Bibliothek

Beschreibung: Im Mai 2009 wurde Wolfram|Alpha gestartet, ein Service, der seinen Namen von seinem Entwickler, dem britischen Mathematiker Stephen Wolfram, ableitet. Dem Benutzer soll nicht nur eine Liste von Webseiten als Ergebnis auf Anfragen geliefert werden, sondern Antworten auf konkrete Fragen geben. In diesem Report soll gezeigt werden, warum sichWolframjAlpha von Suchmaschinen abgrenzt und was die Berechnung von Antworten auf natürlichsprachliche Fragen möglich machen kann.

Beschreibung: Wolfram|Alpha was started in May 2009 and it's a service whose name derives from the british mathematician Stephen wolfram. As a result for a request the user is not just supported with a list of websites but with answers for concrete questions. In this report it will be shown why Wolfram|Alpha seperates from search engines and moreover what makes the computation of answers for natural language queries possible.

Beschreibung: We consider an optimal control problem from hyperthermia treatment planning and its barrier regularization. We derive basic results, which lay the groundwork for the computation of optimal solutions via an interior point path-following method. Further, we report on a numerical implementation of such a method and its performance at an example problem.

Beschreibung: Optical technologies are ubiquitously used in hi-tech devices. As a common feature of such devices one finds structures with dimensions in the order of the wavelength of the used light. To design and produce such devices, the wave nature of light must be taken into account. Accordingly, robust simulation tools are required which are based on rigorously solving Maxwell's equations, the governing equations of light propagation within macroscopic media. This thesis contributes to the modeling and the numerical computation of light scattering problems: Light scattering problems are typically posed on the entire space. The Perfectly-Matched -Layer method (PML) is widely used to restrict the simulation problem onto a bounded computational domain. We propose an adaptive PML method which exhibits a good convergence even for critical problems where standard PML implementations fail. Besides the computation of the near field, that is the electromagnetic field within the computational domain, it is of major interest to evaluate the electromagnetic field in the exterior domain and to compute the far field. So far, this was numerically only possible for simple geometries such as homogeneous exterior domains or layered media. To deal with more complicated devices, for example with waveguide inhomogeneities, we develop an evaluation formula based on the PML solution which allows for an exterior domain field evaluation in a half space above the device. Finally, we generalize the PML method to problems with multiply structured exterior domains. The term “multiply structured exterior domain” is defined in this thesis and means that the exterior domain exhibits several half-infinite structures. Mathematically, this gives rise to various complications. For example, no analytical solutions to Maxwell's equations for standard light sources are available in the exterior domain, which are needed to describe the incoming field in a light scattering problem. To tackle this we propose a new light scattering problem formulation which fits well into the PML method framework and which may be regarded as an extension of classical contributions by Sommerfeld, Wiener and Hopf. An exterior domain evaluation formula for multiply structured exterior domains with an extended illumination is derived as well.

Beschreibung: We introduce the coolest path problem, which is a mixture of two well-known problems from distinct mathematical fields. One of them is the shortest path problem from combinatorial optimization. The other is the heat conduction problem from the field of partial differential equations. Together, they make up a control problem, where some geometrical object traverses a digraph in an optimal way, with constraints on intermediate or the final state. We discuss some properties of the problem and present numerical solution techniques. We demonstrate that the problem can be formulated as a linear mixed-integer program. Numerical solutions can thus be achieved within one hour for instances with up to 70 nodes in the graph.

Beschreibung: Given a general mixed integer program (MIP), we automatically detect block structures in the constraint matrix together with the coupling by capacity constraints arising from multi-commodity-flow formulations. We identify the underlying graph and generate cutting planes based on cuts in the detected network. Our implementation adds a separator to the branch-and-cut libraries of SCIP and CPLEX. We make use of the complemented mixed integer rounding framework (cMIR) but provide a special purpose aggregation heuristic that exploits the network structure. Our separation scheme speeds-up the computation for a large set of MIPs coming from network design problems by a factor of two on average.

Beschreibung: Executing applications in the Grid often requires access to multiple geographically distributed resources. In a Grid environment, these resources belong to different administrative domains, each employing its own scheduling policy. That is, at which time an activity (e.g., compute job, data transfer) is started, is decided by the resource's local management system. In such an environment, the coordinated execution of distributed applications requires guarantees on the quality of service (QoS) of the needed resources. Reserving resources in advance is an accepted means to obtain QoS guarantees from a single provider. The challenge, however, is to coordinate advance reservations of multiple resources. This work presents a system architecture and mechanisms to coordinate multiple advance reservations -- called co-reservations -- for delivering QoS guarantees to complex applications. We formally define the co-reservation problem as an optimization problem. The presented model supports three dimensions of freedom: the start time, the duration and the service level of a reservation. Requests and resources are described in a simple language. After matching the static properties and requirements of either side in a mapping, the reservation mechanism probes information about the future status of the resources. The versatile design of the probing step allows the efficient processing of requests, but also lets the resources express their preferences among the myriads of reservation candidates. Next, the best mapping is found through an implementation of the formal co-reservation model. Then, the mapping has to be secured, i.e., resources need to be allocated to a co-reservation candidate with all-or-nothing semantics. We study several goal-driven sequential and concurrent allocation mechanisms and define schemes for handling allocation failures. Finally, we introduce the concept of virtual resources for seamlessly embedding co-reservations into Grid resource management.

Beschreibung: Die Ausführung von Anwendungen erfordert oft mehrere, geographisch verteilte Ressourcen. In Grid-Umgebungen gehören diese Ressourcen zu verschiedenen administrativen Organisationen, wobei jede ihre eigene Schedulingregeln verwendet. Das bedeutet, zu welcher Zeit eine Aktivität gestartet wird (z.B. ein Rechenjob), wird vom lokalen Ressourcenmanagementsystem entschieden. Die koordinierte Ausführung von verteilten Anwendungen erfordert Dienstgütegarantien für die benötigten Ressourcen. Das Reservieren von Ressourcen im Voraus ist ein Mittel, um Dienstgütegarantien von einem einzelnen Ressourcenanbieter zu erhalten. Die Herausforderung in dieser Arbeit ist, Vorausreservierungen von mehreren Ressourcen zu koordinieren. Es wird ein System für die Koordinierung mehrerer Vorausreservierungen -- Co-Reservierungen genannt -- für die Bereitstellung von Dienstgütegarantien vorgestellt. Wir definieren das Co-Reservierungsproblem als Optimierungsproblem. Das vorgestellte Modell unterstützt drei Freiheitsgrade: die Startzeit, die Dauer und die Dienstgüte einer Reservierung. Anfragen und Ressourcen werden in einer einfachen Sprache beschrieben. Nachdem statische Eigenschaften und Anforderungen beider Seiten überprüft wurden, ermittelt der Reservierungsmechanismus Informationen über den zukünftigen Zustand der Ressourcen. Dieser Schritt ist so allgemein gehalten, daß er sowohl ein effizientes Bearbeiten der Anfragen erlaubt als auch den Ressourcen ermöglicht ihre Präferenzen auszudrücken. Im Anschluss wird die optimale Zuweisung von Anfragen zu Ressourcen ermittelt. Im letzten Schritt muss diese Zuweisung umgesetzt werden, d.h., entweder alle oder keine Ressource wird allokiert. Es werden mehrere sequentielle und parallele Allokationsverfahren vorgestellt sowie deren Auswirkung auf verschiedene Metriken untersucht. Die Einbettung von Co-Reservierungen in das Grid-Ressourcenmanagement wird anhand des Konzeptes der virtuellen Ressource dargestellt.

