[Amath-seminars] Applied Mathematics Seminar - Randall J. LeVeque, Thursday April 22

[Eli Shlizerman]

Dear All,

This Thursday, April 22, at 4:00 pm in Guggenheim 220,  Randy LeVeque
will give talk in the Applied Mathematics Seminar. Randy's talk is
initiating the "Applied Mathematics Seminar" series - a talk given by
a faculty member in AMATH once a quarter. Hope to see you all there!

Best Regards,
Eli Shlizerman and Andrea Barreiro

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Speaker: Randall J. LeVeque

Title:  Finite-volume Methods and Software for Wave Propagation Problems

Time: 4pm on Thursday, April 22, 2010

Room: Guggenheim 220

Abstract:

Wave propagation problems arise in nearly every field of science and
engineering: shock waves in supernovas or traffic flow, elastic waves
in earthquakes or ultrasound, water waves in tsunamis or storm surges,
blast waves in explosions or volcanoes, to name but a few.  While the
applications may vary greatly, the mathematical structure of such
problems is often very similar: they can all be modeled by hyperbolic
partial differential equations that are often derived via conservation
of physical quantities such as mass, momentum, and energy.

For the past 15 years I have been working with collaborators (including
many UW students) on the development of a general open source software
package, Clawpack, for the solution of conservation laws and other
hyperbolic problems, using adaptive mesh refinement to allow much greater
resolution where needed.  We have also been working with researchers in
several departments at UW and elsewhere on the solution of specific
problems.

In this talk I will give a flavor of the difficulties in solving nonlinear
hyperbolic equations and an overview of some current software projects
and applications, particularly in geophysics and biomechanics.