Radial Basis Function Collocation Research Articles

Meshfree methods for nonlinear equilibrium radiation diffusion equation with interface and discontinuous coefficient

The partial differential equation describing equilibrium radiation diffusion is strongly nonlinear, which has been widely utilized in various fields such as astrophysics and others. The equilibrium radiation diffusion equation usually appears over multiple complicated domains, and the material characteristics vary between each domain. The diffusion coefficient near the interface is discontinuous. In this paper, the equilibrium radiation diffusion equation with discontinuous diffusion coefficient will be solved numerically by the unsymmetric radial basis function collocation method. The energy term T4 is linearized by utilizing the Picard-Newton and Richtmyer linearization methods on the basis of the fully implicit scheme discretization. And the successive permutation iteration and direct linearization methods are applied to linearize the diffusion terms. The accuracy of the proposed methods is proved by numerical experiments for regular and irregular domains with different types of interfaces.

Fourth-order phase field modelling of brittle fracture with strong form meshless method

This study aims to find a solution for crack propagation in 2D brittle elastic material using the local radial basis function collocation method. The staggered solution of the fourth-order phase field and mechanical model is structured with polyharmonic spline shape functions augmented with polynomials. Two benchmark tests are carried out to assess the performance of the method. First, a non-cracked square plate problem is solved under tensile loading to validate the implementation by comparing the numerical and analytical solutions. The analysis shows that the iterative process converges even with a large loading step, whereas the non-iterative process requires smaller steps for convergence to the analytical solution. In the second case, a single-edge cracked square plate subjected to tensile loading is solved, and the results show a good agreement with the reference solution. The effects of the incremental loading, length scale parameter, and mesh convergence for regular and scattered nodes are demonstrated. This study presents a pioneering attempt to solve the phase field crack propagation using a strong-form meshless method. The results underline the essential role of the represented method for an accurate and efficient solution to crack propagation. It also provides valuable insights for future research towards more sophisticated material models.

The localized radial basis function collocation method for dendritic solidification, solid phase sintering and wetting phenomenon based on phase field

Phase-field has been effectively applied to many complex problems according to the mesh based method. However, the computational speed of the numerical method based on phase-field still needs improved. In this paper, an improved localized radial basis function collocation method (LRBFCM) based on the adaptive support domain is employed to the phase-field methods. The proposed adaptive support domain can increase the stability of the LRBFCM, and the improved LRBFCM is much more efficient than the traditional finite element method (FEM) in coupling with phase-field methods. The proposed approach is further applied to the single-phase dendrite solidification, two-phase sintering, and three-phase wetting phenomena. We compare the efficiency of the proposed LRBFCM with different numerical methods, which show that the LRBFCM combined with the Fourier spectral method can deal with the three-phase model with more than ten million nodes easily.

A POD based reduced-order local RBF collocation approach for time-dependent nonlocal diffusion problems

A fast algorithm based on reduced-order model (ROM) is proposed for unsteady nonlocal diffusion models. It combines proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) approach and collocation method with local radial basis functions (RBFs), which makes it possible for using ROM to solve nonlocal models. Several numerical experiments showed that this approach significantly reduce the computational cost of nonlocal models while keep the similar convergent behavior compared with the RBF collocation methods.

Numerical investigation of the mesh-free collocation approach for solving third kind VIEs with nonlinear vanishing delays

The principal purpose of this investigation is to present an approximate algorithm for solving third-kind Volterra integral equation with nonlinear vanishing delays using mesh-free techniques based on a radial basis function collocation scheme. This technique does not require background approximation cells, and the algorithm is efficient, has good stability and does not require much computer memory. A description of the approach for the proposed equations is provided. The error estimation of the proposed approach is also provided. The accuracy and reliability of the new scheme are demonstrated through numerical examples. Some of these examples have been compared with analytical solutions and moving least squares methods. The numerical results validate their agreement with theoretical error estimates.

Using collocation with radial basis functions in a pseudospectral framework to the analysis of laminated plates by the Reissner’s mixed variational theorem

Abstract In order to predict the static deformations and free vibration behaviour of thin and thick cross-ply laminated plates, we integrate Carrera’s unified formulation with a radial basis function collocation technique on a pseudospectral framework, using Reissner’s mixed variational theorem. Numerical examples illustrate the precision and effectiveness of this collocation technique for static and vibration problems.