Beschreibung: Pseudo-Boolean problems lie on the border between satisfiability problems, constraint programming, and integer programming. In particular, nonlinear constraints in pseudo-Boolean optimization can be handled by methods arising in these different fields: One can either linearize them and work on a linear programming relaxation or one can treat them directly by propagation. In this paper, we investigate the individual strengths of these approaches and compare their computational performance. Furthermore, we integrate these techniques into a branch-and-cut-and-propagate framework, resulting in an efficient nonlinear pseudo-Boolean solver.

Beschreibung: The Steiner connectivity problem is a generalization of the Steiner tree problem. It consists in finding a minimum cost set of simple paths to connect a subset of nodes in an undirected graph. We show that polyhedral and algorithmic results on the Steiner tree problem carry over to the Steiner connectivity problem, namely, the Steiner cut and the Steiner partition inequalities, as well as the associated polynomial time separation algorithms, can be generalized. Similar to the Steiner tree case, a directed formulation, which is stronger than the natural undirected one, plays a central role.

Beschreibung: Every day, millions of people are transported by buses, trains, and airplanes in Germany. Public transit (PT) is of major importance for the quality of life of individuals as well as the productivity of entire regions. Quality and efficiency of PT systems depend on the political framework (state-run, market oriented) and the suitability of the infrastructure (railway tracks, airport locations), the existing level of service (timetable, flight schedule), the use of adequate technologies (information, control, and booking systems), and the best possible deployment of equipment and resources (energy, vehicles, crews). The decision, planning, and optimization problems arising in this context are often gigantic and “scream” for mathematical support because of their complexity. This article sketches the state and the relevance of mathematics in planning and operating public transit, describes today’s challenges, and suggests a number of innovative actions. The current contribution of mathematics to public transit is — depending on the transportation mode — of varying depth. Air traffic is already well supported by mathematics. Bus traffic made significant advances in recent years, while rail traffic still bears significant opportunities for improvements. In all areas of public transit, the existing potentials are far from being exhausted. For some PT problems, such as vehicle and crew scheduling in bus and air traffic, excellent mathematical tools are not only available, but used in many places. In other areas, such as rolling stock rostering in rail traffic, the performance of the existing mathematical algorithms is not yet sufficient. Some topics are essentially untouched from a mathematical point of view; e.g., there are (except for air traffic) no network design or fare planning models of practical relevance. PT infrastructure construction is essentially devoid of mathematics, even though enormous capital investments are made in this area. These problems lead to questions that can only be tackled by engineers, economists, politicians, and mathematicians in a joint effort. Among other things, the authors propose to investigate two specific topics, which can be addressed at short notice, are of fundamental importance not only for the area of traffic planning, should lead to a significant improvement in the collaboration of all involved parties, and, if successful, will be of real value for companies and customers: • discrete optimal control: real-time re-planning of traffic systems in case of disruptions, • model integration: service design in bus and rail traffic. Work on these topics in interdisciplinary research projects could be funded by the German ministry of research and education (BMBF), the German ministry of economics (BMWi), or the German science foundation (DFG).

Beschreibung: The steel mill slab design problem from the CSPLib is a binpacking problem that is motivated by an application of the steel industry and that has been widely studied in the constraint programming community. Recently, several people proposed new models and methods to solve this problem. A steel mill slab library was created which contains 380 instances. A closely related binpacking problem called multiple knapsack problem with color constraints, originated from the same industrial problem, were discussed in the integer programming community. In particular, a simple integer programming for this problem has been given by Forrest et al. [3]. The aim of this paper is to bring these different studies together. Moreover, we adopt the model of [3] for the steel mill slab problem. Using a state of the art integer program solver, this model is capable to solve all instances of the steel mill slab library, mostly in less than one second, to optimality. We improved, thereby, the solution value of 76 instances.

Beschreibung: Nowadays most data networks use shortest path protocols such as OSPF or IS-IS to route traffic. Given administrative routing lengths for the links of a network, all data packets are sent along shortest paths with respect to these lengths from their source to their destination. One of the most fundamental problems in planning shortest path networks is to decide whether a given set of routing paths forms a valid routing and, if this is not the case, to find a small subset of the given paths that cannot be shortest paths simultaneously for any routing lengths. In this paper we show that it is NP-hard to approximate the size of the smallest shortest path conflict by a factor less than 7/6.

Beschreibung: The Vehicle Positioning Problem (VPP) consists of the assignment of vehicles (buses, trams or trains) of a public transport or railway company to parking positions in a depot and to timetabled trips. Such companies have many different types of vehicles, and each trip can be performed only by vehicles of some of these types. These assignments are non-trivial due to the topology of depots. The parking positions are organized in tracks, which work as one- or two-sided stacks or queues. If a required type of vehicle is not available in the front of any track, shunting movements must be performed in order to change vehicles' positions, which is undesirable and should be avoided. In this text we present integer linear and non-linear programming formulations for some versions of the problem and compare them from a theoretical and a computational point of view.

Beschreibung: The understanding of geometric structures and dynamical properties of molecular conformations gives insight into molecular long-term behavior. The identification of metastable conformations together with their life times and transition patterns is the intention of conformation dynamics. Conformation dynamics is a multi-scale approach that leads to a reduced description of the dynamical system in terms of a stochastic transition probability matrix. The present thesis deals with the error analysis of computed matrices and the resulting matrix functions. Since conformational membership vectors, as they are computed by the Robust Perron Cluster Analysis (PCCA+), form an invariant subspace of the transition matrix, subspace-based error estimators are of particular interest. The decomposition of the state space into basis functions and the approximation of integrals by Monte-Carlo quadrature give rise to row-wise correlated random matrices, for which stochastic norms are computed. Together with an appropriate statistical model for the distribution of matrix rows, this allows for the calculation of error bounds and error distributions of the invariant subspace and other variables of interest. Equilibration of errors among the basis functions can be achieved by enhanced sampling in regions where the trajectories are mixing slowly. Hierarchical refinement of such basis functions systematically improves the clustering into metastable conformations by reducing the error in the corresponding invariant subspace. These techniques allow for an evaluation of simulation results and pave the way for the analysis of larger molecules. Moreover, the extension of PCCA+ to non-reversible Markov chains, verified by the corresponding perturbation theory, and the modification of the objective function for the case of soft membership vectors represent a further generalization of the clustering method, thus continuing the development from PCCA over PCCA+ to PCCA++. The methods developed in this thesis are useful for but not limited to conformation dynamics. In fact, they are applicable to a broader class of problems which combine domain decomposition with Monte-Carlo quadrature. Possible application areas may include the chemical master equation or quantum dynamical systems.

