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DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2019/2020

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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of Mathematics : Mathematics

Undergraduate Course: Multi-scale Methods in Mathematical Modelling (MATH11141)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Mathematics CollegeCollege of Science and Engineering
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Year 5 Undergraduate) AvailabilityAvailable to all students
SCQF Credits10 ECTS Credits5
SummaryThe aim of this course is to introduce a unified framework for the systematic simplification of a variety of problems that all share the common feature of possessing multiple scales in their description. Multiscale systems are ubiquitous across various scientific areas, including chemical and biological processes or material science, and are characterised by nontrivial interactions between a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. The high complexity of multi-scale systems implies that accurate description of the underlying problem is either impossible or practically intractable and, instead, a coarse-grained approach must be used. The set of techniques discussed in this course - commonly referred to as averaging and homogenisation - is applicable to problems characterised by separation of scales and described by either ODEs, PDEs or SDEs.

The driving principle behind this approach is to derive systematic approximations of the original highly heterogeneous system so that the simplified description, which effectively 'averages out' the
microscopic features, provides an accurate description of the system properties at the 'macro' scales of interest. The main advantage of this approach is that the resulting equations are much more amenable to rigorous analysis and numerical implementation. We will also discuss conditions which are necessary for the solution to the full equations to converge to the averaged/homogenised description in the limit of the scale of the small-scale inhomogeneities tending to zero.
Course description Motivating examples
Basics of ODEs and probability
Multiple-scale perturbation expansions; singular perturbations
Slow and fast dynamics in ODEs; Dimension reduction in ODEs; The Fredholm Alternative Invariant manifolds and 'slow' manifolds in ODEs; chaos & shadowing lemmas
Averaging and Homogenisation for ODEs (Hamiltonian & dissipative systems)
Convergence Theorems
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Students MUST have passed: Honours Differential Equations (MATH10066)
Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisitesVisiting students are advised to check that they have studied the material covered in the syllabus of any pre-requisite course listed above before enrolling
High Demand Course? Yes
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2019/20, Available to all students (SV1) Quota:  None
Course Start Semester 1
Timetable Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 100 ( Lecture Hours 22, Seminar/Tutorial Hours 5, Summative Assessment Hours 2, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 2, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 69 )
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 95 %, Coursework 5 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment) Coursework 5%, Examination 95%
Feedback Not entered
Exam Information
Exam Diet Paper Name Hours & Minutes
Main Exam Diet S1 (December)2:00
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. Apply the method of multiple scales to ODEs.
  2. Identify and apply suitable transformations to various problems encountered in practice to the general framework considered in the course.
  3. Explain and apply the key aspects of the solvability conditions via the Fredholm alternative and the need for considering them in the context of averaging and homogenisation.
  4. Explain the concept of invariant manifolds and 'slow' manifolds in the systems of ODEs, and determine these.
  5. Apply homogenisation and averaging techniques to simple, low-dimensional ODEs.
Reading List
Recommended:

G. A. Pavliotis and A. M. Stuart. Multiscale Methods: Averaging and Homogenization, Springer, 2008. (Main course text)

D. Cioranescu and P. Donato. An Introduction to Homogenization. Oxford University Press, New York, 1999.

M. H. Holmes, Introduction to Perturbation Methods, Springer, 2012.
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
KeywordsMSM
Contacts
Course organiserDr Benjamin Goddard
Tel: (0131 6)50 5127
Email: B.Goddard@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMr Martin Delaney
Tel: (0131 6)50 6427
Email: Martin.Delaney@ed.ac.uk
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