Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Meshfree Methods For Pdes On Surfaces, Andrew Michael Jones

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on meshfree methods for solving surface partial differential equations (PDEs). These PDEs arise in many areas of science and engineering where they are used to model phenomena ranging from atmospheric dynamics on earth to chemical signaling on cell membranes. Meshfree methods have been shown to be effective for solving surface PDEs and are attractive alternatives to mesh-based methods such as finite differences/elements since they do not require a mesh and can be used for surfaces represented only by a point cloud. The dissertation is subdivided into two papers and software.

In the first paper, we examine the …

Relationships Between Covid-19 Infection Rates, Healthcare Access, Socioeconomic Status, And Cultural Diversity, Marghece P. J. Barnes

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on racial and ethnic minority groups, with high infection rates throughout those communities. There are a complex set of factors that account for COVID-19 disparities. Focusing on infection and death rates alone without also examining health equity, underestimates the true impact of the pandemic. To gain a more clear understanding of COVID-19’s impact in these communities, we analyzed the relationship between state COVID-19 infection rates with social determinants of health: cultural diversity, health care access, and socioeconomic status. Our approach to identifying this relationship was to estimate infection rates by fitting John …

A Collection Of Fast Algorithms For Scalar And Vector-Valued Data On Irregular Domains: Spherical Harmonic Analysis, Divergence-Free/Curl-Free Radial Basis Functions, And Implicit Surface Reconstruction, Kathryn Primrose Drake

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation addresses problems that arise in a diverse group of fields including cosmology, electromagnetism, and graphic design. While these topics may seem disparate, they share a commonality in their need for fast and accurate algorithms which can handle large datasets collected on irregular domains. An important issue in cosmology is the calculation of the angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. CMB photons offer a direct insight into the early stages of the universe's development and give the strongest evidence for the Big Bang theory to date. The Hierarchical Equal Area isoLatitude Pixelation (HEALPix) grid is …

Analytic Solutions For Diffusion On Path Graphs And Its Application To The Modeling Of The Evolution Of Electrically Indiscernible Conformational States Of Lysenin, K. Summer Ware

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Memory is traditionally thought of as a biological function of the brain. In recent years, however, researchers have found that some stimuli-responsive molecules exhibit memory-like behavior manifested as history-dependent hysteresis in response to external excitations. One example is lysenin, a pore-forming toxin found naturally in the coelomic fluid of the common earthworm Eisenia fetida. When reconstituted into a bilayer lipid membrane, this unassuming toxin undergoes conformational changes in response to applied voltages. However, lysenin is able to "remember" past history by adjusting its conformational state based not only on the amplitude of the stimulus but also on its previous …

Joint Inversion Of Gpr And Er Data, Diego Domenzain

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Imaging the subsurface can shed knowledge on important processes needed in a modern day human's life such as ground-water exploration, water resource monitoring, contaminant and hazard mitigation, geothermal energy exploration and carbon dioxide storage. As computing power expands, it is becoming ever more feasible to increase the physical complexity of Earth's exploration methods, and hence enhance our understanding of the subsurface.

We use non-invasive geophysical active source methods that rely on electromagnetic fields to probe the depths of the Earth. In particular, we use Ground penetrating radar (GPR) and Electrical resistivity (ER). Both methods are sensitive to electrical conductivity while …

Radial Basis Function Finite Difference Approximations Of The Laplace-Beltrami Operator, Sage Byron Shaw

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Partial differential equations (PDEs) are used throughout science and engineering for modeling various phenomena. Solutions to PDEs cannot generally be represented analytically, and therefore must be approximated using numerical techniques; this is especially true for geometrically complex domains. Radial basis function generated finite differences (RBF-FD) is a recently developed mesh-free method for numerically solving PDEs that is robust, accurate, computationally efficient, and geometrically flexible. In the past seven years, RBF-FD methods have been developed for solving PDEs on surfaces, which have applications in biology, chemistry, geophysics, and computer graphics. These methods are advantageous, as they are mesh-free, operate on arbitrary …

A Stable Algorithm For Divergence-Free And Curl-Free Radial Basis Functions In The Flat Limit, Kathryn Primrose Drake

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Radial basis functions (RBFs) were originally developed in the 1970s for interpolating scattered topographic data. Since then they have become increasingly popular for other applications involving the approximation of scattered, scalar-valued data in two and higher dimensions, especially data collected on the surface of a sphere. In the late 2000s, matrix-valued RBFs were introduced for approximating divergence-free and curl-free vector fields on the surface of a sphere from scattered samples, which arise naturally in atmospheric and oceanic sciences. The intriguing property of these RBFs is that the resulting vector-valued approximations analytically preserve the divergence-free or curl-free properties of the field. …

Joint Inversion Of Compact Operators, James Ford

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The first mention of joint inversion came in [22], where the authors used the singular value decomposition to determine the degree of ill-conditioning in inverse problems. The authors demonstrated in several examples that combining two models in a joint inversion, and effectively stacking discrete linear models, improved the conditioning of the problem. This thesis extends the notion of using the singular value decomposition to determine the conditioning of discrete joint inversion to using the singular value expansion to determine the well-posedness of joint linear operators. We focus on compact linear operators related to geophysical, electromagnetic subsurface imaging.