Fourth-order phase-field simulation of cracks using strong form meshless method

The prediction of crack propagation in fracture mechanics is still a fundamental challenge. In recent decades, phase-field formulation emerged as a powerful tool for the simulation of crack evolution, which offers a continuous representation of cracks from intact to broken material. For the first time, the present study combines a fourth-order phase field and a strong-form meshless method to investigate crack propagation in brittle elastic material. The local radial basis function collocation method, structured with the augmented polyharmonic splines, is used to solve the coupled mechanical and phase-field models. Due to the smooth nature of the fourth-order phase-field model, the sharp transition at the crack surface can be avoided. It is found that the presented method successfully predicts the crack propagation for a material subjected to tensile loading. The obtained results agree well with the benchmark case. Further study will include elastoplastic material behaviour and applications to crack formation in different steel processing steps.

Elasto-plastic simulation of hot shape rolling of steel by a meshless method

This paper describes the development of meshless simulation of thermomechanics of steel in a continuous hot rolling process using a novel meshless solution procedure. During the process, steel billets at high temperatures are transferred through multiple roll passes, each with a specific groove shape and roll gap. The major outcome of this simulation system is to design the rolling schedule and confirm whether the final shape is inside the acceptable range. For this purpose, a perpendicular 2D slice model approach is used to obtain fast and reasonably accurate simulation results. A return mapping algorithm solves the elasto-plastic material model with linear hardening to obtain displacements, strains and stresses. They are calculated by the local radial basis function collocation method (LRBFCM), which uses the local interpolation of the strong form of partial differential equations. The predefined slice positions are entered into the rolling system, and for each position, the slice contact line and amount of reduction are predicted and used as boundary conditions. Thermal and mechanical models are run sequentially, which is repeated until the final slice position reaches the exit from the last roll. The simulation system was validated with multiple rolling schedules provided by the industrial partner and was successfully used in the steel production plant afterwards. The meshless LRBFCM successfully solves a complex elasto-plastic large deformation problem of hot rolling for the first time.

A new hybrid local radial basis function collocation method for 2.5D thermo-mechanical modelling of continuous casting of steel

This study presents a new strong-form meshless method to solve the thermo-mechanical problem of the solidification process in the continuous casting of steel. A two-dimensional slice that travels in the casting direction is modelled in the Lagrangian system. The newly developed mechanical model is one-way coupled to the thermal model, where the heat flux due to the mould, sprays, rolls and radiation are imposed to solve heat transfer in the strand. The resulting temperature and metallostatic pressure govern the Norton-Hoff visco-plastic model used for computing shrinkage of the solid shell and induced residual stresses. The results are used to estimate critical areas susceptible to hot-tearing formation. The mechanical model uses a generalised plane strain assumption that includes linear strains perpendicular to the slice and enables the computation of the straightening of the strand. The thermo-mechanical model is spatially discretised with a local radial basis function collocation method (LRBFCM). The mechanical part includes a new hybrid method that combines LRBFCM with finite differences for increased stability. The presented work shows how the developed model is used to assess the impact of casting velocity on the solid shell shrinkage and the probability of hot-tearing occurrence in the continuous casting of square billets.

Simulation of temperature field in steel billets moving in the reheating furnace by a meshless method

A simulation of a reheating furnace in a steel production line where the steel billets are heated from room temperature up to 1200 °C is carried out. In this work, governing equations are solved in a strong form by the meshless local radial basis function collocation method (LRBFCM) with explicit time-stepping. The solution of the diffusion equation for the temperature is formulated on a two-dimensional central slice of the billet. The temperature field is solved by considering the positions of multiple billets in the furnace and the radiative and convective heat fluxes on the boundaries of the furnace and the billets. Ray tracing procedure, in which the view factors are computed with a Monte-Carlo method, is employed to determine the radiative heat flux. A sensitivity study is performed on the influence of two different stopping times of the billets in the furnace on the temperature evolution.

Simulation of Temperature Field in Steel Billets during Reheating in Pusher-Type Furnace by Meshless Method

Using a meshless method, a simulation of steel billets in a pusher-type reheating furnace is carried out for the first time. The simulation represents an affordable way to replace the measurements. The heat transfer from the billets with convection and radiation is considered. Inside each of the billets, the heat diffusion equation is solved on a two-dimensional central slice of the billet. The diffusion equation is solved in a strong form by the Local Radial Basis Function Collocation Method (LRBFCM) with explicit time-stepping. The ray tracing procedure solves the radiation, where the view factors are computed with the Monte Carlo method. The changing number of billets in the furnace at the start and the end of the loading and unloading of the furnace is considered. A sensitivity study on billets’ temperature evolution is performed as a function of a different number of rays used in the Monte Carlo method, different stopping times of the billets in the furnace, and different spacing between the billets. The temperature field simulation is also essential for automatically optimizing the furnace’s productivity, energy consumption, and the billet’s quality. For the first time, the LRBFCM is successfully demonstrated for solving such a complex industrial problem.

