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U.S. Department of Energy
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Parallel software for nonlinear systems of equations. Final report, February 28, 1995--June 30, 1997

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/584951· OSTI ID:584951
The nonlinear systems of equations arising in circuit simulation, structural optimization, closed loop optimal control, chemical engineering of distillation systems, combustion chemistry, CAD/CAM modeling, robotics, computer vision, and orbital mechanics have several properties that make them especially amenable to homotopy methods. Even so, the homotopy zero curves are not trivial to track, and sophisticated curve tracking techniques are sometimes required. The size of typical engineering problems also presents some interesting numerical linear algebra challenges, and the supported work has been geared toward developing parallel sparse matrix techniques specifically tailored to the sparsity structures corresponding to the mentioned problem areas, in the context of homotopy algorithms. There are many different algorithms for tracking the zero curve {gamma}; the previous proposal discussed three such algorithms: ordinary differential equation based, normal flow, and augmented Jacobian matrix. The descriptions of these algorithms are now in the literature for the software package HOMPACK, so will not be repeated here. The development of sparse homotopy algorithms within HOMPACK specifically tailored for various parallel machines (e.g., distributed memory, shared memory, and vector) and problem areas (e.g., circuit simulation, structural optimization, optimal control, and combustion chemistry) was the central theme of this research.
Research Organization:
Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State Univ., Blacksburg, VA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Energy Research, Washington, DC (United States)
DOE Contract Number:
FG05-88ER25068
OSTI ID:
584951
Report Number(s):
DOE/ER/25068--5; ON: DE98004213
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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