The purpose of this study is the time domain modeling of a piano. We aim at explaining the vibratory and acoustical behavior of the piano, by taking into account the main elements that contribute to sound production. The soundboard is modeled as a bidimensional thick, orthotropic, heterogeneous, frequency dependent damped plate, using Reissner Mindlin equations. The vibroacoustics equations allow the soundboard to radiate into the surrounding air, in which we wish to compute the complete acoustical field around the perfectly rigid rim. The soundboard is also coupled to the strings at the bridge, where they form a slight angle from the horizontal plane. Each string is modeled by a one dimensional damped system of equations, taking into account not only the transversal waves excited by the hammer, but also the stiffness thanks to shear waves, as well as the longitudinal waves arising from geometric nonlinearities. The hammer is given an initial velocity that projects it towards a choir of strings, before being repelled. The interacting force is a nonlinear function of the hammer compression. The final piano model is a coupled system of partial differential equations, each of them exhibiting specific difficulties (nonlinear nature of the string system of equations, frequency dependent damping of the soundboard, great number of unknowns required for the acoustic propagation), in addition to couplings’ inherent difficulties.

In this paper, we use the adapted periodic unfolding method to study the homogenization and corrector problems for the parabolic problem in a two-component composite with ε-periodic connected inclusions. The condition imposed on the interface is that the jump of the solution is proportional to the conormal derivative via a function of order εγ with γ ≤−1. We give the homogenization results which include those obtained by Jose in [Rev. Roum. Math. Pures Appl. 54 (2009) 189–222]. We also get the corrector results.

Parameter estimation in non linear mixed effects models requires a large number of evaluations of the model to study. For ordinary differential equations, the overall computation time remains reasonable. However when the model itself is complex (for instance when it is a set of partial differential equations) it may be time consuming to evaluate it for a single set of parameters. The procedures of population parametrization (for instance using SAEM algorithms) are then very long and in some cases impossible to do within a reasonable time. We propose here a very simple methodology which may accelerate population parametrization of complex models, including partial differential equations models. We illustrate our method on the classical KPP equation.

In this paper we propose and analyze a localized orthogonal decomposition (LOD) methodfor solving semi-linear elliptic problems with heterogeneous and highly variablecoefficient functions. This Galerkin-type method is based on a generalized finite elementbasis that spans a low dimensional multiscale space. The basis is assembled by performinglocalized linear fine-scale computations on small patches that have a diameter of orderH | log (H)| where H is the coarse mesh size. Without any assumptions onthe type of the oscillations in the coefficients, we give a rigorous proof for a linearconvergence of the H1-error with respect to the coarse meshsize even for rough coefficients. To solve the corresponding system of algebraicequations, we propose an algorithm that is based on a damped Newton scheme in themultiscale space.

For a stationary Markov process the detailed balance condition is equivalent to thetime-reversibility of the process. For stochastic differential equations (SDE’s), the timediscretization of numerical schemes usually destroys the time-reversibility property.Despite an extensive literature on the numerical analysis for SDE’s, their stabilityproperties, strong and/or weak error estimates, large deviations and infinite-timeestimates, no quantitative results are known on the lack of reversibility of discrete-timeapproximation processes. In this paper we provide such quantitative estimates by using theconcept of entropy production rate, inspired by ideas from non-equilibrium statisticalmechanics. The entropy production rate for a stochastic process is defined as the relativeentropy (per unit time) of the path measure of the process with respect to the pathmeasure of the time-reversed process. By construction the entropy production rate isnonnegative and it vanishes if and only if the process is reversible. Crucially, from anumerical point of view, the entropy production rate is an a posterioriquantity, hence it can be computed in the course of a simulation as the ergodicaverage of a certain functional of the process (the so-called Gallavotti−Cohen (GC) action functional). We computethe entropy production for various numerical schemes such as explicit Euler−Maruyama and explicit Milstein’s forreversible SDEs with additive or multiplicative noise. In addition we analyze the entropyproduction for the BBK integrator for the Langevin equation. The order (in thetime-discretization step Δt) of the entropy production rate provides a tool toclassify numerical schemes in terms of their (discretization-induced) irreversibility. Ourresults show that the type of the noise critically affects the behavior of the entropyproduction rate. As a striking example of our results we show that the Euler scheme formultiplicative noise is not an adequate scheme from a reversibilitypoint of view since its entropy production rate does not decrease withΔt.

