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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.

In this paper, the structure of a shock wave in a binary gas mixture is studied on the basis of direct solution of the Boltzmann kinetic equation. The conservative projection method is used to evaluate the collision integral in the kinetic equation. The applied evaluation formulas and numerical methods are described in detail. The model of hard spheres is used as an interaction potential of molecules. Numerical simulation is performed using the developed simulation environment software, which makes it possible to study both steady and non-steady flows of gas mixtures in various flow regimes and for an arbitrary geometry of the problem. Modeling is performed on a cluster architecture. Due to the use of code parallelization technologies, a significant acceleration of computations is achieved. With a fixed accuracy controlled by the simulation parameters, the distributions of macroscopic characteristics of the mixture components through the shock wave front were obtained. Computations were conducted for various ratios of molecular masses and Mach numbers. The total accuracy of at least 1% for the local values of molecular density and temperature and 3% for the shock front width was achieved. The obtained results were compared with existing computation data. The results presented in this paper are of theoretical significance, and can serve as a test computation, since they are obtained using the exact Boltzmann equation.

This study develops a previously proposed Method of Computer Analogy (MCA) based on formalization of digital computer operations. The paper discusses the position of the proposed approach among other well-known methods. It is emphasized that the primary objective is to derive analytical solutions, although in some cases they have to resort to semianalytical approximations. The paper focuses on constructing solutions for systems which, for certain parameter values, demonstrate the deterministic chaos behavior, namely Lorenz, Marioka – Shimitsu and R¨ossler systems. The paper also considers obtaining solution for Van der Pol equation (reduced to a nonlinear system). The aim of the study is to construct semi-analytical solutions represented as a segment of a power series in a step size of approximating difference scheme. To prevent overflow, authors formalize rank transfer operation. The authors apply a convergent difference scheme, referred to as the “guiding” scheme, to advance to the next step of the independent variable. The resulting approximation by a sum with only a few terms provides an approximation to the solution with any accuracy in accordance with the accuracy of the governing difference scheme. The senior digits in the resulting approximation exhibit probabilistic properties that can be modeled by known distributions, thereby enabling the derivation of analytical and semi-analytical approximations. The paper presents linear approximations that are the base for a complete approximations of solutions and provide important qualitative as well as some quantitative properties of solutions of considered systems. This work describes approximations of various orders, including those that do not guarantee convergence to the exact solution, but simplify the analysis of certain properties of nonlinear equations and systems. In particular, for the Van der Pol equation, authors demonstrate that its corresponding system has a cyclic solution and provide an estimate of its scale. A modification of the MCA that has features of the Monte Carlo method makes it possible to remove recurrent sequences and construct complete solutions in simple situations. The authors mention a promising approach for representing the solution using branched continued fractions.

Based on CFD computations we provide the analysis of the possibilities for using modern hybrid distributed computational environments for large complex system simulation. We argue that only multilevel approach supported by new mathematical models of transport properties, dynamical representation of the problem with transport and internal processes separated, and modern paradigm of programming, taking into account specific properties of heterogeneous system, will make it possible to scale the problem effectively.

The currently performed mathematical and computer modeling of thermal processes in technical systems is based on an assumption that all the parameters determining thermal processes are fully and unambiguously known and identified (i.e., determined). Meanwhile, experience has shown that parameters determining the thermal processes are of undefined interval-stochastic character, which in turn is responsible for the intervalstochastic nature of thermal processes in the electronic system. This means that the actual temperature values of each element in an technical system will be randomly distributed within their variation intervals. Therefore, the determinative approach to modeling of thermal processes that yields specific values of element temperatures does not allow one to adequately calculate temperature distribution in electronic systems. The interval-stochastic nature of the parameters determining the thermal processes depends on three groups of factors: (a) statistical technological variation of parameters of the elements when manufacturing and assembling the system; (b) the random nature of the factors caused by functioning of an technical system (fluctuations in current and voltage; power, temperatures, and flow rates of the cooling fluid and the medium inside the system); and (c) the randomness of ambient parameters (temperature, pressure, and flow rate). The interval-stochastic indeterminacy of the determinative factors in technical systems is irremediable; neglecting it causes errors when designing electronic systems. A method that allows modeling of unsteady interval-stochastic thermal processes in technical systems (including those upon interval indeterminacy of the determinative parameters) is developed in this paper. The method is based on obtaining and further solving equations for the unsteady statistical measures (mathematical expectations, variances and covariances) of the temperature distribution in an technical system at given variation intervals and the statistical measures of the determinative parameters. Application of the elaborated method to modeling of the interval-stochastic thermal process in a particular electronic system is considered.

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.

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.

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.

We present a physico-mathematical statement of coupled geometrical and gas dynamics problem of intrachamber processes simulation and calculation of main internal ballistics characteristics of solid rocket motors in axisymmetric approximation. Method and numerical algorithm of solving the problem are described in this paper. We track the propellant burning surface using the level set method. This method allows us to implicitly represent the surface on a fixed Cartesian grid as zero-level of some function. Two-dimensional gas-dynamics equations describe a flow of combustion products in a solid rocket motor. Due to inconsistency of domain boundaries and nodes of computational grid, presence of ghost points lying outside the computational domain is taken into account. For setting the values of flow parameters in ghost points, we use the inverse Lax – Wendroff procedure. We discretize spatial derivatives of level set and gas-dynamics equations with standard WENO schemes of fifth and third-order respectively and time derivatives using total variation diminishing Runge –Kutta methods. We parallelize the presented numerical algorithm using CUDA technology and further optimize it with regard to peculiarities of graphics processors architecture.

Created software package is used for calculating internal ballistics characteristics of nozzleless solid rocket motor during main firing phase. On the base of obtained numerical results, we discuss efficiency of parallelization using CUDA technology and applying considered optimizations. It has been shown that implemented parallelization technique leads to a significant acceleration in comparison with central processes. Distributions of key parameters of combustion products flow in different periods of time have been presented in this paper. We make a comparison of obtained results between quasione-dimensional approach and developed numerical technique.

Authors describe a two-stage traffic assignment model. It contains of two blocks. The first block consists of a model for calculating a correspondence (demand) matrix, whereas the second block is a traffic assignment model. The first model calculates a matrix of correspondences using a matrix of transport costs (it characterizes the required volumes of movement from one area to another, it is time in this case). To solve this problem, authors propose to use one of the most popular methods of calculating the correspondence matrix in urban studies — the entropy model. The second model describes exactly how the needs for displacement specified by the correspondence matrix are distributed along the possible paths. Knowing the ways of the flows distribution along the paths, it is possible to calculate the cost matrix. Equilibrium in a two-stage model is a fixed point in the sequence of these two models. In practice the problem of finding a fixed point can be solved by the fixed-point iteration method. Unfortunately, at the moment the issue of convergence and estimations of the convergence rate for this method has not been studied quite thoroughly. In addition, the numerical implementation of the algorithm results in many problems. In particular, if the starting point is incorrect, situations may arise where the algorithm requires extremely large numbers to be computed and exceeds the available memory even on the most modern computers. Therefore the article proposes a method for reducing the problem of finding the equilibrium to the problem of the convex non-smooth optimization. Also a numerical method for solving the obtained optimization problem is proposed. Numerical experiments were carried out for both methods of solving the problem. The authors used data for Vladivostok (for this city information from various sources was processed and collected in a new dataset) and two smaller cities in the USA. It was not possible to achieve convergence by the method of fixed-point iteration, whereas the second model for the same dataset demonstrated convergence rate $k^{-1.67}$.