Beschreibung: Das Verständnis von geometrischen Strukturen und dynamischen Eigenschaften molekularer Konformationen ist essentiell für die Vorhersage des Langzeitverhaltens von Molekülen. Die Identifikation metastabiler Konformationen sowie die Bestimmung von Übergangswahrscheinlichkeiten und Haltezeiten sind Bestandteil der Konformationdynamik. Dabei handelt es sich um eine Mehrskalenmethode, die auf eine reduzierte Beschreibung des Systems mittels einer stochastischen Übergangsmatrix führt. In der vorliegenden Dissertation wurde untersucht, wie man die Genauigkeit der Matrizen sowie der daraus berechneten Größen quantifizieren kann. Im Mittelpunkt stehen dabei Fehlerschätzer für den invarianten Unterraum, da die rechten Eigenvektoren als Grundlage der Robusten Perron Cluster Analyse (PCCA+) zur Identifizierung der metastabilen Konformationen dienen. Die Zerlegung des Zustandsraumes in Basisfunktionen sowie die Approximation der Matrixeinträge mittels Monte-Carlo-Quadratur führen zu zeilenweise korrelierten Zufallsmatrizen. Mit Hilfe einer stochastischen Norm sowie einem geeigneten statistischen Modell für die Verteilung der Matrixzeilen können u.a. Fehlerschranken und -verteilungen für den invarianten Unterraum brechnet werden. Eine Equilibrierung des Fehlers zwischen den Basisfunktionen kann durch erweitertes Sampling in solchen Regionen erreicht werden, in denen die Trajektorien nur langsam mischen.Eine hierarchische Zerlegung dieser Basisfunktionen verbessert systematisch die Zerlegung in metastabile Konformationen, indem sie den Fehler im invarianten Unterraum reduziert. Diese Techniken gestatten eine Evaluierung der Simulationsergebnisse und ebnen den Weg zur Behandlung komplexerer Moleküle. Desweiteren wurden Verallgemeinerungen der PCCA+ untersucht. Die Erweiterung der PCCA+ auf nicht-reversible Markov-Ketten sowie die Modifizierung der Zielfunktion für den Fall der weichen Clusterung setzen die Entwicklung von der PCCA über PCCA+ zu PCCA++ fort. Somit können neue Anwendungsfelder für dieses Cluster-Verfahren erschlossen werden. Die Methoden wurden zwar in Rahmen der Konformationsdynamik entwickelt, jedoch lassen sie sich auf eine weite Problemklasse anwenden, in der Gebietszerlegungsverfahren mit Monte-Carlo-Quadratur kombiniert werden. Mögliche Anwendungsgebiete umfassen die chemische Master-Gleichung oder quantenchemische Systeme.

Beschreibung: We give the basic definitions and some theoretical results about hyperdeterminants, introduced by A.~Cayley in 1845. We prove integrability (understood as $4d$-consistency) of a nonlinear difference equation defined by the $2 \times 2 \times 2$ - hyperdeterminant. This result gives rise to the following hypothesis: the difference equations defined by hyperdeterminants of any size are integrable. We show that this hypothesis already fails in the case of the $2\times 2\times 2\times 2$ - hyperdeterminant.

Beschreibung: The Vehicle Positioning Problem (VPP) is a classical combinatorial optimization problem in public transport planning. A number of models and approaches have been suggested in the literature, which work for small problems, but not for large ones. We propose in this article a novel set partitioning model and an associated column generation solution approach for the VPP. The model provides a tight linear description of the problem. The pricing problem, and hence the LP relaxation itself, can be solved in polynomial resp. pseudo-polynomial time for some versions of the problems.

Beschreibung: Since the initial application of mathematical optimisation methods to mine planning in 1965, the Lerchs-Grossmann algorithm for computing the ultimate pit limit, operations researchers have worked on a variety of challenging problems in the area of open pit mining. This thesis focuses on the open pit mining production scheduling problem: Given the discretisation of an orebody as a block model, determine the sequence in which the blocks should be removed from the pit, over the lifespan of the mine, such that the net present value of the mining operation is maximised. In practise, when some material has been removed from the pit, it must be processed further in order to extract the valuable elements contained therein. If the concentration of valuable elements is not sufficiently high, the material is discarded as waste or stockpiled. Realistically-sized block models can contain hundreds of thousands of blocks. A common approach to render these problem instances computationally tractable is the aggregation of blocks to larger scheduling units. The thrust of this thesis is the investigation of a new mixed-integer programming formulation for the open pit mining production scheduling problem, which allows for processing decisions to be made at block level, while the actual mining schedule is still computed at aggregate level. A drawback of this model in its full form is the large number of additional variables needed to model the processing decisions. One main result of this thesis shows how these processing variables can be aggregated efficiently to reduce the problem size significantly, while practically incurring no loss in net present value. The second focus is on the application of lagrangean relaxation to the resource constraints. Using a result of Möhring et al. (2003) for project scheduling, the lagrangean relaxation can be solved efficiently via minimum cut computations in a weighted digraph. Experiments with a bundle algorithm implementation by Helmberg showed how the lagrangean dual can be solved within a small fraction of the time required by standard linear programming algorithms, while yielding practically the same dual bound. Finally, several problem-specific heuristics are presented together with computational results: two greedy sub-MIP start heuristics and a large neighbourhood search heuristic. A combination of a lagrangean-based start heuristic followed by a large neighbourhood search proved to be effective in generating solutions with objective values within a 0.05% gap of the optimum.

Beschreibung: Starting from the conservation laws for mass, momentum and energy together with a three species, bulk microphysic model, a model for the interaction of internal gravity waves and deep convective hot towers is derived by using multiscale asymptotic techniques. From the resulting leading order equations, a closed model is obtained by applying weighted averages to the smallscale hot towers without requiring further closure approximations. The resulting model is an extension of the linear, anelastic equations, into which moisture enters as the area fraction of saturated regions on the microscale with two way coupling between the large and small scale. Moisture reduces the effective stability in the model and defines a potential temperature sourceterm related to the net effect of latent heat release or consumption by microscale up- and downdrafts. The dispersion relation and group velocity of the system is analyzed and moisture is found to have several effects: It reduces energy transport by waves, increases the vertical wavenumber but decreases the slope at which wave packets travel and it introduces a lower horizontal cutoff wavenumber, below which modes turn into evanescent. Further, moisture can cause critical layers. Numerical examples for steadystate and timedependent mountain waves are shown and the effects of moisture on these waves are investigated.

Beschreibung: In dieser Arbeit wird ein neuer Ansatz zur Modellierung von thermal signifikanten Gefäßsträngen im Hyperthermie-Kontext betrachtet. Ausgehend von einer Konvektions-Diffusions-Gleichung wird durch Reskalierung des Massenflussterms eine Reduktion des Adergebietes auf eine 1D-Struktur erreicht. Nach numerischen Vorbetrachtungen wird die Grenzgleichung innerhalb einer verallgemeinerten Sobolev-Algebra formuliert. Die Untersuchung der Lösungsfamilie in klassischen Funktionenräumen zeigt, dass deren schwacher Grenzwert die Lösung der korrespondierenden Diffusions-Gleichung ist. Die Diskretisierung einer formalen Grenzgleichung mit Linienstromanteil stellt jedoch eine gute Approximation an die Diskretisierung des ursprünglichen Problems dar, wenn man die lokale Maschenweite an die Gefäßradien koppelt und bei erhöhtem Genauigkeitsbedarf auf ein vollständiges 3D-Modell umschaltet.

