All issues

Verification of the physical-statistical approach within reliability theory for the simplest cases was carried out, which showed its validity. An analytical solution of the one-dimensional basic equation of the physicalstatistical approach is presented under the assumption of a stationary degradation rate. From a mathematical point of view this equation is the well-known continuity equation, where the role of density is played by the density distribution function of goods in its characteristics phase space, and the role of fluid velocity is played by intensity (rate) degradation processes. The latter connects the general formalism with the specifics of degradation mechanisms. The cases of coordinate constant, linear and quadratic degradation rates are analyzed using the characteristics method. In the first two cases, the results correspond to physical intuition. At a constant rate of degradation, the shape of the initial distribution is preserved, and the distribution itself moves equably from the zero. At a linear rate of degradation, the distribution either narrows down to a narrow peak (in the singular limit), or expands, with the maximum shifting to the periphery at an exponentially increasing rate. The distribution form is also saved up to the parameters. For the initial normal distribution, the coordinates of the largest value of the distribution maximum for its return motion are obtained analytically.

In the quadratic case, the formal solution demonstrates counterintuitive behavior. It consists in the fact that the solution is uniquely defined only on a part of an infinite half-plane, vanishes along with all derivatives on the boundary, and is ambiguous when crossing the boundary. If you continue it to another area in accordance with the analytical solution, it has a two-humped appearance, retains the amount of substance and, which is devoid of physical meaning, periodically over time. If you continue it with zero, then the conservativeness property is violated. The anomaly of the quadratic case is explained, though not strictly, by the analogy of the motion of a material point with an acceleration proportional to the square of velocity. Here we are dealing with a mathematical curiosity. Numerical calculations are given for all cases. Additionally, the entropy of the probability distribution and the reliability function are calculated, and their correlation is traced.

An essential class of problems describes physical processes occurring in non-convex domains containing a corner greater than 180 degrees on the boundary. The solution in a neighborhood of a corner is singular and its finding using classical approaches entails a loss of accuracy. In the paper, we consider stationary, linearized by Picard’s iterations, Navier – Stokes equations governing the flow of a incompressible viscous fluid in the convection form in $L$-shaped domain. An $R_\nu$-generalized solution of the problem in special sets of weighted spaces is defined. A special finite element method to find an approximate $R_\nu$-generalized solution is constructed. Firstly, functions of the finite element spaces satisfy the law of conservation of mass in the strong sense, i.e. at the grid nodes. For this purpose, Scott – Vogelius element pair is used. The fulfillment of the condition of mass conservation leads to the finding more accurate, from a physical point of view, solution. Secondly, basis functions of the finite element spaces are supplemented by weight functions. The degree of the weight function, as well as the parameter $\nu$ in the definition of an $R_\nu$-generalized solution, and a radius of a neighborhood of the singularity point are free parameters of the method. A specially selected combination of them leads to an increase almost twice in the order of convergence rate of an approximate solution to the exact one in relation to the classical approaches. The convergence rate reaches the first order by the grid step in the norms of Sobolev weight spaces. Thus, numerically shown that the convergence rate does not depend on the corner value.

Correct modeling of complex dynamics of urban transportation flows requires the collection of large volumes of empirical data to specify types of the modes and their identification. At the same time, setting a large number of observation posts is expensive and technically not always feasible. All this results in insufficient factographic support for the traffic control systems as well as for urban planners with the obvious consequences for the quality of their decisions. As one of the means to provide large-scale data collection at least for the qualitative situation analysis, the wide-area video cameras are used in different situation centers. There they are analyzed by human operators who are responsible for observation and control. Some video cameras provided their videos for common access, which makes them a valuable resource for transportation studies. However, there are significant problems with getting qualitative data from such cameras, which relate to the theory and practice of image processing. This study is devoted to the practical application of certain mainstream neuro-networking technologies for the estimation of essential characteristics of actual transportation flows. The problems arising in processing these data are analyzed, and their solutions are suggested. The convolution neural networks are used for tracking, and the methods for obtaining basic parameters of transportation flows from these observations are studied. The simplified neural networks are used for the preparation of training sets for the deep learning neural network YOLOv4 which is later used for the estimation of speed and density of automobile flows.

