Non-linear Dynamics Commons^™

Orbital Stability Results For Soliton Solutions To Nonlinear Schrödinger Equations With External Potentials, Joseph B. Lindgren

Theses and Dissertations--Mathematics

For certain nonlinear Schroedinger equations there exist solutions which are called solitary waves. Addition of a potential $V$ changes the dynamics, but for small enough $||V||_{L^\infty}$ we can still obtain stability (and approximately Newtonian motion of the solitary wave's center of mass) for soliton-like solutions up to a finite time that depends on the size and scale of the potential $V$. Our method is an adaptation of the well-known Lyapunov method.

For the sake of completeness, we also prove long-time stability of traveling solitons in the case $V=0$.

A Physics-Based Approach To Modeling Wildland Fire Spread Through Porous Fuel Beds, Tingting Tang

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical Engineering

Wildfires are becoming increasingly erratic nowadays at least in part because of climate change. CFD (computational fluid dynamics)-based models with the potential of simulating extreme behaviors are gaining increasing attention as a means to predict such behavior in order to aid firefighting efforts. This dissertation describes a wildfire model based on the current understanding of wildfire physics. The model includes physics of turbulence, inhomogeneous porous fuel beds, heat release, ignition, and firebrands. A discrete dynamical system for flow in porous media is derived and incorporated into the subgrid-scale model for synthetic-velocity large-eddy simulation (LES), and a general porosity-permeability model is …

Autonomous Quadrotor Collision Avoidance And Destination Seeking In A Gps-Denied Environment, Thomas C. Kirven

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical Engineering

This thesis presents a real-time autonomous guidance and control method for a quadrotor in a GPS-denied environment. The quadrotor autonomously seeks a destination while it avoids obstacles whose shape and position are initially unknown. We implement the obstacle avoidance and destination seeking methods using off-the-shelf sensors, including a vision-sensing camera. The vision-sensing camera detects the positions of points on the surface of obstacles. We use this obstacle position data and a potential-field method to generate velocity commands. We present a backstepping controller that uses the velocity commands to generate the quadrotor's control inputs. In indoor experiments, we demonstrate that the …