PARALLEL MESHLESS RADIAL BASIS FUNCTION COLLOCATION METHOD FOR NEUTRON DIFFUSION PROBLEMS

The meshless global radial basis function (RBF) collocation method is widely used to model physical phenomena in science and engineering. The method produces highly accurate solutions with an exponential convergence rate. However, due to the global approximation structure of the method, dense node distributions lead to long computation times and hinder the applicability of the technique. In order to overcome this issue, this study proposes a parallel meshless global RBF collocation algorithm. The algorithm is applied to 2-D neutron diffusion problems. The multiquadric is used as the RBF. The algorithm is developed with Mathematica and eight virtual processors are used in calculations on a multicore computer with four physical cores. The method provides accurate numerical results in a stable manner. Parallel speedup increases with the number of processors up to five and seven processors for external and fission source problems, respectively. The speedup values are limited by the constrained resource sharing of the multicore computer’s memory. On the other hand, significant time savings are achieved with parallel computation. For the four-group fission source problem, when 4316 interpolation nodes are employed, the utilization of seven processors instead of sequential computation decreases the computation time of the meshless approach by 716 s.

Assessment of Local Radial Basis Function Collocation Method for Diffusion Problems Structured with Multiquadrics and Polyharmonic Splines

This paper aims to systematically assess the local radial basis function collocation method, structured with multiquadrics (MQs) and polyharmonic splines (PHSs), for solving steady and transient diffusion problems. The boundary value test involves a rectangle with Dirichlet, Neuman, and Robin boundary conditions, and the initial value test is associated with the Dirichlet jump problem on a square. The spectra of the free parameters of the method, i.e., node density, timestep, shape parameter, etc., are analyzed in terms of the average error. It is found that the use of MQs is less stable compared to PHSs for irregular node arrangements. For MQs, the most suitable shape parameter is determined for multiple cases. The relationship of the shape parameter with the total number of nodes, average error, node scattering factor, and the number of nodes in the local subdomain is also provided. For regular node arrangements, MQs produce slightly more accurate results, while for irregular node arrangements, PHSs provide higher accuracy than MQs. PHSs are recommended for use in diffusion problems that require irregular node spacing.

Numerical and statistical approach on chemotaxis-haptotaxis model for cancer cell invasion of tissue

<abstract><p>In this study, a one-dimensional chemotaxis-haptotaxis model of cancer cell invasion of tissue was numerically and statistically investigated. In the numerical part, the time dependent, nonlinear, triplet governing dimensionless equations consisting of cancer cell (CC) density, extracellular matrix (ECM) density, and urokinase plasminogen activator (uPA) density were solved by the radial basis function (RBF) collocation method both in time and space discretization. In the statistical part, mean CC density, mean ECM density, and mean uPA density were modeled by two different machine learning approaches. The datasets for modeling were originated from the numerical results. The numerical method was performed in a set of parameter combinations by parallel computing and the data in case of convergent combinations were stored. In this data, inputs consisted of selected time values up to a maximum time value and converged parameter values, and outputs were mean CC, mean ECM, and mean uPA. The whole data was divided randomly into train and test data. Trilayer neural network (TNN) and multilayer adaptive regression splines (Mars) model the train data. Then, the models were tested on test data. TNN modeling resulting in terms of mean squared error metric was better than Mars results.</p></abstract>

A novel global RBF direct collocation method for solving partial differential equations with variable coefficients

Conventional radial basis function (RBF) approximation techniques face two fundamental challenges: determining the optimal shape parameter and solving the ill-conditioned linear system, which result from the use of typical kernel functions such as the Multiquadric (MQ) RBF. The objective of this study is to address these challenges by employing a novel RBF kernel, termed the coupled MQ RBF (CMQ-RBF). The new kernel combines the MQ with an m-order conical spline, where m denotes the optimal value determined by the so-called back check method (BCM) introduced in this study. Leveraging the CMQ-RBF kernel, we present a novel global RBF collocation method that generates a well-conditioned linear system, enabling direct solver utilization and delivering highly accurate numerical results without the need for laborious shape parameter selection. Consequently, the previously challenging issues can be effectively circumvented by switching to the "better kernel" offered by the CMQ-RBF. The proposed methodology is characterized by its mathematical simplicity and ease of numerical implementation. Several benchmark examples are investigated to verify its performance.

