Search results for "fractional calculu"
showing 10 items of 145 documents
A Wavelet-Galerkin Method for a 1D Elastic Continuum with Long- Range Interactions
2009
An elastic continuum model with long-range forces is addressed in this study. The model stems from a physically-based approach to non-local mechanics where non-adjacent volume elements exchange mutual central forces that depend on the relative displacement and on the product between the interacting volume elements; further, they are taken as proportional to a material dependent and distance-decaying function. Smooth-decay functions lead to integrodifferential equations while hypersingular, fractional-decay functions lead to a fractional differential equation of Marchaud type. In both cases the governing equations are solved by the Galerkin method with different sets of basis functions, amon…
Dynamics of non-local systems handled by fractional calculus
2007
Mechanical vibrations of non-local systems with long-range, cohesive, interactions between material particles have been studied in this paper by means of fractional calculus. Long-range cohesive forces between material particles have been included in equilibrium equations assuming interaction distance decay with order α . This approach yields as limiting case a partial fractional differential equation of order α involving space-time variables. It has been shown that the proposed model may be obtained by a discrete, mass-spring model that includes non-local interactions by non-adjacent particles and the mechanical vibrations of the particles have been obtained by an approximation fractional …
Stochastic dynamic analysis of fractional viscoelastic systems
2011
A method is presented to compute the non-stationary response of single-degree-of-freedom structural systems with fractional damping. Based on an appropriate change of variable and a discretization of the fractional derivative operator, the equation of motion is reverted to a set of coupled linear equations involving additional half oscillators, the number of which depends on the discretization of the fractional derivative operator. In this context, it is shown that such a set of oscillators can be given a proper fractal representation, with a Mandelbrot dimension depending on the fractional derivative order a. It is then seen that the response second-order statistics of the derived set of c…
A mechanical picture of fractional-order Darcy equation
2015
Abstract In this paper the authors show that fractional-order force-flux relations are obtained considering the flux of a viscous fluid across an elastic porous media. Indeed the one-dimensional fluid mass transport in an unbounded porous media with power-law variation of geometrical and physical properties yields a fractional-order relation among the ingoing flux and the applied pressure to the control section. As a power-law decay of the physical properties from the control section is considered, then the flux is related to a Caputo fractional derivative of the pressure of order 0 ⩽ β ≤ 1 . If, instead, the physical properties of the media show a power-law increase from the control sectio…
Laminar flow through fractal porous materials: the fractional-order transport equation
2015
Abstract The anomalous transport of a viscous fluid across a porous media with power-law scaling of the geometrical features of the pores is dealt with in the paper. It has been shown that, assuming a linear force–flux relation for the motion in a porous solid, then a generalized version of the Hagen–Poiseuille equation has been obtained with the aid of Riemann–Liouville fractional derivative. The order of the derivative is related to the scaling property of the considered media yielding an appropriate mechanical picture for the use of generalized fractional-order relations, as recently used in scientific literature.
Generalized differential transform method for nonlinear boundary value problem of fractional order
2015
Abstract In this paper the generalized differential transform method is applied to obtain an approximate solution of linear and nonlinear differential equation of fractional order with boundary conditions. Several numerical examples are considered and comparisons with the existing solution techniques are reported. Results show that the method is effective, easier to implement and very accurate when applied for the solution of fractional boundary values problems.
Fractional characteristic times and dissipated energy in fractional linear viscoelasticity
2016
Abstract In fractional viscoelasticity the stress–strain relation is a differential equation with non-integer operators (derivative or integral). Such constitutive law is able to describe the mechanical behavior of several materials, but when fractional operators appear, the elastic and the viscous contribution are inseparable and the characteristic times (relaxation and retardation time) cannot be defined. This paper aims to provide an approach to separate the elastic and the viscous phase in the fractional stress–strain relation with the aid of an equivalent classical model (Kelvin–Voigt or Maxwell). For such equivalent model the parameters are selected by an optimization procedure. Once …
A physical approach to the connection between fractal geometry and fractional calculus
2014
Our goal is to prove the existence of a connection between fractal geometries and fractional calculus. We show that such a connection exists and has to be sought in the physical origins of the power laws ruling the evolution of most of the natural phenomena, and that are the characteristic feature of fractional differential operators. We show, with the aid of a relevant example, that a power law comes up every time we deal with physical phenomena occurring on a underlying fractal geometry. The order of the power law depends on the anomalous dimension of the geometry, and on the mathematical model used to describe the physics. In the assumption of linear regime, by taking advantage of the Bo…
Step-by-step integration for fractional operators
2018
Abstract In this paper, an approach based on the definition of the Riemann–Liouville fractional operators is proposed in order to provide a different discretisation technique as alternative to the Grunwald–Letnikov operators. The proposed Riemann–Liouville discretisation consists of performing step-by-step integration based upon the discretisation of the function f(t). It has been shown that, as f(t) is discretised as stepwise or piecewise function, the Riemann–Liouville fractional integral and derivative are governing by operators very similar to the Grunwald–Letnikov operators. In order to show the accuracy and capabilities of the proposed Riemann–Liouville discretisation technique and th…
On the Stochastic Response of a Fractionally-damped Duffing Oscillator
2012
A numerical method is presented to compute the response of a viscoelastic Duffing oscillator with fractional derivative damping, subjected to a stochastic input. The key idea involves an appropriate discretization of the fractional derivative, based on a preliminary change of variable, that allows to approximate the original system by an equivalent system with additional degrees of freedom, the number of which depends on the discretization of the fractional derivative. Unlike the original system that, due to the presence of the fractional derivative, is governed by non-ordinary differential equations, the equivalent system is governed by ordinary differential equations that can be readily h…