Beschreibung: Aktuelle Entwicklungen zeigen, dass Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Anwendungen wie Skype oder Bittorrent im Internet immer mehr an Bedeutung gewinnen. In den letzten Jahren hat es einen explosionsartigen Anstieg an Nutzern und Daten in solchen Netzen gegeben. Dabei stellt der eigentliche Dateitransfer zwischen zwei Rechnern kein großes Problem mehr dar und auch der Speicherbedarf für die große Menge an Daten kann durch die Weiterentwicklung der Hardware gut gedeckt werden. Das eigentliche Problem liegt vielmehr darin, den Rechner zu finden, der die gewünschten Daten hat. Client-Server Architekturen, wie zum Beispiel Napster, haben sich als ungünstig herausgestellt. Wenige Server, die eine große Anzahl an Clients bedienen müssen, sind einerseits sehr anfällig gegenüber Angriffen und Ausfällen (Single Point of Failure)und kommen auch nicht mit der ständig wachsenden Anzahl an Nutzern zurecht. Verteilte Hashtabellen (DHT) bieten hier einen guten Lösungsansatz, der mit einer großen Anzahl an Nutzern skaliert und ausfallsicher ist. Andere dezentrale Lösungen, wie zum Beispiel das P2P Netzwerk Gnutella haben zwar das Problem des Single Point of Failure gelöst, jedoch haben sie starke Nachteile bei der Suche nach Keys. Bei einer Suche wird ein Broadcast verwendet (jeder schickt die Anfrage an jeden weiter) und damit ein enormer Netzwerkverkehr erzeugt. In "Why Gnutella Can't Scale. No, Really" wird erklärt, dass eine Suchanfrage bei Standardeinstellungen in der Clientsoftware einen Netzwerkverkehr von 17MB erzeugt. Deswegen wird zusätzlich eine Lösung benötigt, die Keys und Values geordnet verteilt, damit sie gezielt gesucht werden können. Aus diesem Grund beschäftigt sich die folgende Arbeit mit einer völlig dezentralen Architektur, die außerdem eine sinnvolle Platzierung der Keys vornimmt. Die dezentrale Architektur hat den Vorteil, dass die Endgeräte den Hauptteil des Dienstes selbst erbringen und damit jeder zusätzliche Teilnehmer seine eigenen Ressourcen beisteuert. Diese Arbeit präsentiert Chord#, eine dezentrale, skalierbare und selbstorganisierende verteilte Hashtabelle. Chord# wurde ausgewählt, da in dieser Arbeit auch Wert auf Bereichsabfragen gelegt wurde. Diese sind zum Beispiel bei dem Chord Algorithmus nicht möglich, da dieser eine Hashfunktion für die Keys verwendet und somit die Daten zwar gleichmäßig aber unsortiert auf die Teilnehmer verteilt. Es wird in dieser Arbeit gezeigt, dass mit Hilfe von Chord# auch ohne die Hashfunktion gute Ergebnisse erzielt werden. Außerdem können durch den Verzicht auf die Hashfunktion Bereichsabfragen ermöglicht werden. Dafür wird der Chord# Algorithmus in Java implementiert (ca. 1500 Zeilen Code) und in dem Forschungsnetz PlanetLab ausführlich auf Laufzeiten, Instandhaltungskosten und Skalierung getestet.

Beschreibung: Recent developments show that peer-to-peer (p2p) applications, such as Skype or Bittorrent have become increasingly important in the internet. Over the last years there has been a rapid growth of both users and data in such networks. However, the actual file transfer between two peers is not really an issue anymore. The same holds true for data storage, since the new hardware grants users enough space to store their data. The real problem is finding the peers that possess the desired data. Client-server architectures like Napster have proven to be ineffective addressing that problem. One or few servers being responsible for many peers are vulnerable to attacks or failures (single point of failure). Additionally, they are unable to cope with the rapidly growing number of peers. Distributed hashtables (DHT) are a good approach to solve these problems, since they scale nicely with large numbers of peers and provide a high tolerance for errors. Other decentralized solutions like the p2p network Gnutella solved the problem of Single Point of Failure but show considerable disadvantages when searching for keys. The peers in Gnutella use a broadcast (sending the message to all peers they know)resulting in massive traffic. According to "Why Gnutella Can't Scale. No, Really.", each search using standard client settings yields 17MB traffc. This calls for a different solution, distributing keys and values to peers quickly and efficiently so they can be found fast. For that reason this thesis focuses on a fully distributed architecture using organized key placement. One major advantage of distributed architecture is the fact, that the peers do most of the work themselves. This way, new peers joining the network add resources to it. This thesis presents Chord#, a scalable, self-organizing and completely decentralized DHT. It has been chosen due to its capability to allow range queries. The regular Chord algorithm does not support range queries, because of the hashfunction it uses to evenly distribute the keys among the peers. This results in similar or logical coherent keys most likely not being close together in the network. This thesis shows Chord# achieving same results as Chord - regarding performance costs - without the hashfunction. In dropping the hashfunction this algorithm allows the use of range queries. The Chord# algorithm is implemented in Java (about 1500 lines of code) and thoroughly tested in the research network PlanetLab. The results are evaluated regarding performance, maintenance and scalability.

Beschreibung: One of the biggest impacts on the performance of a Distributed Hash Table (DHT), once established, is its ability to balance load among its nodes. DHTs supporting range queries for example suffer from a potentially huge skew in the distribution of their items since techniques such as consistent hashing can not be applied. Thus explicit load balancing schemes need to be deployed. Several such schemes have been developed and are part of recent research, most of them using only information locally available in order to scale to arbitrary systems. Gossiping techniques however allow the retrieval of fairly good estimates of global information with low overhead. Such information can then be added to existing load balancing algorithms that can use the additional knowledge to improve their performance. Within this thesis several schemes are developed that use global information like the average load and the standard deviation of the load among the nodes to primarily reduce the number of items an algorithm moves to achieve a certain balance. Two novel load balancing algorithms have then been equipped with implementations of those schemes and have been simulated on several scenarios. Most of these variants show better balance results and move far less items than the algorithms they are based on. The best of the developed algorithms achieves a 15-30% better balance and moves only about 50-70% of the number of items its underlying algorithm moves. This variation is also very robust to erroneous estimates and scales linearly with the system size and system load. Further experiments with self-tuning algorithms that set an algorithm’s parameter according to the system’s state show that even more improvements can be gained if additionally applied. Such a variant based on the algorithm described by Karger and Ruhl shows the same balance improvements of 15-30% as the variant above but reduces the number of item movements further to 40-65%.