Long time simulations of transport equations raise computational challenges since theyrequire both a large domain of calculation and sufficient accuracy. It is thereforeadvantageous, in terms of computational costs, to use a time varying adaptive mesh, withsmall cells in the region of interest and coarser cells where the solution is smooth.Biological models involving cell dynamics fall for instance within this framework and areoften non conservative to account for cell division. In that case the thresholdcontrolling the spatial adaptivity may have to be time-dependent in order to keep up withthe progression of the solution. In this article we tackle the difficulties arising whenapplying a Multiresolution method to a transport equation with discontinuous fluxesmodeling localized mitosis. The analysis of the numerical method is performed on asimplified model and numerical scheme. An original threshold strategy is proposed andvalidated thanks to extensive numerical tests. It is then applied to a biological model inboth cases of distributed and localized mitosis.

In this paper, we present and study a mixed variational method in order to approximate,with the finite element method, a Stokes problem with Tresca friction boundary conditions.These non-linear boundary conditions arise in the modeling of mold filling process bypolymer melt, which can slip on a solid wall. The mixed formulation is based on adualization of the non-differentiable term which define the slip conditions. Existence anduniqueness of both continuous and discrete solutions of these problems is guaranteed bymeans of continuous and discrete inf-sup conditions that are proved. Velocity and pressureare approximated by P1 bubble-P1 finite element and piecewise linearelements are used to discretize the Lagrange multiplier associated to the shear stress onthe friction boundary. Optimal a priori error estimates are derived usingclassical tools of finite element analysis and two uncoupled discrete inf-sup conditionsfor the pressure and the Lagrange multiplier associated to the fluid shear stress.

We present equivalent conditions and asymptotic models for the diffraction problem ofelastic and acoustic waves in a solid medium surrounded by a thin layer of fluid medium.Due to the thinness of the layer with respect to the wavelength, this problem is wellsuited for the notion of equivalent conditions and the effect of the fluid medium on thesolid is as a first approximation local. We derive and validate equivalent conditions upto the fourth order for the elastic displacement. These conditions approximate theacoustic waves which propagate in the fluid region. This approach leads to solve onlyelastic equations. The construction of equivalent conditions is based on a multiscaleexpansion in power series of the thickness of the layer for the solution of thetransmission problem.

We consider a model for flow in a porous medium with a fracture in which the flow in thefracture is governed by the Darcy−Forchheimerlaw while that in the surrounding matrix is governed byDarcy’s law. We give an appropriate mixed, variational formulation and show existence anduniqueness of the solution. To show existence we give an analogous formulation for themodel in which the Darcy−Forchheimerlaw is the governing equation throughout the domain. We showexistence and uniqueness of the solution and show that the solution for the model withDarcy’s law in the matrix is the weak limit of solutions of the model with theDarcy−Forchheimerlaw in theentire domain when the Forchheimer coefficient in the matrix tends toward zero.

We discuss a family of discontinuous Petrov–Galerkin (DPG) schemes for quite generalpartial differential operators. The starting point of our analysis is the DPG methodintroduced by [Demkowicz et al., SIAM J. Numer. Anal.49 (2011) 1788–1809; Zitelli et al., J.Comput. Phys. 230 (2011) 2406–2432]. This discretization resultsin a sparse positive definite linear algebraic system which can be obtained from a saddlepoint problem by an element-wise Schur complement reduction applied to the test space.Here, we show that the abstract framework of saddle point problems and domaindecomposition techniques provide stability and a priori estimates. Toobtain efficient numerical algorithms, we use a second Schur complement reduction appliedto the trial space. This restricts the degrees of freedom to the skeleton. We construct apreconditioner for the skeleton problem, and the efficiency of the discretization and thesolution method is demonstrated by numerical examples.

We derive asymptotic formulas for the solutions of the mixed boundary value problem forthe Poisson equation on the union of a thin cylindrical plate and several thin cylindricalrods. One of the ends of each rod is set into a hole in the plate and the other one issupplied with the Dirichlet condition. The Neumann conditions are imposed on the wholeremaining part of the boundary. Elements of the junction are assumed to have contrastingproperties so that the small parameter, i.e. the relative thickness,appears in the differential equation, too, while the asymptotic structures cruciallydepend on the contrastness ratio. Asymptotic error estimates are derived in anisotropicweighted Sobolev norms.

We study the time-harmonic acoustic scattering in a duct in presence of a flow and of adiscontinuous impedance boundary condition. Unlike a continuous impedance, a discontinuousone leads to still open modeling questions, as in particular the singularity of thesolution at the abrupt transition and the choice of the right unknown to formulate thescattering problem. To address these questions we propose a mathematical approach based onvariational formulations set in weighted Sobolev spaces. Considering the discontinuousimpedance as the limit of a continuous boundary condition, we prove that only the problemformulated in terms of the velocity potential converges to a well-posed problem. Moreoverwe identify the limit problem and determine some Kutta-like condition satisfied by thevelocity: its convective derivative must vanish at the ends of the impedance area. Finallywe justify why it is not possible to define limit problems for the pressure and thedisplacement. Numerical examples illustrate the convergence process.