All issues

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.

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.

The article submits wall functions model “FlowVision”. The model allows simulating turbulent flows of fluid and gas over solid impermeable surfaces on different grids. Four turbulence models are considered: $k-\varepsilon$ FlowVision, $k-\varepsilon$ Standard, SST $k-\omega$, SA. Details of implementation of turbulence models in FlowVision software are discussed. Calculations of two test cases are demonstrated.

Optimization of hull lines for the minimum resistance to movement is a problem of current interest in ship hydrodynamics. In practice, lines design is still to some extent an art. The usual approaches to decrease the ship resistance are based on the model experiment and/or CFD simulation, following the trial and error method. The paper presents a new method of in-detail hull form design based on the wave-based optimization approach. The method provides systematic variation of the hull geometrical form, which corresponds to alteration of longitudinal distribution of the hull volume, while its vertical volume distribution is fixed or highly controlled. It’s well known from the theoretical studies that the vertical distribution can't be optimized by condition of minimum wave resistance, thus it can be neglected for the optimization procedures. The method efficiency was investigated by application to the foreship of KCS, the well-known test object from the workshop Gothenburg-2000. The variations of the longitudinal distribution of the volume were set on the sectional area curve as finite volume increments and then transferred to the lines plan with the help of special frame transformation methods. The CFD towing simulations were carried out for the initial hull form and the six modified variants. According to the simulation results, examined modifications caused the resistance increments in the range 1.3–6.5 %. Optimization process was underpinned with the respective data analysis based on the new hypothesis, according to which, the resistance increments caused by separate longitudinal segments of hull form meet the principle of superposition. The achieved results, which are presented as the optimum distribution of volume present in the optimized designed hull form, which shows the interesting characteristics that its resistance has decrease by 8.9 % in respect to initial KCS hull form. Visualization of the wave patterns showed an attenuation of the transversal wave components, and the intensification of the diverging wave components.

Numerical study of unsteady mixed convection in an open partially porous horizontal channel with a heatgenerating source was performed. The outer surfaces of horizontal walls of finite thickness were adiabatic. In the channel there was a Newtonian heat-conducting fluid with a temperature-dependent viscosity. The discrete heatconducting and heat-generating source is located inside the bottom wall. The temperature of the fluid phase was equal to the temperature of the porous medium, and calculations were performed using the local thermal equilibrium model. The porous insertion is isotropic, homogeneous and permeable to fluid. The Darcy–Brinkman model was used to simulate the transport process within the porous medium. Governing equations formulated in dimensionless variables “stream function – vorticity – temperature” using the Boussinesq approximation were solved numerically by the finite difference method. The vorticity dispersion equation and energy equation were solved using locally one-dimensional Samarskii scheme. The diffusive terms were approximated by central differences, while the convective terms were approximated using monotonic Samarskii scheme. The difference equations were solved by the Thomas algorithm. The approximated Poisson equation for the stream function was solved separately by successive over-relaxation method. Optimal value of the relaxation parameter was found on the basis of computational experiments. The developed computational code was tested using a set of uniform grids and verified by comparing the results obtained of other authors.

Numerical analysis of unsteady mixed convection of variable viscosity fluid in the horizontal channel with a heat-generating source was performed for the following parameters: $\mathrm{Pr} = 7.0$, $\varepsilon = 0.8$, $\mathrm{Gr} = 10^5$, $C = 0-1$, $10^{-5} < \mathrm{Da} < 10^{-1}$, $50 < \mathrm{Re} < 500$, $\delta = l/H = 0.6-3$. Distributions of the isolines of the stream function, temperature and the dependences of the average Nusselt number and the average temperature inside the heater were obtained in a steady-state regime, when the stationary picture of the flow and heat transfer is observed. As a result we showed that an addition of a porous insertion leads to an intensification of heat removal from the surface of the energy source. The increase in the porous insertion sizes and the use of working fluid with different thermal characteristics, lead to a decrease in temperature inside the source.