Beschreibung: We present Undercover, a primal heuristic for mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP). The heuristic constructs a mixed-integer linear subproblem (sub-MIP) of a given MINLP by fixing a subset of the variables. We solve a set covering problem to identify a minimal set of variables which need to be fixed in order to linearise each constraint. Subsequently, these variables are fixed to approximate values, e.g. obtained from a linear outer approximation. The resulting sub-MIP is solved by a mixed-integer linear programming solver. Each feasible solution of the sub-MIP corresponds to a feasible solution of the original problem. Although general in nature, the heuristic seems most promising for mixed-integer quadratically constrained programmes (MIQCPs). We present computational results on a general test set of MIQCPs selected from the MINLPLib.

Beschreibung: In this paper we investigate the performance of several out-of-the box solvers for mixed-integer quadratically constrained programmes (MIQCPs) on an open pit mine production scheduling problem with mixing constraints. We compare the solvers BARON, Couenne, SBB, and SCIP to a problem-specific algorithm on two different MIQCP formulations. The computational results presented show that general-purpose solvers with no particular knowledge of problem structure are able to nearly match the performance of a hand-crafted algorithm.

Beschreibung: Eines der Hauptanliegen bei der Initiierung des Kooperativen Bibliotheksverbundes Berlin-Brandenburg (KOBV) war die Schaffung einer modernen, leistungsfähigen Informationsinfrastruktur unter Einbeziehung möglichst aller Bibliotheken der in ihrer Dichte und Vielfalt in Deutschland einmaligen Bibliothekslandschaft. Sie wurde beim Aufbau des KOBV durch die Wahl des Verbundmodelles mit seinen offenen, integrativen Strukturen befördert. Die Ziele und Strategien des KOBV leiten sich aus dem Grundauftrag der Bibliotheken her, ihre NutzerInnen optimal mit Medien und Informationen zu versorgen. Mit dem KOBV haben die Bibliotheken eine gemeinsame Plattform und ein regionales Netzwerk geschaffen, mit deren Hilfe sie die Informationsinfrastruktur in Berlin und Brandenburg zusammen aufgebaut und grundlegend verbessert haben. Nach rund elf Jahren ist der KOBV in eine neue Phase eingetreten, indem er – unter Wahrung seiner institutionellen Eigenständigkeit – eine Strategische Allianz mit dem Bibliotheksverbund Bayern (BVB) eingegangen ist und die bislang auf die Region bezogene Kooperation der Bibliotheken überregional ausgeweitet hat. Wenn auch die Universalbibliotheken des KOBV in dieser Zusammenarbeit einen Kurswechsel zur zentralen Katalogisierung vollziehen, bedeutet dies für den KOBV insgesamt keinen Paradigmenwechsel: Er bleibt ein dezentraler Verbund und wird sein flexibles technisches Mischkonzept von verteilter und zentraler Datenhaltung fortführen. Dieses lässt den Bibliotheken die Freiheit zu entscheiden, ob sie zentral oder dezentral katalogisieren möchten. Die KOBV-Zentrale, die im KOBV keine Aufgaben in der Katalogisierung wahrnimmt, wird wie bislang allen Mitgliedsbibliotheken die ASP-Dienste und weiteren Angebote gleichermaßen zur Verfügung stellen und die Dienstleistungen für NutzerInnen und Bibliotheken weiter ausbauen. Mit dem vorhandenen Know How, der eingesetzten modernen Technologie und der strategischen Entscheidung, Ressourcen und Kompetenzen mit dem BVB zu bündeln und durch verbundübergreifende arbeitsteilige Verfahren Synergien zu gewinnen, ist der KOBV gut aufgestellt, um die Herausforderungen der kommenden Jahre anzugehen und das Leistungsspektrum der KOBV-Bibliotheken durch die Entwicklung neuer Dienste auszuweiten.

Beschreibung: Entwurf und Entwicklung eines eingebetteten Hauptspeicher-Datenbanksystems mit Snapshot-Reads.

Beschreibung: Design and implementation of an embedded main memory database with snapshot reads.

Beschreibung: We consider a system with Poisson arrivals and i.i.d. service times. The requests are served according to the state-dependent processor sharing discipline, where each request receives a service capacity which depends on the actual number of requests in the system. The linear systems of PDEs describing the residual and attained sojourn times coincide for this system, which provides time reversibility including sojourn times for this system, and their minimal non negative solution gives the LST of the sojourn time $V(\tau)$ of a request with required service time $\tau$. For the case that the service time distribution is exponential in a neighborhood of zero, we derive a linear system of ODEs, whose minimal non negative solution gives the LST of $V(\tau)$, and which yields linear systems of ODEs for the moments of $V(\tau)$ in the considered neighborhood of zero. Numerical results are presented for the variance of $V(\tau)$. In case of an M/GI/2-PS system, the LST of $V(\tau)$ is given in terms of the solution of a convolution equation in the considered neighborhood of zero. For bounded from below service times, surprisingly simple expressions for the LST and variance of $V(\tau)$ in this neighborhood of zero are derived, which yield in particular the LST and variance of $V(\tau)$ in M/D/2-PS.

Beschreibung: Eigentlich war der erste Autor nur zu einem Grußwort zur Tagung „GML² 2009 - Grundfragen Multi¬medialen Lehrens und Lernens“ eingeladen. Daraus wurde ein E-Learning-bezogener Vortrag, der – basierend auf Erfahrungen im Fach Mathematik – einen kritischen Blick auf die E-Learning-Szene in Deutschland wirft und diese mit entsprechenden Aktivitäten weltweit vergleicht. Dies ist die in seinen mathematischen Teilen gekürzte, in den E-Learning-Anteilen ein wenig erweiterte schriftliche Fassung des Vortrags. Der Artikel stammt nicht von E-Learning-Spezialisten sondern von Personen, die sich seit fast zwanzig Jahren mit elektronischer Information und Kommunikation (kurz: IuK) – insbesondere in der Mathematik – beschäftigen. Nach einer Definition von Michael Kerres kennzeichnet der Begriff E-Learning (electronic learning – elektronisch unterstütztes Lernen) alle Formen von Lernen, bei denen digitale Medien für die Präsentation und Distribution von Lernmaterialien und/oder zur Unterstützung zwischenmenschlicher Kommunikation zum Einsatz kommen, siehe z.B. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Learning. IuK und E-Learning haben nach dieser Begriffsbildung viele Berührungspunkte. Deswegen wagen wir es, unsere positiven und negativen Erfahrungen im Bereich IuK in diesem Eröffnungsvortrag zu berichten, einige Entwicklungslinien zu vergleichen und eine eigene Kurzversion der Definition von E-Learning (besser E-Teaching and -Learning) voranzustellen: „Lehren und Lernen mit Unterstützung elektronischer Hilfsmittel“.

Beschreibung: Das Ziel dieser Arbeit ist die Schaffung einer Zugriffs-Komponente für das Grid-Datenmanagement-System ZIB-DMS, das dessen transparente Einbindung in den Verzeichnisbaum eines Linux-Systems erlaubt. Dazu wird unter Verwendung des FUSE-Rahmenwerkes ein Userspace-Dateisystem mit Anbindung an das ZIB-DMS konzipiert und implementiert. Im Fokus stehen dabei die Abbildung der erweiterten Verwaltungsmechanismen des Systems auf die limitierte Schnittstelle hierarchischer Dateisysteme und die dazu notwendigen Änderungen am ZIB-DMS.

