Fluids and solids seminar

This is the website for Math 692 Graduate Seminar on Fluids and Solids: Mathematics and Numerics in Spring 2025!

The official course schedule says “Fluids: Mathematics and Numerics”. Here I revised the title so that elastic solids are in scope. (I am too lazy to make the change official.)

We are in the Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

guiding principles

  1. show up
  2. talk about fluids and solids and stuff
  3. try running stuff that does stuff

content

My idea for this seminar is that there are several math graduate students already doing fluids or elasticity research. Broader knowledge, with some kind of focus on the mathematical structures underlying continuum problems, and on finite element/volume formulation of the equations, is helpful to all of us.

Also, it is now pretty easy to do numerical simulations of fluids and solids using the finite element method, especially using Firedrake. That open source Python-based library was the subject of last year’s finite element seminar, so we have examples to work from.

I figure I might start the seminar with some kind of continuum mechanics introduction. However, general continuum mechanics quickly gets … boring? In any case, there are many on campus who are expert in various specific fluids/solids problems, and they are all invited. Anyone who is just curious is also invited. Ideally the experts can start their presentations from a somewhat-common starting point, before getting to their particular models.

Tsunamis, linear elasticity, seismology, vulcanology, glaciers, magneto-hydrodynamics, and water balloons are all in scope.

topics (schedule)

Date Speaker Topic Slides Code in repo
16 Jan someone something slides link maybe