Solution of Dynamic Light Scattering problem makes it possible to determine particle size distribution (PSD) from the spectrum of the intensity of scattered light. As a result of experiment, an intensity curve is obtained. The experimentally obtained spectrum of intensity is compared with the theoretically expected spectrum, which is the Lorentzian line. The main task is to determine on the basis of these data the relative concentrations of particles of each class presented in the solution. The article presents a method for constructing and using a neural network trained on synthetic data to determine PSD in a solution in the range of 1–500 nm. The neural network has a fully connected layer of 60 neurons with the RELU activation function at the output, a layer of 45 neurons and the same activation function, a dropout layer and 2 layers with 15 and 1 neurons (network output). The article describes how the network has been trained and tested on synthetic and experimental data. On the synthetic data, the standard deviation metric (rmse) gave a value of 1.3157 nm. Experimental data were obtained for particle sizes of 200 nm, 400 nm and a solution with representatives of both sizes. The results of the neural network and the classical linear methods are compared. The disadvantages of the classical methods are that it is difficult to determine the degree of regularization: too much regularization leads to the particle size distribution curves are much smoothed out, and weak regularization gives oscillating curves and low reliability of the results. The paper shows that the neural network gives a good prediction for particles with a large size. For small sizes, the prediction is worse, but the error quickly decreases as the particle size increases.

The purpose of this work is to develop a universal computer program (solver) which solves kinetic Boltzmann equation for simulations of rarefied gas flows in complexly shaped devices. The structure of the solver is described in details. Its efficiency is demonstrated on an example of calculations of a modern many tubes Knudsen pump. The kinetic Boltzmann equation is solved by finite-difference method on discrete grid in spatial and velocity spaces. The differential advection operator is approximated by finite difference method. The calculation of the collision integral is based on the conservative projection method.

In the developed computational program the unstructured spatial mesh is generated using GMSH and may include prisms, tetrahedrons, hexahedrons and pyramids. The mesh is denser in areas of flow with large gradients of gas parameters. A three-dimensional velocity grid consists of cubic cells of equal volume.

A huge amount of calculations requires effective parallelization of the algorithm which is implemented in the program with the use of Message Passing Interface (MPI) technology. An information transfer from one node to another is implemented as a kind of boundary condition. As a result, every MPI node contains the information about only its part of the grid.

The main result of the work is presented in the graph of pressure difference in 2 reservoirs connected by a multitube Knudsen pump from Knudsen number. This characteristic of the Knudsen pump obtained by numerical methods shows the quality of the pump. Distributions of pressure, temperature and gas concentration in a steady state inside the pump and the reservoirs are presented as well.

The correctness of the solver is checked using two special test solutions of more simple boundary problems — test with temperature distribution between 2 planes with different temperatures and test with conservation of total gas mass.

The correctness of the obtained data for multitube Knudsen pump is checked using denser spatial and velocity grids, using more collisions in collision integral per time step.

Ultrasound examination of material properties is a precision method for determining their elastic and strength properties in connection with the small wavelength formed in the material after impact of a laser beam. In this paper, the wave processes arising during these measurements are considered in detail. It is shown that full-wave numerical modeling allows us to study in detail the types of waves, topological characteristics of their profile, speed of arrival of waves at various points, identification the types of waves whose measurements are most optimal for examining a sample made of a specific material of a particular shape, and to develop measurement procedures.

To carry out full-wave modeling, a grid-characteristic method on structured grids was used in this work and a hyperbolic system of equations that describes the propagation of elastic waves in the material of the thin plate under consideration on a specific example of a ratio of thickness to width of 1:10 was solved.

To simulate an elastic front that arose in the plate due to a laser beam, a model of the corresponding initial conditions was proposed. A comparison of the wave effects that arise during its use in the case of a point source and with the data of physical experiments on the propagation of laser ultrasound in metal plates was made.