Beschreibung: The goal of this work is to create an access component for the Grid data management system ZIB-DMS, that allows a transparent integration into the directory tree of a Linux system. For this purpose the FUSE framework is used to design and implement a userspace file system with connections to the ZIB-DMS. The focus is on the mapping of the extended management mechanisms of the system to the limited interface of hierarchical file systems and the therefore necessary changes to ZIB-DMS.

Beschreibung: We present a framework for transactional data access on data stored in a DHT. It allows to atomically read and write items and to run distributed transactions consisting of a sequence of read and write operations on the items. Items are symmetrically replicated in order to achieve durability of data stored in the SON. To provide availability of items despite the unavailability of some replicas, operations on items are quorum-based. They make progress as long as a majority of replicas can be accessed. Our framework processes transactions optimistically with an atomic commit protocol that is based on Paxos atomic commit. We present algorithms for the whole framework with an event based notation. Additionally we discuss the problem of lookup inconsistencies and its implications on the one-copy serializability property of the transaction processing in our framework.

Beschreibung: When planning teams for projects with specific goals, employees of a company have to group together so well, that all necessary knowledge for conquering the project’s challenges are met within the member’s skills. A tool that facilitates semantic web technologies can support the team recruiter, who is responsible for chosing the members of the team, in terms of finding the most efficient combinations of the company’s employees based on their expertises.

Beschreibung: Telecommunication transport networks consist of a stack of technologically different subnetworks, so-called layers, which are strongly interdependent. For example, one layer may correspond to an Internet (IP) backbone network whose links are realized by lightpath connections in an underlying optical fiber layer. To ensure that the network can fulfill its task of routing all communication requests, the inter-layer dependencies have to be taken into account already in the planning phase of the network. This is particularly important with survivability constraints, where connections in one layer have to be protected against cable cuts or equipment failures in another layer. The traditional sequential planning approach where one layer is optimized after the other cannot properly take care of the inter-layer dependencies; this can only be achieved with an integrated planning of several network layers at the same time. This thesis provides mathematical models and algorithmic techniques for the integrated optimization of two network layers with survivability constraints. We describe a multi-layer network design problem which occurs in various technologies, and model it mathematically using mixed-integer programming (MIP) formulations. The presented models cover many important practical side constraints from different technological contexts. In contrast to previous models from the literature, they can be used to design large two-layer networks with survivability requirements. We discuss modeling alternatives for various aspects of a multi-layer network and compare different routing formulations under multi-layer survivability constraints. We solve our models using a branch-and-cut-and-price approach with various problemspecific enhancements. This includes a presolving technique based on linear programming to reduce the problem size, combinatorial and sub-MIP-based primal heuristics to compute feasible network configurations, cutting planes which take the multi-layer survivability constraints into account to improve the lower bound on the optimal network cost, and column generation to generate flow variables dynamically during the algorithm. We develop techniques to speed up computations in a Benders decomposition approach and compare this approach to the standard formulation with a single MIP. We use the developed techniques to design large survivable two-layer networks by means of linear and integer programming methods. On realistic test instances with up to 67 network nodes and survivability constraints, we investigate the algorithmic impact of our techniques and show how to use them to compute good network configurations with quality guarantees. Most of the smaller test instances with up to 17 nodes can be solved to near-optimality. Moreover, we can compute feasible solutions and dual bounds even for large networks with survivability constraints, which has not been possible before.

Beschreibung: In the simplex algorithm, solving linear systems with the basis matrix and its transpose accounts for a large part of the total computation time. We investigate various methods from modern numerical linear algebra to improve the computation speed of the basis updates arising in LPs. The experiments are executed on a large real-world test set. The most widely used solution technique is sparse LU factorization, paired with an updating scheme that allows to use the factors over several iterations. Clearly, small number of fill-in elements in the LU factors is critical for the overall performance. Using a wide range of LPs we show numerically that after a simple permutation the non-triangular part of the basis matrix is so small, that the whole matrix can be factorized with (relative) fill-in close to the optimum. This permutation has been exploited by simplex practitioners for many years. But to our knowledge no systematic numerical study has been published that demonstrates the effective reduction to a surprisingly small non-triangular problem, even for large scale LPs. For the factorization of the non-triangular part most existing simplex codes use some variant of dynamic Markowitz pivoting, which originated in the late 1950s. We also show numerically that, in terms of fill-in and in the simplex context, dynamic Markowitz is quite consistently superior to other, more recently developed techniques.

Beschreibung: We compute expectation values for the solution of the nuclear Schrödinger equation. The proposed particle method consists of three steps: sampling of the initial Wigner function, classical transport of the sampling points, weighted phase space summation for the final computation of the expectation values. The Egorov theorem guarantees that the algorithm is second order accurate with respect to the semiclassical parameter. We present numerical experiments for a two-dimensional torsional potential with three different sets of initial data and for a six-dimensional Henon-Heiles potential. By construction, the computing times scale linearly with the number of initial sampling points and range between three seconds and one hour.

Beschreibung: This paper discusses how to build a solver for mixed integer quadratically constrained programs (MIQCPs) by extending a framework for constraint integer programming (CIP). The advantage of this approach is that we can utilize the full power of advanced MIP and CP technologies. In particular, this addresses the linear relaxation and the discrete components of the problem. For relaxation, we use an outer approximation generated by linearization of convex constraints and linear underestimation of nonconvex constraints. Further, we give an overview of the reformulation, separation, and propagation techniques that are used to handle the quadratic constraints efficiently. We implemented these methods in the branch-cut-and-price framework SCIP. Computational experiments indicates the potential of the approach.

Beschreibung: Supercomputers can simulate complex molecular systems. However, there is a very large gap between the fastest oscillations of covalent bonds of a molecule and the time-scale of the dominant processes. In order to extract the dominant time-scales and to identify the dominant processes, a clustering of information is needed. This thesis shows that only the subspace-based Robust Perron Cluster Analysis (PCCA+) can solve this problem correctly by the construction of a Markov State Model. PCCA+ allows for time-extrapolation in molecular kinetics. This thesis shows the difference between molecular dynamics and molecular kinetics. Only in the molecular kinetics framework a definition of transition rates is possible. In this context, the existence of an infinitesimal generator of the dynamical processes is discussed. If the existence is assumed, the Theorem of Gauß can be applied in order to compute transition rates efficiently. Molecular dynamics, however, is not able to provide a suitable statistical basis for the determination of the transition pattern.

Beschreibung: Key/value stores which are built on structured overlay networks often lack support for atomic transactions and strong data consistency among replicas. This is unfortunate, because consistency guarantees and transactions would allow a wide range of additional application domains to benefit from the inherent scalability and fault-tolerance of DHTs. The Scalaris key/value store supports strong data consistency and atomic transactions. It uses an enhanced Paxos Commit protocol with only four communication steps rather than six. This improvement was possible by exploiting information from the replica distribution in the DHT. Scalaris enables implementation of more reliable and scalable infrastructure for collaborative Web services that require strong consistency and atomic changes across multiple items.

