Volker Mehrmann

Julius Reiss, Philipp Schulze, Jörn Sesterhenn et al.

Transport-dominated phenomena provide a challenge for common mode-based model reduction approaches. We present a model reduction method, which is suited for these kind of systems. It extends the proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) by introducing time-dependent shifts of the snapshot matrix. The approach, called shifted proper orthogonal decomposition (sPOD), features a determination of the {\it multiple} transport velocities and a separation of these. One- and two-dimensional test examples reveal the good performance of the sPOD for transport-dominated phenomena and its superiority in comparison to the POD.

Volker Mehrmann, Riccardo Morandin

We extend the modeling framework of port-Hamiltonian descriptor systems to include under- and over-determined systems and arbitrary differentiable Hamiltonian functions. This structure is associated with a Dirac structure that encloses its energy balance properties. In particular, port-Hamiltonian systems are naturally passive and Lyapunov stable, because the Hamiltonian defines a Lyapunov function. The explicit representation of input and dissipation in the structure make these systems particularly suitable for output feedback control. It is shown that this structure is invariant under a wide class of nonlinear transformations, and that it can be naturally modularized, making it adequate for automated modeling. We investigate then the application of time-discretization schemes to these systems and we show that, under certain assumptions on the Hamiltonian, structure preservation is achieved for some methods. Numerical examples are provided.

Christian Mehl, Volker Mehrmann, Michal Wojtylak

A wide class of matrix pencils connected with dissipative Hamiltonian descriptor systems is investigated. In particular, the following properties are shown: all eigenvalues are in the closed left half plane, the nonzero finite eigenvalues on the imaginary axis are semisimple, the index is at most two, and there are restrictions for the possible left and right minimal indices. For the case that the eigenvalue zero is not semisimple, a structure-preserving method is presented that perturbs the given system into a Lyapunov stable system.

Herbert Egger, Thomas Kugler, Björn Liljegren-Sailer et al.

We consider the discretization and subsequent model reduction of a system of partial differential-algebraic equations describing the propagation of pressure waves in a pipeline network. Important properties like conservation of mass, dissipation of energy, passivity, existence of steady states, and exponential stability can be preserved by an appropriate semi-discretization in space via a mixed finite element method and also during the further dimension reduction by structure preserving Galerkin projection which is the main focus of this paper. Krylov subspace methods are employed for the construciton of the reduced models and we discuss modifications needed to satisfy certain algebraic compatibility conditions; these are required to ensure the well-posedness of the reduced models and the preservation of the key properties. Our analysis is based on the underlying infinite dimensional problem and its Galerkin approximations. The proposed algorithms therefore have a direct interpretation in function spaces; in principle, they are even applicable directly to the original system of partial differential-algebraic equations while the intermediate discretization by finite elements is only required for the actual computations. The performance of the proposed methods is illustrated with numerical tests and the necessity for the compatibility conditions is demonstrated by examples.

Christopher A. Beattie, Serkan Gugercin, Volker Mehrmann

We consider the model reduction problem for linear time-invariant dynamical systems having nonzero (but otherwise indeterminate) initial conditions. Building upon the observation that the full system response is decomposable as a superposition of the response map for an unforced system having nontrivial initial conditions and the response map for a forced system having null initial conditions, we develop a new approach that involves reducing these component responses independently and then combining the reduced responses into an aggregate reduced system response. This approach allows greater flexibility and offers better approximation properties than other comparable methods.

Nicolas Gillis, Volker Mehrmann, Punit Sharma

In this paper, we study the nearest stable matrix pair problem: given a square matrix pair $(E,A)$, minimize the Frobenius norm of $(Δ_E,Δ_A)$ such that $(E+Δ_E,A+Δ_A)$ is a stable matrix pair. We propose a reformulation of the problem with a simpler feasible set by introducing dissipative Hamiltonian (DH) matrix pairs: A matrix pair $(E,A)$ is DH if $A=(J-R)Q$ with skew-symmetric $J$, positive semidefinite $R$, and an invertible $Q$ such that $Q^TE$ is positive semidefinite. This reformulation has a convex feasible domain onto which it is easy to project. This allows us to employ a fast gradient method to obtain a nearby stable approximation of a given matrix pair.

Sadegh Jokar, Volker Mehrmann, Marc Pfetsch et al.

A new concept is introduced for the adaptive finite element discretization of partial differential equations that have a sparsely representable solution. Motivated by recent work on compressed sensing, a recursive mesh refinement procedure is presented that uses linear programming to find a good approximation to the sparse solution on a given refinement level. Then only those parts of the mesh are refined that belong to large expansion coefficients. Error estimates for this procedure are refined and the behavior of the procedure is demonstrated via some simple elliptic model problems.

Pia Domschke, Aseem Dua, Jeroen J. Stolwijk et al.

A model hierarchy that is based on the one-dimensional isothermal Euler equations of fluid dynamics is used for the simulation and optimisation of gas flow through a pipeline network. Adaptive refinement strategies have the aim of bringing the simulation error below a prescribed tolerance while keeping the computational costs low. While spatial and temporal stepsize adaptivity is well studied in the literature, model adaptivity is a new field of research. The problem of finding an optimal refinement strategy that combines these three types of adaptivity is a generalisation of the unbounded knapsack problem. A refinement strategy that is currently used in gas flow simulation software is compared to two novel greedy-like strategies. Both a theoretical experiment and a realistic gas flow simulation show that the novel strategies significantly outperform the current refinement strategy with respect to the computational cost incurred.

