength of the oil phase. The presence of an electric field leads to varying degrees of polarization at the interface and the appearance of a force acting on a liquid with a higher dielectric constant (water) in the direction of a liquid with a lower dielectric constant (oil). This leads to the contact surface instability development. Instability as a result of its development leads to a stream of water being drawn into oil volume and a violation of the insulating gap. In this work, we experimentally and numerically study electrohydrodynamic instability at the phase boundary between electrically weakly conductive water and transformer oil in a highly inhomogeneous electric field directed perpendicular to the contact boundary. The results of a full-scale and numerical experiment of studying of the electrohydrodynamic instability development in a strong electric field at the interface between water and transformer oil are presented. The system consists of a spherical electrode with a radius of 3.5 mm, placed in water with a conductivity of 5 $\mu S/cm$, and a thin blade electrode 0.1 mm thick, placed in transformer oil of the GK brand. The contact boundary passes at the same distance from the nearest points of the electrodes, equal to 3 mm. The work shows that at a certain electric field strength, the cone-shaped structure of water grows towards the electrode immersed in transformer oil. A numerical correspondence was obtained for both the shape of the resulting water structure (cone) during the entire growth time and the size measured from its top to the level of the initial contact boundary of phase separation. The dynamics of this structure growth has been studied. Both in numerical calculations and in experiment, it was found that the size of the resulting cone along the electrode connection line depends linearly on time.