Beschreibung: We consider a system with Poisson arrivals and general service times, where the requests are served according to the State-Dependent Processor Sharing (SDPS) discipline (Cohen's generalized processor sharing discipline), where each request receives a service capacity which depends on the actual number of requests in the system. For this system, denoted by $M/GI/SDPS$, we derive approximations for the squared coefficients of variation of the conditional sojourn time of a request given its service time and of the unconditional sojourn time by means of two-moment fittings of the service times. The approximations are given in terms of the squared coefficients of variation of the conditional and unconditional sojourn time in related $M/D/SDPS$ and $M/M/SDPS$ systems, respectively. The numerical results presented for $M/GI/m-PS$ systems illustrate that the proposed approximations work well.

Beschreibung: We consider a system with Poisson arrivals and i.i.d. service times and where the requests are served according to the state-dependent (Cohen's generalized) processor sharing discipline, where each request in the system receives a service capacity which depends on the actual number of requests in the system. For this system we derive asymptotically tight upper bounds for the moments of the conditional sojourn time of a request with given required service time. The bounds generalize corresponding results, recently given for the single-server processor sharing system by Cheung et al. and for the state-dependent processor sharing system with exponential service times by the authors. Analogous results hold for the waiting times.

Beschreibung: The Dynamic Multi-Period Routing Problem DMPRP introduced by Angelelli et al. gives a model for a two-stage online-offline routing problem. At the beginning of each time period a set of customers becomes known. The customers need to be served either in the current time period or in the following. Postponed customers have to be served in the next time period. The decision whether to postpone a customer has to be done online. At the end of each time period, an optimal tour for the customers assigned to this period has to be computed and this computation can be done offline. The objective of the problem is to minimize the distance traveled over all planning periods assuming optimal routes for the customers selected in each period. We provide the first randomized online algorithms for the DMPRP which beat the known lower bounds for deterministic algorithms. For the special case of two planning periods we provide lower bounds on the competitive ratio of any randomized online algorithm against the oblivious adversary. We identify a randomized algorithm that achieves the optimal competitive ratio of $\frac{1+\sqrt{2}}{2}$ for two time periods on the real line. For three time periods, we give a randomized algorithm that is strictly better than any deterministic algorithm.

Beschreibung: This thesis introduces the novel paradigm of "constraint integer programming" (CIP), which integrates constraint programming (CP) and mixed integer programming (MIP) modeling and solving techniques. It is supplemented by the software SCIP, which is a solver and framework for constraint integer programming that also features SAT solving techniques. SCIP is freely available in source code for academic and non-commercial purposes. Our constraint integer programming approach is a generalization of MIP that allows for the inclusion of arbitrary constraints, as long as they turn into linear constraints on the continuous variables after all integer variables have been fixed. The constraints, may they be linear or more complex, are treated by any combination of CP and MIP techniques: the propagation of the domains by constraint specific algorithms, the generation of a linear relaxation and its solving by LP methods, and the strengthening of the LP by cutting plane separation. The current version of SCIP comes with all of the necessary components to solve mixed integer programs. In the thesis, we cover most of these ingredients and present extensive computational results to compare different variants for the individual building blocks of a MIP solver. We focus on the algorithms and their impact on the overall performance of the solver. In addition to mixed integer programming, the thesis deals with chip design verification, which is an important topic of electronic design automation. Chip manufacturers have to make sure that the logic design of a circuit conforms to the specification of the chip. Otherwise, the chip would show an erroneous behavior that may cause failures in the device where it is employed. An important subproblem of chip design verification is the property checking problem, which is to verify whether a circuit satisfies a specified property. We show how this problem can be modeled as constraint integer program and provide a number of problem-specific algorithms that exploit the structure of the individual constraints and the circuit as a whole. Another set of extensive computational benchmarks compares our CIP approach to the current state-of-the-art SAT methodology and documents the success of our method.

Beschreibung: Diese Arbeit stellt einen integrierten Ansatz aus "Constraint Programming" (CP) und Gemischt-Ganzzahliger Programmierung ("Mixed Integer Programming", MIP) vor, den wir "Constraint Integer Programming" (CIP) nennen. Sowohl Modellierungs- als auch Lösungstechniken beider Felder fließen in den neuen integrierten Ansatz ein, um die unterschiedlichen Stärken der beiden Gebiete zu kombinieren. Als weiteren Beitrag stellen wir der wissenschaftlichen Gemeinschaft die Software SCIP zur Verfügung, die ein Framework für Constraint Integer Programming darstellt und zusätzlich Techniken des SAT-Lösens beinhaltet. SCIP ist im Source Code für akademische und nicht-kommerzielle Zwecke frei erhältlich. Unser Ansatz des Constraint Integer Programming ist eine Verallgemeinerung von MIP, die zusätzlich die Verwendung beliebiger Constraints erlaubt, solange sich diese durch lineare Bedingungen ausdrücken lassen falls alle ganzzahligen Variablen auf feste Werte eingestellt sind. Die Constraints werden von einer beliebigen Kombination aus CP- und MIP-Techniken behandelt. Dies beinhaltet insbesondere die "Domain Propagation", die Relaxierung der Constraints durch lineare Ungleichungen, sowie die Verstärkung der Relaxierung durch dynamisch generierte Schnittebenen. Die derzeitige Version von SCIP enthält alle Komponenten, die für das effiziente Lösen von Gemischt-Ganzzahligen Programmen benötigt werden. Die vorliegende Arbeit liefert eine ausführliche Beschreibung dieser Komponenten und bewertet verschiedene Varianten in Hinblick auf ihren Einfluß auf das Gesamt-Lösungsverhalten anhand von aufwendigen praktischen Experimenten. Dabei wird besonders auf die algorithmischen Aspekte eingegangen. Ein weiterer Hauptteil der Arbeit befasst sich mit der Chip-Design-Verifikation, die ein wichtiges Thema innerhalb des Fachgebiets der "Electronic Design Automation" darstellt. Chip-Hersteller müssen sicherstellen, dass der logische Entwurf einer Schaltung der gegebenen Spezifikation entspricht. Andernfalls würde der Chip fehlerhaftes Verhalten aufweisen, dass zu Fehlfunktionen innerhalb des Gerätes führen kann, in dem der Chip verwendet wird. Ein wichtiges Teilproblem in diesem Feld ist das Eigenschafts-Verifikations-Problem, bei dem geprüft wird, ob der gegebene Schaltkreisentwurf eine gewünschte Eigenschaft aufweist. Wir zeigen, wie dieses Problem als Constraint Integer Program modelliert werden kann und geben eine Reihe von problemspezifischen Algorithmen an, die die Struktur der einzelnen Constraints und der Gesamtschaltung ausnutzen. Testrechnungen auf Industrie-Beispielen vergleichen unseren Ansatz mit den bisher verwendeten SAT-Techniken und belegen den Erfolg unserer Methode.

Beschreibung: In this paper we investigate the fare planning model for public transport, which consists in designing a system of fares maximizing the revenue. We discuss a discrete choice model in which passengers choose between different travel alternatives to express the demand as a function of fares. Furthermore, we give a computational example for the city of Potsdam and discuss some theoretical aspects.