The operators are …

Multi-Rate Runge-Kutta-Chebyshev Time Stepping For Parabolic Equations On Adaptively Refined Meshes, Talin Mirzakhanian

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, we develop an explicit multi-rate time stepping method for solving parabolic equations on a one dimensional adaptively refined mesh. Parabolic equations are characterized by their stiffness and as a result are usually solved using implicit time stepping schemes [16]. However, implicit schemes have the disadvantage that they can be expensive in higher dimensions or complicated to implement on adaptive or otherwise non-uniform meshes. Moreover, for coupled systems of parabolic equations, it can be difficult to achieve the expected order of accuracy without using sophisticated operator splitting techniques. For these reasons, we seek to exploit the properties of …

Numerical Computing With Functions On The Sphere And Disk, Heather Denise Wilber

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

A new low rank approximation method for computing with functions in polar and spherical geometries is developed. By synthesizing a classic procedure known as the double Fourier sphere (DFS) method with a structure-preserving variant of Gaussian elimination, approximants to functions on the sphere and disk can be constructed that (1) preserve the bi-periodicity of the sphere, (2) are smooth over the poles of the sphere (and origin of the disk), (3) allow for the use of FFT-based algorithms, and (4) are near-optimal in their underlying discretizations. This method is used to develop a suite of fast, scalable algorithms that exploit …

Solution Techniques And Error Analysis Of General Classes Of Partial Differential Equations, Wijayasinghe Arachchige Waruni Nisansala Wijayasinghe

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

While constructive insight for a multitude of phenomena appearing in the physical and biological sciences, medicine, engineering and economics can be gained through the analysis of mathematical models posed in terms of systems of ordinary and partial differential equations, it has been observed that a better description of the behavior of the investigated phenomena can be achieved through the use of functional differential equations (FDEs) or partial functional differential equations (PFDEs). PFDEs or functional equations with ordinary derivatives are subclasses of FDEs. FDEs form a general class of differential equations applied in a variety of disciplines and are characterized by …

Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations, Their Solutions, And Properties, Prasanna Bandara

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Although valuable understanding of real-world phenomena can be gained experimentally, it is often the case that experimental investigations can be found to be limited by financial, ethical or other constraints making such an approach impractical or, in some cases, even impossible. To nevertheless understand and make predictions of the natural world around us, countless processes encountered in the physical and biological sciences, engineering, economics and medicine can be efficiently described by means of mathematical models written in terms of ordinary or/and partial differential equations or their systems. Fundamental questions that arise in the modeling process need care that relies on …

A Radial Basis Function Partition Of Unity Method For Transport On The Sphere, Kevin Aiton

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The transport phenomena dominates geophysical fluid motions on all scales making the numerical solution of the transport problem fundamentally important for the overall accuracy of any fluid solver. In this thesis, we describe a new high-order, computationally efficient method for numerically solving the transport equation on the sphere. This method combines radial basis functions (RBFs) and a partition of unity method (PUM). The method is mesh-free, allowing near optimal discretization of the surface of the sphere, and is free of any coordinate singularities. The basic idea of the method is to start with a set of nodes that are quasi-uniformly …

Computing Curvature And Curvature Normals On Smooth Logically Cartesian Surface Meshes, John Thomas Hutchins

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This thesis describes a new approach to computing mean curvature and mean curvature normals on smooth logically Cartesian surface meshes. We begin by deriving a finite-volume formula for one-dimensional curves embedded in two- or three- dimensional space. We show the exact results on curves for specific cases as well as second-order convergence in numerical experiments. We extend this finite-volume formula to surfaces embedded in three-dimensional space. Exact results are again derived for special cases and second-order convergence is shown numerically for more general cases. We show that our formula for computing curvature is an improvement over using the “cotan” formula …

Stability And Convergence For Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations, Oday Mohammed Waheeb

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

If used cautiously, numerical methods can be powerful tools to produce solutions to partial differential equations with or without known analytic solutions. The resulting numerical solutions may, with luck, produce stable and accurate solutions to the problem in question, or may produce solutions with no resemblance to the problem in question at all. More such numerical computations give no hope of solving this troublesome feature and one needs to resort to investing time in a theoretical approach. This thesis is devoted not solely to computations, but also to a theoretical analysis of the numerical methods used to generate computationally the …

Perfect Stripes From A General Turing Model In Different Geometries, Jean Tyson Schneider

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

We explore a striped pattern generated by a general Turing model in three different geometries. We look at the square, disk, and hemisphere and make connections between the stripes in each spatial direction. In particular, we gain a greater understanding of when perfect stripes can be generated and what causes defects in their patterns. In this investigation, we look at the difference between the solutions due to the different domain shapes. In the end, we propose a reason why stripes from a reaction-diffusion system with zero-flux boundary conditions can be perfect on a square or hemisphere, but not on a …

Analytical Upstream Collocation Solution Of A Quadratic Forced Steady-State Convection-Diffusion Equation, Eric Paul Smith

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis we present the exact solution to the Hermite collocation discretization of a quadratically forced steady-state convection-diffusion equation in one spatial dimension with constant coeffcients, defined on a uniform mesh, with Dirichlet boundary conditions. To improve the accuracy of the method we use \upstream weighting" of the convective term in an optimal way. We also provide a method to determine where the forcing function should be optimally sampled. Computational examples are given, which support and illustrate the theory of the optimal sampling of the convective and forcing term.