Search

Abstract: The problem of finding the least change adjustment to a stiffness matrix modeled by finite element method is considered in this paper. Desired stiffness matrix properties such as symmetry, sparsity, positive semidefiniteness, and satisfaction of the characteristic equation are imposed as side constraints of the constructed optimal matrix approximation for updating the stiffness matrix, which matches measured data better. The dual problems of the original constrained minimization are presented and solved by subgradient algorithms with different line search strategies. Some numerical results are included to illustrate the performance and application of the proposed methods. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In the course of the numerical approximation of mathematical models there is often a need to solve a system of linear equations with a tridiagonal or a block-tridiagonal matrices. Usually it is efficient to solve these systems using a special algorithm (tridiagonal matrix algorithm or TDMA) which takes advantage of the structure. The main result of this work is to formulate a sufficient condition for the numerical method to preserve the non-negativity for the special algorithm for structured meshes. We show that a different condition can be obtained for such cases where there is no way to fulfill this condition. Moreover, as an example, the numerical solution of the two-dimensional heat conduction equation on a rectangular domain is investigated by applying Dirichlet boundary condition and Neumann boundary condition on different parts of the boundary of the domain. For space discretization, we apply the linear finite element method, and for time discretization, the well-known -method. The theoretical results of the paper are verified by several numerical experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]