Process
Scientists within the field of computational mechanics follow a list of tasks to analyze their target mechanical process:
1. A mathematical model of the physical phenomenon is made. This usually involves expressing the natural or engineering system in terms of partial differential equations. This step uses physics to formalize a complex system.
2. The mathematical equations are converted into forms which are suitable for digital computation. This step is called discretization because it involves creating an approximate discrete model from the original continuous model. In particular, it typically translates a partial differential equation (or a system thereof) into a system of algebraic equations. The processes involved in this step are studied in the field of numerical analysis.
3. Computer programs are made to solve the discretized equations using direct methods (which are single step methods resulting in the solution) or iterative methods (which start with a trial solution and arrive at the actual solution by successive refinement). Depending on the nature of the problem, supercomputers or parallel computers may be used at this stage.
4. The mathematical model, numerical procedures, and the computer codes are verified using either experimental results or simplified models for which exact analytical solutions are available. Quite frequently, new numerical or computational techniques are verified by comparing their result with those of existing well-established numerical methods. In many cases, benchmark problems are also available. The numerical results also have to be visualized and often physical interpretations will be given to the results.
Read more about this topic: Computational Mechanics
Famous quotes containing the word process:
“Because her instinct has told her, or because she has been reliably informed, the faded virgin knows that the supreme joys are not for her; she knows by a process of the intellect; but she can feel her deprivation no more than the young mother can feel the hardship of the virgin’s lot.”
—Arnold Bennett (1867–1931)
“The American, if he has a spark of national feeling, will be humiliated by the very prospect of a foreigner’s visit to Congress—these, for the most part, illiterate hacks whose fancy vests are spotted with gravy, and whose speeches, hypocritical, unctuous, and slovenly, are spotted also with the gravy of political patronage, these persons are a reflection on the democratic process rather than of it; they expose it in its process rather than of it; they expose it in its underwear.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“In contrast to revenge, which is the natural, automatic reaction to transgression and which, because of the irreversibility of the action process can be expected and even calculated, the act of forgiving can never be predicted; it is the only reaction that acts in an unexpected way and thus retains, though being a reaction, something of the original character of action.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)