The effects on adsorption of the geometry of the solid may be studied through calculations based on a (distance)−ε (ε> 3) intermolecular potential. This paper establishes the result that the potential due to an infinitely long polygonal homogeneous solid prism, at position r in the plane of its right section, is – . Here ρi = ∣ r − ri ∣, where the ri are the position vectors of the n vertices of the polygon, and θij are the angles r − ri makes with the two sides of the polygon which meet at vertex ri. The g's are exact functions of θij. They are, in general, integrals of associated Legendre functions, but they are elementary for ε an even integer. A similar result holds for the potential within an infinitely long polygonal prismatic cavity. The analysis involves a systematic superposition schema and the concept of a supplementary potential with datum within the solid at infinity. The cases ε = 6 and ε = 4 are treated in detail and illustrative solutions given for the following configurations: semi-infinite laminae, deep rectangular cracks, square prisms, square prismatic cavities and regular n-gonal prismatic cavities.

The authors derive a general theorem on partly bilateral and partly unilateral generating functions involving multiple series with essentially arbitrary coefficients. By appropriately specialising these coefficients, a number of (known or new) results are shown to follow as applications of the theorem.

This paper gives explicit, applicable bounds for solutions of a wide class of third-order difference equations with nonconstant coefficients. The techniques used are readily adaptable for higher-order equations. The results extend recent work of the authors for second-order equations.

This paper studies a system proposed by K. Gopalsamy and P. X. Weng to model a population growth with feedback control and time delays. Sufficient conditions are established under which the positive equilibrium of the system is globally attracting. The conjecture proposed by Gopalsamy and Weng is here confirmed and improved.

A three-dimensional barotropic and baroclinic model is developed to simulate currents and temperature changes induced by tropical cyclones traversing the continental shelf and slope region of the Australian North West Shelf. The model is based on a layered, explicit, finite difference formulation using the nonlinear primitive equations with an embedded entrainment scheme; a mixed-surface-layer interface is defined, which is allowed to shift from one interface to another, depending on the strength of a storm. The model has been tested by simulating the currents and temperature changes induced by tropical cyclones Orson and Ian. The modelled currents and temperatures agreed well with the available measured records except near the seabed. It has been found that the pre-storm currents have very little influence on the peak of the storm-induced currents and the currents in the wake of a tropical cyclone. The model contained no coefficients which must be calibrated for a particular application and clearly illustrated the importance of the baroclinic effects on the storm-induced response over the North West Shelf of Australia.

Given a Fredhoim integral equation of the second kind, which is defined over a certain region ⊆ R2, we define and , two different numerical approximations to its solution, using the collocation and iterated collocation methods respectively. We describe without proof some known results concerning the general convergence properties of and when the kernel and solution of the integral equation are smooth. Then, we prove rigorously order of convergence estimates for and which are applicable in the practically siginificant case when is a rectangle, and the kernel of the integral equation is weakly singular. These estimates are illustrated by the numerical solution of a two dimensional weakly singular equation which arises in electrical engineering.

We describe a C0-collocation-like method for solving two-dimensional elliptic Dirichlet problems on rectangular regions, using tensor products of continuous piecewise polynomials. Nodes of the Lobatto quadrature formula are taken as the points of collocation. We show that the method is stable and convergent with order hr(r ≥ 1) in the H1–norm and hr+1(r ≥ 2) in the L2–norm, if the collocation solution js a piecewise polynomial of degree not greater than r with respect to each variable. The method has an advantage over the Galerkin procedure for the same space in that no integrals need be evaluated or approximated.

Computing the generalised gradient directly using its standard definition can involve forming the convex hull of a very large number of vectors. Here an alternative concise parametrization is developed for the generalised gradient of the signed rank regression family of objective functions, a class of piecewise linear functions which includes both convex and nonconvex members. The approach uses the geometry of the epigraph explicitly and this suggests extensions to more general functions. A nondegeneracy condition is assumed which is natural in optimization problems.

Random transition probability matrices with stationary independent factors define “white noise” environment processes for Markov chains. Two examples are considered in detail. Such environment processes can be used to construct several Markov chains which are dependent, have the same transition probabilities and are jointly a Markov chain. Transition rates for such processes are evaluated. These results have application to the study of animal movements.

The effect of an enclosed air cavity on the natural vibration frequencies of a rectangular membrane is investigated. The modes specified by an even integer are not affected. For the odd-odd modes, the frequency equation is found via a Green's function formulation and is solved to first order in a parameter representing the effect of the cavity of the rectangular drum. The frequencies are raised, with the fundamental being most affected. In the case of degeneracies, each degenerate mode contributes to the frequency shift, but the degeneracy itself is not broken to first order.

This paper deals with a class of network optimization problems in which the flow is a function of time rather than static as in the classical network flow problem, and storage is permitted at the nodes. A solution method involving discretization will be presented as an application of the ASG algorithm. We furnish a proof that the discretized solution converges to the exact continuous solution. We also apply the method to a water distribution network where we minimize the cost of pumping water to meet supply and demand, subject to both linear and nonlinear constraints.

In this article, exact and approximate techniques are used to obtain parameters of interest for two problems involving differential equations of power-law type. The first problem is related to non-linear steady-state diffusion, and is investigated by means of a hodograph transformation and an approximation using a path-independent integral. The second problem involves Poiseuille flow of a pseudo-plasticfluid, and a path-independent integral is derived which yields an exact result for the geometry under consideration.

Explicit formulae are derived for the projected gradient vector and trial dual variables required in the application of Rosen's method [4] to the solution of a Minimum Cost Network problem.

The basic problem in this paper is that of determining the geometry of an arbitrary doubly-connected region in R2 together with an impedance condition on its inner boundary and another impedance condition on its outer boundary, from the complete knowledge of the eigenvalues for the two-dimensional Laplacian using the asymptotic expansion of the spectral function for small positive t.

Consideration of functions whose second difference along the trajectories of a difference equation is positive gives a stability theorem for autonomous discrete-time systems. Such functions can be used to estimate domains of nonglobal stability.

A formal framework is constructed for the comparison of different stabilization techniques, such as Wiener filtering, regularization, Courant's method and Landweber–Strand iterations, for the solution of first kind integral equations. It is shown that, when they are applied to convolution equations, all these methods can be reinterpreted as Wiener filters. This equivalence is then used to derive some specific results about regularization, Courant's method and Landweber–Strand iteration.