Hiroki Yamamoto

Masato Kimura, Hirofumi Notsu, Yoshimi Tanaka et al.

An extended Maxwell viscoelastic model with a relaxation parameter is studied from mathematical and numerical points of view. It is shown that the model has a gradient flow property with respect to a viscoelastic energy. Based on the gradient flow structure, a structure-preserving time-discrete model is proposed and existence of a unique solution is proved. Moreover, a structure-preserving P1/P0 finite element scheme is presented and its stability in the sense of energy is shown by using its discrete gradient flow structure. As typical viscoelastic phenomena, two-dimensional numerical examples by the proposed scheme for a creep deformation and a stress relaxation are shown and the effects of the relaxation parameter are investigated.

Kenji Saito, Akimitsu Shiseki, Mitsuyasu Takada et al.

It is said that blockchain will contribute to the digital transformation of society in a wide range of ways, from the management of public and private documents to the traceability in various industries, as well as digital currencies. A number of so-called blockchain platforms have been developed, and experiments and applications have been carried out on them. But are these platforms really conducive to practical use of the blockchain concept? To answer the question, we need to better understand what the technology called blockchain really is. We need to sort out the confusion we see in understanding what blockchain was invented for and what it means. We also need to clarify the structure of its applications. This document provides a generic model of understanding blockchain and its applications. We introduce design patterns to classify the platforms. We categorize possible use cases by identifying the structure among applications, and organize the functional, performance, operational and legal requirements for each such case. Based on the categorization and criteria, we evaluated and compared the following platforms: Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Iroha, Hyperledger Indy, Ethereum, Quorum/Hyperledger Besu, Ethereum 2.0, Polkadot, Corda and BBc-1. We have tried to be fair in our evaluations and comparisons, but we also expect to provoke discussion. The intended readers for this document is anyone involved in development of application systems who wants to understand blockchain and their platforms, including non-engineers and non-technologists. The assessments in this document will allow readers to understand the technological requirements for the blockchain platforms, to question existing technologies, and to choose the appropriate platforms for the applications they envision. The comparisons hopefully will also be useful as a guide for designing new technologies.