A study was made on the basis of which the characteristic topological features of the wave processes under consideration were identified and revealed. The main types of elastic waves arising due to a laser beam are investigated, the possibility of their use for studying the properties of materials is analyzed. A method based on the analysis of multiple waves is proposed. The proposed method for studying the properties of a plate with the help of multiple waves on synthetic data was tested, and it showed good results.

It should be noted that most of the studies of multiple waves are aimed at developing methods for their suppression. Multiple waves are not used to process the results of ultrasound studies due to the complexity of their detection in the recorded data of a physical experiment.

Due to the use of full wave modeling and analysis of spatial dynamic wave processes, multiple waves are considered in detail in this work and it is proposed to divide materials into three classes, which allows using multiple waves to obtain information about the material of the plate.

The main results of the work are the developed problem statements for the numerical simulation of the study of plates of a finite thickness by laser ultrasound; the revealed features of the wave phenomena arising in plates of a finite thickness; the developed method for studying the properties of the plate on the basis of multiple waves; the developed classification of materials.

The results of the studies presented in this paper may be of interest not only for developments in the field of ultrasonic non-destructive testing, but also in the field of seismic exploration of the earth's interior, since the proposed approach can be extended to more complex cases of heterogeneous media and applied in geophysics.

Inverse geophysical problems are difficult to solve due to their mathematically incorrect formulation and large computational complexity. Geophysical exploration in frontier areas is even more complicated due to the lack of reliable geological information. In this case, inversion methods that allow interpretation of several types of geophysical data together are recognized to be of major importance. This paper is dedicated to one of such inversion methods, which is based on minimization of the determinant of the Gram matrix for a set of model vectors. Within the framework of this approach, we minimize a nonlinear functional, which consists of squared norms of data residual of different types, the sum of stabilizing functionals and a term that measures the structural similarity between different model vectors. We apply this approach to seismic and electromagnetic synthetic data set. Specifically, we study joint inversion of acoustic pressure response together with controlled-source electrical field imposing structural constraints on resulting electrical conductivity and P-wave velocity distributions.

We start off this note with the problem formulation and present the numerical method for inverse problem. We implemented the conjugate-gradient algorithm for non-linear optimization. The efficiency of our approach is demonstrated in numerical experiments, in which the true 3D electrical conductivity model was assumed to be known, but the velocity model was constructed during inversion of seismic data. The true velocity model was based on a simplified geology structure of a marine prospect. Synthetic seismic data was used as an input for our minimization algorithm. The resulting velocity model not only fit to the data but also has structural similarity with the given conductivity model. Our tests have shown that optimally chosen weight of the Gramian term may improve resolution of the final models considerably.

First-order optimization methods are workhorses in a wide range of modern applications in economics, physics, biology, machine learning, control, and other fields. Among other first-order methods accelerated and momentum ones obtain special attention because of their practical efficiency. The heavy-ball method (HB) is one of the first momentum methods. The method was proposed in 1964 and the first analysis was conducted for quadratic strongly convex functions. Since then a number of variations of HB have been proposed and analyzed. In particular, HB is known for its simplicity in implementation and its performance on nonconvex problems. However, as other momentum methods, it has nonmonotone behavior, and for optimal parameters, the method suffers from the so-called peak effect. To address this issue, in this paper, we consider an averaged version of the heavy-ball method (AHB). We show that for quadratic problems AHB has a smaller maximal deviation from the solution than HB. Moreover, for general convex and strongly convex functions, we prove non-accelerated rates of global convergence of AHB, its weighted version WAHB, and for AHB with restarts R-AHB. To the best of our knowledge, such guarantees for HB with averaging were not explicitly proven for strongly convex problems in the existing works. Finally, we conduct several numerical experiments on minimizing quadratic and nonquadratic functions to demonstrate the advantages of using averaging for HB. Moreover, we also tested one more modification of AHB called the tail-averaged heavy-ball method (TAHB). In the experiments, we observed that HB with a properly adjusted averaging scheme converges faster than HB without averaging and has smaller oscillations.