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Ben-Shan Liao

Ph. D. student of Mathematics
Department of Mathematics
University of California at Davis
One Shields Avenue
Davis, CA 95616, USA
Email: liao@math.ucdavis.edu

I am a graduate student in Graduate Group of Applied Mathematics (GGAM) and in The Algorithms and Theory Laboratory . I study scientific computation under the Prof. Zhaojun Bai.

Research

Research Interests

  • Numerical linear algebra and matrix computations
  • Model order reduction techniques for various analysis (steady-state, transient analysis, sensitivity analysis) of large-scale dynamical systems and its applications. In particular, structure-persevering and substructuring methods.
  • Linear and nonlinear (large-scale) eigenvalue problems
  • Parallel scientific computing

Research Projects

  • Substructuring methods I - mode selection criterion
    (with Z. Bai)

    Substructuring methods have been studied in structural dynamics analysis since 1960s. Main attraction points of substructuring methods are exploiting underlying structures of a system explicitly, avoiding the expenses of processing the entire system at once, able to be conducted in parallel, and preserving the structure of subsystems. These features enable substructuring methods to tackle very large problems efficiently. However, in these substructure-based methods, the modes of subsystems associated with the lowest frequencies are typically retained. This mode selection rule is largely heuristic. We work on deriving mode selection rules and their associated theories. We have derived a sub-optimal selection rule by using moment-matching analysis for one-level substructuring method. (We called CMSχ -- An alternative mode selection to the Component Mode Synthesis (CMS) methods.) We continue working on better mode selection rules and its multilevel extension.

    Papers and Presentations:
    • B.-S. Liao, Z. Bai and W. Gao, The important modes of subsystems: a moment-matching approach. Accepted by International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering , 2006.
    • (Sub)optimal mode selection for modal reduction of subsystems, (with Z. Bai - presenter). SIAM Annual Meeting, Jul 2005.
    • Optimal Mode Selection for Substructuring Method. Poster presentation at Bay Area Scientific Computing Day, Mar 2005.
    • Z. Bai and B.-S. Liao, Towards an Optimal Substructuring Method for Model Reduction. Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science Vol 3732, pp. 276-285, 2006. (pdf file)
    • Substructuring method for system-on-chip simulation. Meeting talk given at UC Davis with Synopsys researchers, Dec 2004.

  • Substructuring methods II - Krylov subspace basis
    (with Z. Bai)

    This is continued work from above project. We observe that modal reduction methods (including multilevel substructuring methods) are generally less accurate and efficient than Krylov subspace-based reduction methods. We investigate how to replace eigenbases by Krylov subspace bases (including multilevel extensions). This type method is appealing since it not only takes the advantages of substructuring methods (parallel-computing, structure-persevering, ...) but also improves the accuracy by using the Krylov subspace bases.

    Papers and Presentations:

    Presentations for substructuring methods (combination of I and II):
    • What are good bases of substructures for substructuring methods? Colloquial talk given in at National Central University, Taiwan, Dec 2005.
    • What are good bases of substructures for substructuring methods? Colloquial talk given in at Tamkang University, Taiwan, Dec 2005.

  • Large-scale nonlinear eigensolvers
    (with Z. Bai, L. Lee, and K. Ko) (I was a visiting researcher in Advanced Computations Department (ACD) at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) where I worked on developing nonlinear eigensolvers for accelerator RF cavity modeling during the Summer 2005)

    Recently, large-scale nonlinear eigensolvers have been attracted a lot of attention. Partly reason is that modeling real world eigenproblems generally results in certain type nonlinearity. For example, dynamic analysis of vibration and non-proportional damping of a structure and modeling RF cavity design. The fundamental difficulty is that nonlinearity can be very complicated and the problems are large. A straightforward Newton's type method is not feasible. We work on developing robust and efficient subspace-type methods and their associated theories for (at least) certain type nonlinear eigenproblems (hopefully, can apply to many different applications).

    Papers and Presentations:
    • An iterative projection method for solving large-scale nonlinear eigenvalue problems with application to next-generation accelerator design. Invited talk given at Ninth Copper Mountain Conference on Iterative Methods, Apr 2006.
    • Numerical methods for large-scale electromagnetic application. Seminar talk given at National Center of Theoretical Science, Taiwan, Dec 2005.
    • Numerical methods for nonlinear eigenproblems in RF cavity design. Seminar talk given at SLAC, Sep 2005.
    • Solving nonlinear eigenproblems in Accelerator cavity design, (with L. Lee - presenter, SLAC team, Z.Bai and LBL team). SIAM Annual Meeting, Jul 2005.

  • Fast linear solvers for large-scale sequential low-rank modified linear systems
    (with J. E. Bolander)

    This work is inspired by fracture simulation. In the fracture simulation, solving several thousands of large-scale successive low-rank-modified linear systems is needed. (See the fracture process here and image gallery at J.E. Bolander homepage). We successfully used the low-rank update process to have about two orders of magnitude computational time less than the ordinary direct sparse solver to complete a fracture cycle. One typical example is that a seven day computing work now only needs about 10 hours. We continue working on other possible fast solvers such as PCG method.

    Papers and Presentations:
    • M. Yip, Z. Li, B.-S. Liao, and J. E. Bolander, Irregular lattice models of fracture of multiphase particulate materials. Accepted by International Journal of Fracture, 2006.

Teaching

Currently I have no TA or AI duty. I was previously a Teaching Assistant (Fall 2001 - Winter 2005) at UC Davis for various undergraduate courses including
  • Precalculus, Short Calculus, Calculus for BioSci, Calculus
  • Linear Algebra
  • Differential Equations
  • Oridinary Differential Equations (ODE)
  • Partial Differential Equations (PDE)
  • Numerical Analysis
Links

Journals

Model Order Reduction Techniques

Nonlinear Eigenvalue Problems

Other Numerical Related information

Softwares


Last update by Ben-Shan Liao on Nov 8, 2006