Volume 15 Number 3	July 1999

Conductivity of Molten Semiconductors Building of Protein Structures Diamond Growth Turbulent Flow and Heat Transfer in Propulsion Systems Interns Future Symposia Colloquium Series Special Seminars Visitors Research Reports r. Gianni Royer (center) visited Minneapolis from the University of Parma in Italy to meet with Professor Roger Fosdick (left) of the Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics Department at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Royer worked with Professor Fosdick and his research group, including Eric Petersen (right), on fundamental problems of nonlinear continuum mechanics. In particular, he investigated the existence and structure of states of minimum potential energy within elasticity theory under the constraint that admissible deformations be injective. Historically, this constraint has not been employed, and in some important cases, the currently acceptable solution to certain elasticity problems unfortunately exhibits regions of interpenetrability of material which implies that the related deformation field is not injective. Thus, it is important to affect the constraint of injectivity, and this creates both a mathematically and computationally challenging problem which has been part of Professor Fosdick's Supercomputing Institute research program for some time. Together, Fosdick and Royer developed a key existence theorem and set the groundwork for further computational exploration. It is planned that the computational aspects of this work will be developed by Dr. Adair Aguiar, a recent graduate of the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics Department at the University of Minnesota and a member of Professor Fosdick's research group for the past several years. Dr. Royer will return to the University during the month of August to continue this work. Dr. Qun Lin (center) of the Institute of Systems Sciences, Academia Sinica, Beijing meets with Fellows of the Supercomputing Institute, Professors Mitchell Luskin (left) and Bernardo Cockburn (right), from the Mathematics Department at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Lin's visit began a collaboration trying to make the discontinuous Galerkin method more accurate. This method currently has an order of accuracy one half less than the best possible order in arbitrary meshes. Dr. Lin is a leading expert in the analysis of the discontinuous Galerkin method and is working with Professor Cockburn to see if the optimal order of accuracy can be achieved by a suitable modification of the method.

HOME | BULLETINS | CONTACT US | PREVIOUS ARTICLE | THIS ISSUE