An adaptive support domain for the in-compressible fluid flow based on the localized radial basis function collocation method

In this paper, an adaptive support domain scheme is proposed to the in-compressible fluid flow based on the localized radial basis function collocation method (LRBFCM). The idea of the adaptive support domain avoids complex mathematical derivations of the finite difference method (FDM). Unlike other upwind schemes in the LRBFCM, the support domain uses the sampling nodes similar to different finite difference schemes, and the improved LRBFCM is further applied to the in-compressible fluid flows. Considering the Kronecker tensor product and Cholesky decomposition techniques, the improved LRBFCM can be easily used to the lid-driven problems with Reynolds numbers up to 100,000 by a simple mathematical derivation. The proposed LRBFCM has an adaptive support domain similar to the finite difference schemes with much less CPU time costs.

Improving Numerical Accuracy of the Localized Oscillatory Radial Basis Functions Collocation Method for Solving Elliptic Partial Differential Equations in 2D

Recently, the localized oscillatory radial basis functions collocation method (L-ORBFs) has been introduced to solve elliptic partial differential equations in 2D with a large number of computational nodes. The research clearly shows that the L-ORBFs is very convenient and useful for solving large-scale problems, but this method is numerically less accurate. In this paper, we propose a numerical scheme to improve the accuracy of the L-ORBFs by adding low-degree polynomials in the localized collocation process. The numerical results validate that the proposed numerical scheme is highly accurate and clearly outperforms the results of the L-ORBFs.

A shape parameter insensitive CRBFs‐collocation for solving nonlinear optimal control problems

AbstractIn this work, we introduce a Coupled Radial Basis Functions collocation (CRBFs‐Coll) approach for solving optimal control problems. CRBFs are real‐valued Radial Basis Functions (RBFs) augmented with a conical spline. They show insensitivity to the shape parameter resulting in robust behavior in function approximation. The method is applied to classical nonlinear optimal control problems: Zermelo's problem, a Duffing oscillator with various boundary conditions, and a nonlinear pendulum on a cart problem. The nonlinear optimal control problem is solved by deriving the necessary conditions for optimality followed by collocation using CRBFs as basis functions for approximating the two‐point boundary value problem (TPBVP). The resulting system of nonlinear algebraic equations (NAEs) is then solved using a standard solver. Unlike existing methods that rely on nodal distributions that are denser at the boundaries to obtain a solution, the present CRBFs‐Coll approach is capable of solving the optimal control problem on uniform nodes without the need for interpolation. The present CRBFs‐Coll approach is shown to be simple to implement and provides accurate results over an equidistant nodal distribution while maintaining a continuous representation of the control and states.

A Novel ANN-Based Radial Basis Function Collocation Method for Solving Elliptic Boundary Value Problems

Elliptic boundary value problems (BVPs) are widely used in various scientific and engineering disciplines that involve finding solutions to elliptic partial differential equations subject to certain boundary conditions. This article introduces a novel approach for solving elliptic BVPs using an artificial neural network (ANN)-based radial basis function (RBF) collocation method. In this study, the backpropagation neural network is employed, enabling learning from training data and enhancing accuracy. The training data consist of given boundary data from exact solutions and the radial distances between exterior fictitious sources and boundary points, which are used to construct RBFs, such as multiquadric and inverse multiquadric RBFs. The distinctive feature of this approach is that it avoids the discretization of the governing equation of elliptic BVPs. Consequently, the proposed ANN-based RBF collocation method offers simplicity in solving elliptic BVPs with only given boundary data and RBFs. To validate the model, it is applied to solve two- and three-dimensional elliptic BVPs. The results of the study highlight the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method, demonstrating its capability to deliver accurate solutions with minimal data input for solving elliptic BVPs while relying solely on given boundary data and RBFs.

Analysis of the band structure of transient in-plane elastic waves based on the localized radial basis function collocation method

In this paper, the localized radial basis function collocation method is applied to investigate the in-plane elastic wave propagation of 2D phononic crystals. The direct method with local support domain in one line is used to enhance the stability of the localized radial basis function collocation method when dealing with the derivative calculations in the boundary and interface conditions. The Houbolt method is employed to discretize the time, and then the Fast Fourier Transform is adopted to obtain the band structure according to the wave vectors in the first Brillouin Zone. Different acoustic impedance ratios, filling rates, and lattice forms are studied. The numerical results can be used to validate the band structures obtained directly from the frequency domain.