Beschreibung: This extended abstract is about algorithms for controlling elevator systems employing destination hall calls, i.e. the passenger provides his destination floor when calling an elevator. We present the first exact algorithm for controlling a group of elevators and report on simulation results indicating that destination hall call systems outperform conventional systems.

Beschreibung: The paper proposes goal-oriented error estimation and mesh refinement for optimal control problems with elliptic PDE constraints using the value of the reduced cost functional as quantity of interest. Error representation, hierarchical error estimators, and greedy-style error indicators are derived and compared to their counterparts when using the all-at-once cost functional as quantity of interest. Finally, the efficiency of the error estimator and generated meshes are demonstrated on numerical examples.

Beschreibung: The paper considers the time integration of frictionless dynamical contact problems between viscoelastic bodies in the frame of the Signorini condition. Among the numerical integrators, interest focuses on the contact-stabilized Newmark method recently suggested by Deuflhard et al., which is compared to the classical Newmark method and an improved energy dissipative version due to Kane et al. In the absence of contact, any such variant is equivalent to the Störmer-Verlet scheme, which is well-known to have consistency order 2. In the presence of contact, however, the classical approach to discretization errors would not show consistency at all because of the discontinuity at the contact. Surprisingly, the question of consistency in the constrained situation has not been solved yet. The present paper fills this gap by means of a novel proof technique using specific norms based on earlier perturbation results due to the authors. The corresponding estimation of the local discretization error requires the bounded total variation of the solution. The results have consequences for the construction of an adaptive timestep control, which will be worked out subsequently in a forthcoming paper.

Beschreibung: The mathematical treatment of planning problems in public transit has made significant advances in the last decade. Among others, the classical problems of vehicle and crew scheduling can nowadays be solved on a routine basis using combinatorial optimization methods. This is not yet the case for problems that pertain to the design of public transit networks, and for the problems of operations control that address the implementation of a schedule in the presence of disturbances. The article gives a sketch of the state and important developments in these areas, and it addresses important challenges. The vision is that mathematical tools of computer aided scheduling (CAS) will soon play a similar role in the design and operation of public transport systems as CAD systems in manufacturing.

Beschreibung: Die mathematische Behandlung von Planungsproblemen im öffentlichen Verkehr hat im letzten Jahrzehnt große Fortschritte gemacht. Klassische Probleme wie die Umlauf- und die Dienstplanung können heutzutage routinemäßig mit kombinatorischen Optimierungsmethoden gelöst werden. Die Behandlung von Problemen der Angebotsplanung und der Betriebssteuerung sind dagegen noch nicht ganz auf diesem Stand. Dieser Artikel gibt einen Überblick über den Stand der Forschung, über wichtige Entwicklungen und einige Herausforderungen in diesem Gebiet. Die Vision ist, dass mathematische Planungswerkzeuge im öffentlichen Verkehr (Computer Aided Scheduling, CAS) in Zukunft eine ähnliche Rolle spielen werden wie CAD-Systeme in der industriellen Fertigung.

Beschreibung: The reconstruction of geometric shapes plays an important role in many biomedical applications. One example is the patient-specific, computer-aided planning of complex interventions, which requires the generation of explicitly represented geometric models of anatomical structures from medical image data. Only solutions that require minimal interaction by medical personnel are likely to enter clinical routine. Another example is the planning of surgical corrections of deformities where the target shape is unknown. Surgeons are often forced to resort to subjective criteria. These applications still pose highly challenging reconstruction problems, which are addressed in this thesis. The fundamental hypothesis, pursued in this thesis, is that the problems can be solved by incorporating a-priori knowledge about shape and other application-specific characteristics. Here, we focus mainly on the aspect of geometric shape analysis. The basic idea is to capture the most essential variations of a certain class of geometric objects via statistical shape models, which model typical features contained in a given population, and restrict the outcome of a reconstruction algorithm (more or less) to the space spanned by such models. A fundamental prerequisite for performing statistical shape analysis on a set of different objects is the identification of corresponding points on their associated surfaces. This problem is particularly difficult to solve if the shapes stem from different individuals. The reason lies in the basic difficulty of defining suitable measures of similarity. In this thesis, we divide the correspondence problem into feature and non-feature matching. The feature part depends on the application, while the non-feature part can be characterized by a purely geometric description. We propose two different approaches. The first approach has proved useful in many applications. Yet, it suffers from some practical limitations and does not yield a measure of similarity. Our second, variational, approach is designed to overcome these limitations. In it, we propose to minimize an invariant stretching measure, constrained by previously computed features. An important property, which sets our method apart from previous work, is that it does not require the computation of a global surface parameterization.

Beschreibung: Basierend auf einem vorhandenen Ansatz zur Einführung von anisotropen Tetraedern im Randbereich eines reinen Tetraedergitters wird ein Gittergenerator für hybride Gitter implementiert. Das hybride Gitter besteht in Randnähe primär aus anisotropen Prismen und im Inneren der Geometrie aus isotropen Tetraedern. Eine erhöhte Auflösung im Randbereich soll zu besseren Ergebnissen von numerischen Strömungssimulationen führen, für welche eine problemangepasste Diskretisierung des zu untersuchenden Gebietes benötigt wird. In dem zuvor genannten Ansatz wird eine Reihe von Übergangselementen vorgeschlagen, die an scharfen Kanten der Oberfläche platziert werden sollen. Im Rahmen dieser Diplomarbeit wird die Idee der Übergangselemente aufgegriffen und bei hybriden Gittern eingesetzt, um auch komplexe Eingabegeometrien vergittern zu können. Der ursprüngliche Gittergenerierungprozess wird überarbeitet und erweitert. Eine neue Menge an Übergangselementen wird eingeführt, es werden gekrümmte Extrusionsvektoren verwendet und es wird die Auswertung der medialen Oberfläche vorgenommen, um Überschneidungen im hybriden Gitter zu vermeiden. Der Gittergenerator wird als Modul in das Visualisierungs- und Analyseprogramm Amira implementiert und die erstellten hybriden Gitter werden auf ihre Elementqualität und die Güte der Strömungssimulationsergebnisse hin überprüft.

Beschreibung: Based on an existing approach for the introduction of anisotropic tetrahedra near the surface boundary of a tetrahedral grid a grid generator for hybrid grids is implemented. The hybrid grid consists near the surface boundary primarily of anisotropic prisms and inside the geometry of isotropic tetrahedra. An increased resolution near the boundary should lead to better results of numerical flow simulations, which needs a problem specific discretization of the analyzed domain. In the aforementioned approach a set of transition elements is suggested, which should be placed at sharp surface corners. As a part of this diploma thesis the concept of using transition elements is applied for creating hybrid grids even for very complex input geometries. The initial grid generation process is revised and enhanced. A new set of transition elements is introduced, curved extrusion vectors are used and the medial surface is evaluated to avoid intersections in the hybrid grid. The grid generator is implemented as a module for the visualization and analysis tool Amira and the element quality of the generated hybrid grids and the quality of flow simulations performed on the grids are tested.