1,720,962 research outputs found
Low-rank compression techniques in integral methods for eddy currents problems
No full textVolume integral methods for the solution of eddy current problems are very appealing in practice since only the conducting regions need to be meshed. However, they require the assembly and storage of a dense stiffness matrix. With the objective of cutting down assembly time and memory occupation, low-rank approximation techniques like the Adaptive Cross Approximation (ACA) have been considered a major breakthrough. Recently, the VINCO framework has been introduced to reduce significantly memory occupation and computational time thanks to a novel factorization of the dense stiffness matrix. The aim of this paper is introducing a new matrix compression technique enabled by the VINCO framework. We compare the performance of VINCO framework approaches with state-of-the-art alternatives in terms of memory occupation, computational time and accuracy by solving benchmark eddy current problems at increasing mesh sizes; the comparisons are carried out using both direct and iterative solvers. The results clearly indicate that the so-called VINCO-FAIME approach which exploits the Fast Multipole Method (FMM) has the best performance
Explicit geometric construction of sparse inverse mass matrices for arbitrary tetrahedral grids
No full textThe geometric reinterpretation of the Finite Element Method (FEM) shows that Raviart–Thomas and Nédélec mass matrices map from degrees of freedoms (DoFs) attached to geometric elements of a tetrahedral grid to DoFs attached to the barycentric dual grid. The algebraic inverses of the mass matrices map DoFs attached to the barycentric dual grid back to DoFs attached to the corresponding primal tetrahedral grid, but they are of limited practical use since they are dense. In this paper we present a new geometric construction of sparse inverse mass matrices for arbitrary tetrahedral grids and possibly inhomogeneous and anisotropic materials, debunking the conventional wisdom that the barycentric dual grid prohibits a sparse representation for inverse mass matrices. In particular, we provide a unified framework for the construction of both edge and face mass matrices and their sparse inverses. Such a unifying principle relies on novel geometric reconstruction formulas, from which, according to a well-established design strategy, local mass matrices are constructed as the sum of a consistent and a stabilization part. A major difference with the approaches proposed so far is that the consistent part is defined geometrically and explicitly, that is, without the necessity of computing the inverses of local matrices. This provides a sensible speedup and an easier implementation. We use these new sparse inverse mass matrices to discretize a three-dimensional Poisson problem, providing the comparison between the results obtained by various formulations on a benchmark problem with analytical solution
New magic formulas demonstration shows unexpected features of geometrically defined matrices for polyhedral grids
No full textMagic formulas are the geometric identities at the root of modern compatible schemes for polyhedral grids. We present rigorous yet elementary proofs of the magic formulas originating from Stokes theorem. The proofs enlighten new fundamental aspects of the mass matrices produced with the magic formulas. First, the construction of the mass matrices works for an unexpectedly broad type of mesh cells. Second, they show that dual nodes can be arbitrarily positioned thus extending the construction of the dual barycentric grid
A Novel Family of Inductance Matrix Compression Techniques
No full textIntegral methods for the solution of eddy current problems are very appealing since they avoid the meshing of the insulating regions. Yet, their main shortcoming is that they require the assembly and storage of a fully populated stiffness matrix K. To reduce the memory footprint and to enable a fast matrix construction, low-rank approximations techniques-like the Adaptive Cross Approximation (ACA)-have been considered a major breakthrough in the field. This paper presents a novel family of compression techniques that is enabled by a novel explicit factorization of the inductance matrix. Such a novel family exhibits orders of magnitude speedup and memory consumption with respect to state-of-the-art techniques. In particular, the aim of this paper is to compare for the first time the memory occupation, computation time and accuracy of the solution obtained with different compression techniques
Inverting the discrete curl operator: A novel graph algorithm to find a vector potential of a given vector field
