This dissertation develops a variety of structure-preserving algorithms for mechanical systems with external forcing and also extends those methods to systems that evolve on non-Euclidean manifolds. The dissertation is focused on numerical schemes derived from variational principles – schemes that are general enough to apply to a large class of engineering problems. A theoretical framework that encapsulates variational integration for mechanical systems with external forcing and time-dependence and which supports the extension of these methods to systems that evolve on non-Euclidean manifolds is developed. An adaptive time step, energy-preserving variational integrator is developed for mechanical systems with external forcing. It is shown that these methods track the change in energy more accurately than their fixed time step counterparts. This approach is also extended to rigid body systems evolving on Lie groups where the resulting algorithms preserve the geometry of the configuration space in addition to being symplectic as well as energy and momentum-preserving. The advantages of structure-preservation in the numerical simulation are illustrated by various representative examples from engineering applications, which include limit cycle oscillations of an aeroelastic system, dynamics of a neutrally buoyant underwater vehicle, and optimization for spherical shape correlation and matching. / Doctor of Philosophy / Accurate numerical simulation of dynamical systems over long time horizons is essential in applications ranging from particle physics to geophysical fluid flow to space hazard analysis. In many of these applications, the governing physical equations derive from a variational principle and their solutions exhibit physically meaningful invariants such as momentum, energy, or vorticity. Unfortunately, most traditional numerical methods do not account for the underlying geometric structure of the physical system, leading to simulation results that may suggest nonphysical behavior. In this dissertation, tools from geometric mechanics and computational methods are used to develop numerical integrators that respect the qualitative features of the physical system. The research presented here focuses on numerical schemes derived from variational principles– schemes that are general enough to apply to a large class of engineering problems. Energy-preserving algorithms are developed for mechanical systems by exploiting the underlying geometric properties. Numerical performance comparisons demonstrate that these algorithms provide almost exact energy preservation and lead to more accurate prediction. The advantages of these methods in the numerical simulation are illustrated by various representative examples from engineering applications, which include limit cycle oscillations of an aeroelastic system, dynamics of a neutrally buoyant underwater vehicle, and optimization for spherical shape correlation and matching.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/99912 |
| Date | 04 September 2020 |
| Creators | Sharma, Harsh Apurva |
| Contributors | Aerospace and Ocean Engineering, Patil, Mayuresh J., Woolsey, Craig A., Ross, Shane D., Lee, Taeyoung, Sultan, Cornel |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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