Detection of branching points in noisy processes

authored by
Michael Beer, Martin Liebscher
Abstract

Processes in engineeringmechanics often contain branching points at which the system can follow different physical paths. In this paper a method for the detection of these branching points is proposed for processes that are affected by noise. It is assumed that a bundle of process records are available from numerical simulations or from experiments, and branching points are concealed by the noise of the process. The bundle of process records is then evaluated at a series of discrete values of the independent process coordinates. At each discrete point of the process, the associated point set of process values is investigated with the aid of cluster analysis. The detected branching points are verified with a recursive algorithm. The revealed information about the branching points can be used to identify the physical and mechanical background for the branching. This helps to better understand a mechanical system and to design it optimal for a specific purpose. The proposed method is demonstrated by means of both a numerical example and a practical example of a crashworthiness investigation.

External Organisation(s)
National University of Singapore
DynaMore GmbH
Type
Article
Journal
Computational mechanics
Volume
45
Pages
363-374
No. of pages
12
ISSN
0178-7675
Publication date
03.2010
Publication status
Published
Peer reviewed
Yes
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Computational Mechanics, Ocean Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Computational Theory and Mathematics, Computational Mathematics, Applied Mathematics
Electronic version(s)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00466-009-0458-4 (Access: Closed)