In this paper, a gravitational system is understood as a set of point bodies that interact according to Newton's law of attraction and have a negative value of the total energy. The question of the stability (nonstability) of a gravitational system of general position is discussed by direct computational experiment. A gravitational system of general position is a system in which the masses, initial positions, and velocities of bodies are chosen randomly from given ranges. A new method for the numerical solution of ordinary differential equations at large time intervals has been developed for the computational experiment. The proposed method allowed, on the one hand, to ensure the fulfillment of all conservation laws by a suitable correction of solutions, on the other hand, to use standard methods for the numerical solution of systems of differential equations of low approximation order. Within the framework of this method, the trajectory of a gravitational system in phase space is assembled from parts, the duration of each of which can be macroscopic. The constructed trajectory, generally speaking, is discontinuous, and the points of joining of individual pieces of the trajectory act as branch points. In connection with the latter circumstance, the proposed method, in part, can be attributed to the class of Monte Carlo methods. The general conclusion of a series of computational experiments has shown that gravitational systems of general position with a number of bodies of 3 or more, generally speaking, are unstable. In the framework of the proposed method, special cases of zero-equal angular momentum of a gravitational system with a number of bodies of 3 or more, as well as the problem of motion of two bodies, are specially considered. The case of numerical modeling of the dynamics of the solar system in time is considered separately. From the standpoint of computational experiments based on analytical methods, as well as direct numerical methods of high-order approximation (10 and higher), the stability of the solar system was previously demonstrated at an interval of five billion years or more. Due to the limitations on the available computational resources, the stability of the dynamics of the planets of the solar system within the framework of the proposed method was confirmed for a period of ten million years. With the help of a computational experiment, one of the possible scenarios for the disintegration of the solar systems is also considered.

We consider a model of spontaneous formation of a computational structure in the human brain for solving a given class of tasks in the process of performing a series of similar tasks. The model is based on a special definition of a numerical measure of the complexity of the solution algorithm. This measure has an informational property: the complexity of a computational structure consisting of two independent structures is equal to the sum of the complexities of these structures. Then the probability of spontaneous occurrence of the structure depends exponentially on the complexity of the structure. The exponential coefficient requires experimental determination for each type of problem. It may depend on the form of presentation of the source data and the procedure for issuing the result. This estimation method was applied to the results of a series of experiments that determined the strategy for solving a series of similar problems with a growing number of initial data. These experiments were described in previously published papers. Two main strategies were considered: sequential execution of the computational algorithm, or the use of parallel computing in those tasks where it is effective. These strategies differ in how calculations are performed. Using an estimate of the complexity of schemes, you can use the empirical probability of one of the strategies to calculate the probability of the other. The calculations performed showed a good match between the calculated and empirical probabilities. This confirms the hypothesis about the spontaneous formation of structures that solve the problem during the initial training of a person. The paper contains a brief description of experiments, detailed computational schemes and a strict definition of the complexity measure of computational structures and the conclusion of the dependence of the probability of structure formation on its complexity.

In this paper, a comparative analysis of the exact and heuristic algorithms presented by the method of branches and boundaries, genetic and ant algorithms, respectively, is carried out to find the optimal solution to the traveling salesman problem using the example of a courier robot. The purpose of the work is to determine the running time, the length of the obtained route and the amount of memory required for the program to work, using the method of branches and boundaries and evolutionary heuristic algorithms. Also, the most appropriate of the listed methods for use in the specified conditions is determined. This article uses the materials of the conducted research, implemented in the format of a computer program, the program code for which is implemented in Python. In the course of the study, a number of criteria for the applicability of algorithms were selected (the time of the program, the length of the constructed route and the amount of memory necessary for the program to work), the results of the algorithms were obtained under specified conditions and conclusions were drawn about the degree of expediency of using one or another algorithm in various specified conditions of the courier robot. During the study, it turned out that for a small number of points  $\leqslant10$, the method of branches and boundaries is the most preferable, since it finds the optimal solution faster. However, when calculating the route by this method, provided that the points increase by more than 10, the operating time increases exponentially. In this case, more effective results are obtained by a heuristic approach using a genetic and ant algorithm. At the same time, the ant algorithm is distinguished by solutions that are closest to the reference ones and with an increase of more than 16 points. Its relative disadvantage is the greatest resource intensity among the considered algorithms. The genetic algorithm gives similar results, but after increasing the points more than 16, the length of the found route increases relative to the reference one. The advantage of the genetic algorithm is its lower resource intensity compared to other algorithms.

The practical significance of this article lies in the potential possibility of using the results obtained for the optimal solution of logistics problems by an automated system in various fields: warehouse logistics, transport logistics, «last mile» logistics, etc.

The article considers minimization of the expectation of convex function. Problems of this type often arise in machine learning and a variety of other applications. In practice, stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and similar procedures are usually used to solve such problems. We propose to use the ellipsoid method with mini-batching, which converges linearly and can be more efficient than SGD for a class of problems. This is verified by our experiments, which are publicly available. The algorithm does not require neither smoothness nor strong convexity of the objective to achieve linear convergence. Thus, its complexity does not depend on the conditional number of the problem. We prove that the method arrives at an approximate solution with given probability when using mini-batches of size proportional to the desired accuracy to the power −2. This enables efficient parallel execution of the algorithm, whereas possibilities for batch parallelization of SGD are rather limited. Despite fast convergence, ellipsoid method can result in a greater total number of calls to oracle than SGD, which works decently with small batches. Complexity is quadratic in dimension of the problem, hence the method is suitable for relatively small dimensionalities.