Philipp Schulze, Julius Reiss, Volker Mehrmann

We propose a new algorithm to compute a shifted proper orthogonal decomposition (sPOD) for systems dominated by multiple transport velocities. The sPOD is a recently proposed mode decomposition technique which overcomes the poor performance of classical methods like the proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) for transport-dominated phenomena. This is achieved by identifying the transport directions and velocities and by shifting the modes in space to track the transports. Our new algorithm carries out a residual minimization in which the main computational cost arises from solving a nonlinear optimization problem scaling with the snapshot dimension. We apply the algorithm to snapshot data from the simulation of a pulsed detonation combuster and observe that very few sPOD modes are sufficient to obtain a good approximation. For the same accuracy, the common POD needs ten times as many modes and, in contrast to the sPOD modes, the POD modes do not reflect the moving front profiles properly.

Gitta Kutyniok, Volker Mehrmann, Philipp Petersen

Regularization techniques for the numerical solution of inverse scattering problems in two space dimensions are discussed. Assuming that the boundary of a scatterer is its most prominent feature, we exploit as model the class of cartoon-like functions. Since functions in this class are asymptotically optimally sparsely approximated by shearlet frames, we consider shearlets as a means for regularization in a Tikhonov method. We analyze two approaches, namely solvers for the nonlinear problem and for the linearized problem obtained by the Born approximation technique. As example for the first class we study the acoustic inverse scattering problem, and for the second class, the inverse scattering problem of the Schrödinger equation. In both cases, we derive analytical results for our approaches. Whereas our emphasis for the linearized problem is more on the theoretical side due to the standardness of associated solvers, we provide numerical examples for the nonlinear problem that highlight the effectiveness of our algorithmic approach.

Christian Mehl, Volker Mehrmann, Punit Sharma

Eigenvalue and eigenpair backward errors are computed for matrix pencils arising in optimal control. In particular, formulas for backward errors are developed that are obtained under block-structure-preserving and symmetry-structure-preserving perturbations. It is shown that these eigenvalue and eigenpair backward errors are sometimes significantly larger than the corresponding backward errors that are obtained under perturbations that ignore the special structure of the pencil.

Nicat Aliyev, Volker Mehrmann, Emre Mengi

A linear time-invariant dissipative Hamiltonian (DH) system x' = (J-R)Q x, with a skew-Hermitian J, an Hermitian positive semi-definite R, and an Hermitian positive definite Q, is always Lyapunov stable and under weak further conditions even asymptotically stable. In various applications there is uncertainty on the system matrices J, R, Q, and it is desirable to know whether the system remains asymptotically stable uniformly against all possible uncertainties within a given perturbation set. Such robust stability considerations motivate the concept of stability radius for DH systems, i.e., what is the maximal perturbation permissible to the coefficients J, R, Q, while preserving the asymptotic stability. We consider two stability radii, the unstructured one where J, R, Q are subject to unstructured perturbation, and the structured one where the perturbations preserve the DH structure. We employ characterizations for these radii that have been derived recently in [SIAM J. Matrix Anal. Appl., 37, pp. 1625-1654, 2016] and propose new algorithms to compute these stability radii for large scale problems by tailoring subspace frameworks that are interpolatory and guaranteed to converge at a super-linear rate in theory. At every iteration, they first solve a reduced problem and then expand the subspaces in order to attain certain Hermite interpolation properties between the full and reduced problems. The reduced problems are solved by means of the adaptations of existing level-set algorithms for H-infinity norm computation in the unstructured case, while, for the structured radii, we benefit from algorithms that approximate the objective eigenvalue function with a piece-wise quadratic global underestimator. The performance of the new approaches is illustrated with several examples including a system that arises from a finite-element modeling of an industrial disk brake.

Murat Manguoglu, Volker Mehrmann

We propose a two-level nested preconditioned iterative scheme for solving sparse linear systems of equations in which the coefficient matrix is symmetric and indefinite with relatively small number of negative eigenvalues. The proposed scheme consists of an outer Minimum Residual (MINRES) iteration, preconditioned by an inner Conjugate Gradient (CG) iteration in which CG can be further preconditioned. The robustness of the proposed scheme is illustrated by solving indefinite linear systems that arise in the solution of quadratic eigenvalue problems in the context of model reduction methods for finite element models of disk brakes as well as on other problems that arise in a variety of applications.

Luka Grubisic, Matko Ljulj, Volker Mehrmann et al.

A new model description for the numerical simulation of elastic stents is proposed. Based on the new formulation an inf-sup inequality for the finite element discretization is proved and the proof of the inf-sup inequality for the continuous problem is simplified. The new formulation also leads to faster simulation times despite an increased number of variables. The techniques also simplify the analysis and numerical solution of the evolution problem describing the movement of the stent under external forces. The results are illustrated via numerical examples.

Peter Benner, Volker Mehrmann, Anshul Prajapati et al.

We study linear time-invariant dissipative Hamiltonian differential-algebraic systems. We characterize when the systems are robustly asymptotically stable and derive exact conditions and bounds when this property is lost under structure-preserving perturbations.

Volker Mehrmann, Paul Van Dooren

We construct optimally robust port-Hamiltonian realizations of a given rational transfer function that represents a passive system. We show that the realization with a maximal passivity radius is a normalized port-Hamiltonian one. Its computation is linked to a particular solution of a linear matrix inequality that defines passivity of the transfer function, and we provide an algorithm to construct this optimal solution. We also consider the problem of finding the nearest passive system to a given non-passive one and provide a simple but suboptimal solution.

Sadegh Jokar, Volker Mehrmann

Three properties of matrices: the spark, the mutual incoherence and the restricted isometry property have recently been introduced in the context of compressed sensing. We study these properties for matrices that are Kronecker products and show how these properties relate to those of the factors. For the mutual incoherence we also discuss results for sums of Kronecker products.