No full textWe provide a novel framework to compute a discrete vector potential of a given discrete vector field on arbitrary polyhedral meshes. The framework exploits the concept of acyclic matching, a combinatorial tool at the core of discrete Morse theory. We introduce the new concept of complete acyclic matchings and we show that they give the same end result of Gaussian elimination. Basically, instead of doing costly row and column operations on a sparse matrix, we compute equivalent cheap combinatorial operations that preserve the underlying sparsity structure. Currently, the most efficient algorithms proposed in literature to find discrete vector potentials make use of tree-cotree techniques. We show that they compute a special type of complete acyclic matchings. Moreover, we show that the problem of computing them is equivalent to the problem of deciding whether a given mesh has a topological property called collapsibility. This fact gives a topological characterization of well-known termination problems of tree-cotree techniques. We propose a new recursive algorithm to compute discrete vector potentials. It works directly on basis elements of 1- and 2-chains by performing elementary Gaussian operations on them associated with acyclic matchings. However, the main novelty is that it can be applied recursively. Indeed, the recursion process allows us to sidetrack termination problems of the standard tree-cotree techniques. We tested the algorithm on pathological triangulations with known topological obstructions. In all tested problems we observe linear computational complexity as a function of mesh size. Moreover, the algorithm is purely graph-based so it is straightforward to implement and does not require specialized external procedures. We believe that our framework could offer new perspectives to sparse matrix computations
Foundations of volume integral methods for eddy current problems
No full textIntegral methods for solving eddy current problems use Biot–Savart law to produce non-local constitutive relations that lead to fully populated generalized mass matrices, better known as inductance matrices. These formulations are appealing because—unlike standard Finite Element solutions—they avoid the generation of a mesh in the insulating regions. The aim of this paper is to alleviate the three main problems of volume integral methods. First, the computation of the inductance matrix elements is slow and also delicate because of the singularity in the integral equation. This paper introduces novel face basis functions that allow a much faster inductance matrix construction with respect to the standard one based on the Rao–Wilton–Glisson (RWG) or Raviart–Thomas (RT) basis functions. Second, our basis functions work for polyhedral elements formed by any number of faces (including prisms, hexahedra and pyramids), while producing the same results as RWG and RT basis functions for tetrahedral meshes. Third, the new basis functions allow to factorize the inductance matrix and to introduce a novel family of groundbreaking low-rank inductance matrix compression techniques that show several orders of magnitude improvement in memory occupation and computational effort than state-of-the-art alternatives, allowing to solve problems that otherwise cannot be faced
METHOD FOR OPTICAL MEASURING VARIATIONS OF CELL MEMBRANE CONDUCTANCE
No full textThe instant invention refers to an optical method to extrapolate cell membrane conductance by indirect measurement of changes in transmembrane voltage upon exposure of at least a cell to electric field pulses, and to its application for evaluating the activity of molecules able to alter, directly or indirectly, membrane permeability. A specific field of application is the screening of candidate compounds, based on their effects on ion channel activit
The role of the dual grid in low-order compatible numerical schemes on general meshes
No full textIn this work, we uncover hidden geometric aspect of low-order compatible numerical schemes. First, we rewrite standard mimetic reconstruction operators defined by Stokes theorem using geometric elements of the barycentric dual grid, providing the equivalence between mimetic numerical schemes and discrete geometric approaches. Second, we introduce a novel global property of the reconstruction operators, called P0-consistency, which extends the standard consistency requirement of the mimetic framework. This concept characterizes the whole class of reconstruction operators that can be used to construct a global mass matrix in such a way that a global patch test is passed. Given the geometric description of the scheme, we can set up a correspondence between entries of reconstruction operators and geometric elements of a secondary grid, which is built by duality from the primary grid used in the scheme formulation. Finally, we show the that the geometric interpretation is necessary for the correct evaluation of certain physical variables in the post-processing stage. A discussion on how the geometric viewpoint allows to optimize reconstruction operators completes the exposition
The curved mimetic finite difference method: Allowing grids with curved faces
No full textWe present a new mimetic finite difference method for diffusion problems that converges on grids with curved (i.e., non-planar) faces. Crucially, it gives a symmetric discrete problem that uses only one discrete unknown per curved face. The principle at the core of our construction is to abandon the standard definition of local consistency of mimetic finite difference methods. Instead, we exploit the novel and global concept of P0-consistency. Numerical examples confirm the consistency and the optimal convergence rate of the proposed mimetic method for cubic grids with randomly perturbed nodes as well as grids with curved boundaries
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