Finding the global minimum of a nonconvex function is one of the key and most difficult problems of the modern optimization. In this paper we consider special classes of nonconvex problems which have a clear and distinct global minimum.

In the first part of the paper we consider two classes of «good» nonconvex functions, which can be bounded below and above by a parabolic function. This class of problems has not been widely studied in the literature, although it is rather interesting from an applied point of view. Moreover, for such problems first-order and higher-order methods may be completely ineffective in finding a global minimum. This is due to the fact that the function may oscillate heavily or may be very noisy. Therefore, our new methods use only zero-order information and are based on grid search. The size and fineness of this grid, and hence the guarantee of convergence speed and oracle complexity, depend on the «goodness» of the problem. In particular, we show that if the function is bounded by fairly close parabolic functions, then the complexity is independent of the dimension of the problem. We show that our new methods converge with a linear convergence rate $\log(1/\varepsilon)$ to a global minimum on the cube.

In the second part of the paper, we consider the nonconvex optimization problem from a different angle. We assume that the target minimizing function is the sum of the convex quadratic problem and a nonconvex «noise» function proportional to the distance to the global solution. Considering functions with such noise assumptions for zero-order methods is new in the literature. For such a problem, we use the classical gradient-free approach with gradient approximation through finite differences. We show how the convergence analysis for our problems can be reduced to the standard analysis for convex optimization problems. In particular, we achieve a linear convergence rate for such problems as well.

Experimental results confirm the efficiency and practical applicability of all the obtained methods.

The paper studies a multidimensional convection-diffusion equation with variable coefficients and a nonclassical boundary condition. Two cases are considered: in the first case, the first boundary condition contains the integral of the unknown function with respect to the integration variable $x_\alpha^{}$, and in the second case, the integral of the unknown function with respect to the integration variable $\tau$, denoting the memory effect. Similar problems arise when studying the transport of impurities along the riverbed. For an approximate solution of the problem posed, a locally one-dimensional difference scheme by A.A. Samarskii with order of approximation $O(h^2+\tau)$. In view of the fact that the equation contains the first derivative of the unknown function with respect to the spatial variable $x_\alpha^{}$, the wellknown method proposed by A.A. Samarskii in constructing a monotonic scheme of the second order of accuracy in $h_\alpha^{}$ for a general parabolic type equation containing one-sided derivatives taking into account the sign of $r_\alpha^{}(x,t)$. To increase the boundary conditions of the third kind to the second order of accuracy in $h_\alpha^{}$, we used the equation, on the assumption that it is also valid at the boundaries. The study of the uniqueness and stability of the solution was carried out using the method of energy inequalities. A priori estimates are obtained for the solution of the difference problem in the $L_2^{}$-norm, which implies the uniqueness of the solution, the continuous and uniform dependence of the solution of the difference problem on the input data, and the convergence of the solution of the locally onedimensional difference scheme to the solution of the original differential problem in the $L_2^{}$-norm with speed equal to the order of approximation of the difference scheme. For a two-dimensional problem, a numerical solution algorithm is constructed.

A variant of the inverse method of characteristics (IMH) is presented, in whose algorithm an additional fractional time step is introduced, which makes it possible to increase the accuracy of calculations due to a more accurate approximation of the characteristics. The calculation formulas of the modified method for the equations of the one-velocity model of a gas-liquid mixture are given, with the help of which one-dimensional and also flat test problems with self-similar solutions are calculated. When solving multidimensional problems, the original system of equations is split into a number of one-dimensional subsystems, for the calculation of which the inverse method of characteristics with a fractional time step is used. Using the proposed method, the following were calculated: the one-dimensional problem of the decay of an arbitrary discontinuity in a dispersed medium; a twodimensional problem of the interaction of a homogeneous gas-liquid flow with an obstacle with an attached shock wave, as well as a flow with a centered rarefaction wave. The results of numerical calculations of these problems are compared with self-similar solutions and their satisfactory agreement is noted. On the example of the Riemann problem with a shock wave, a comparison is made with a number of conservative, non-conservative, first and higher orders of accuracy schemes, from which, in particular, it follows that the presented calculation method, i. e. MIMC, quite competitive. Despite the fact that the application of MIMC requires many times more time than the original inverse method of characteristics (IMC), calculations can be carried out with an increased time step and, in some cases, more accurate results can be obtained. It is noted that the method with a fractional time step has advantages over the IMC in cases where the characteristics of the system are significantly curvilinear. For this reason, the use of MIMC, for example, for the Euler equations is inappropriate, since for the latter the characteristics within the time step differ little from straight lines.