Alifanov’s Iterative Regularization Method for the Poisson Source Term on Spherical Surfaces using Icosahedral Meshes

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5902/2179460X91903

Keywords:

Poisson equation, Icosahedral mesh, Inverse problem, Alifanov, Source term

Abstract

In the Poisson problem, given measurements at specific points on the sphere, the goal is to determine the source term that maintains a stationary distribution. The forward problem was solved using a dual icosahedral mesh, chosen for its quasi-regularity, which is beneficial for a wide range of applications. The objective of this work is to solve the inverse problem in order to obtain the source term of the Poisson equation defined on the sphere. To solve the inverse problem, Alifanov’s iterative regularization method is applied. The inverse problem solution was validated using synthetic experimental data, which successfully recovered the source term. Perturbations of up to 10% preserved the overall behavior of the source term, albeit with amplified values.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

Fábio Freitas Ferreira, Universidade Federal Fluminense

He holds a degree in Mathematics Education from the State University of Rio de Janeiro (2000), a master's degree in Computational Modeling from the State University of Rio de Janeiro (2003), a doctorate in Computational Modeling from the State University of Rio de Janeiro (2008), and a postdoctoral degree in Computational Modeling from IPRJ/UERJ (2019). He is currently an associate professor 2 at the Fluminense Federal University.

Francisco Duarte Moura Neto, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro

He holds a bachelor's degree in Mathematics from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (1980), a master's degree in Mathematics from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (1982) and a PhD in Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley (1987). He is currently a Full Professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, was coordinator of the postgraduate program in Computational Modeling at the Polytechnic Institute (2011-2013).

References

Alifanov, O. M. (1974). Solution of an inverse problem of heat conduction by iteration methods. Journal of Engineering Physics, 26:471–476.

Alifanov, O. M. & Mikhailov, V. V. (1978). Solution of the nonlinear inverse termal conductivity problem by iteration method. J. of Engineering Physics, 35:1501–1506.

Augebaum, J. M. & Peskin, C. S. (1985). On the construction of the voronoi mesh on a sphere. Journal of Computational Physics, 59:177–192.

Baumgardner, J. R. & Friderickson, P. O. (1985). Icosahedral discretization of the twosphere. SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis, 22(6):1107–1115.

Chukkapalli, G., Karpik, S. R., & Ethier, C. R. (1999). A scheme for generating unstructured grids on spheres with application to parallel computation. Journal of Computational Physics, 149:114–127.

Douglas Jr., J., Paes Leme, P. J., Roberts, J. E., & Wang, J. (1993). A parallel iterative procedure applicable to the approximate solution of second order partial differential equations by mixed finite element methods. Numerische Mathematik, 65:95–108.

Ferreira, F. F. (2008). Problemas Inversos sobre a Esfera. Tese de doutorado, Instituto Politécnico - UERJ, Nova Friburgo, RJ.

Gonc¸ alves, F. & Moura Neto, F. D. (2005). An iterative parallel algorithm for linear systems defined on graphs. SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis.

Heikes, R. & Randall, D. A. (1995a). Numerical integration of the shallow-water equations on a twisted icosaedral grid. parte i: basic desing and results of tests. Monthly Weather Review, 123(6):1862–1880.

Heikes, R. & Randall, D. A. (1995b). Numerical integration of the shallow-water equations on a twisted icosaedral grid. parte ii: a detailed description of the grid and analysis of numerical accuracy. Monthly Weather Review, 123(6):1881–1887.

Karpik, S. R. & Peltier, W. R. (1991). Multigrid methods for the solution of poisson´s equation in a thick spherical shell. SIAM Journal on Scientific and Statistical Computing, 12(3):681–694.

Lanser, D., Blom, J. G., & Verwer, J. G. (2000). Spatial discretization of the shallow water equations in spherical geometry using osher’s scheme. Journal of Computational Physics, 165(2):542–565.

Moura Neto, F. D. & Ferreira, F. F. (2006). Discretização da equação de poisson sobre a esfera. In ANAIS do IX Encontro de Modelagem Computacional.

Moura Neto, F. D. & Ferreira, F. F. (2007a). Solução numérica da equação de Poisson sobre a esfera - parte i: formulação, existência e unicidade, e convergência do método iterativo. In ANAIS do X Encontro de Modelagem Computacional.

Moura Neto, F. D. & Ferreira, F. F. (2007b). Solução numérica da equação de Poisson sobre a esfera - parte ii: resultados numéricos. In ANAIS do X Encontro de Modelagem Computacional.

Moura Neto, F. D. & Silva Neto, A. J. (2012). An Introduction to Inverse Problems with Applications. Springer Berlin, Heidelberg, 1nd edition.

Moura Neto, F. D., Su, J., & Silva Neto, A. J. (2002). Inverse problems for heat conduction: gradient methods and nonlinear models. Applied Mathematical Modelling, 26(8):1093–1111.

Nicholson, D. M. C. & Shelton, W. A. (2002). Removed sphere method for poisson’s equation. Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, 14(22):5601–5608.

Nicolaides, R. A. (1992). Direct discretization of planar div-curl problems. SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis, 29(1):32–56.

Renka, R. J. (1984a). Algorithm 623: Interpolation on the surface of a sphere. ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, 10(4):437–439.

Renka, R. J. (1984b). Algorithm 624: Triangulation and interpolation at arbitrarily distributed points in the plane. ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, 10(4):440–442.

Renka, R. J. (1984c). Interpolation of data on the surface of a sphere. ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, 10(4):417–436.

Renka, R. J. (1997). Algorithm 772: Stripack: Delaunay triangulation and voronoi diagram on the surface of a sphere. ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, 23(3):416–434.

Sibson, R. (1978). Locally equiangular triangulations. The Computer Journal, 21(3):243–245.

Siewert, C. E. (1994). A radiative-transfer inverse-source problem for a sphere. J. Quant. Spectrosc. Radiat. Transfer, 52(2):157–160.

Sj¨oberg, L. E. (2012). Solutions to linear inverse problems on the sphere by tikhonov regularization, wiener filtering and spectral smoothing and combination - a comparison. Journal of Geodetic Science, 1(2):31–37.

Stuhne, G. R. & Peltier, W. R. (1996). Vortex erosion and amalgamation in a new model of large scale flow on the sphere. Journal of Computational Physics, 128:58–81.

Stuhne, G. R. & Peltier, W. R. (1999). New icosahedral grid-point discretizations of the shallow water equations on the sphere. Journal of Computational Physics, 148:23–58.

Teanby, N. A. (2006). An icosahedron-based method for even binning of globally distributed remote sensing data. Computers & Geosciences, 32:1442–1450.

Tomita, H., Satoh, M., & Goto, K. (2002). An optimization of the icosaedral grid modified by spring dynamics. Journal of Computational Physics, 183(1):307–331.

Tulovsky, V.&Papiz, L. (2001). Formula for the fundamental solution of the heat equation on the sphere. Applied Mathematics Letters, 14(7):881–884.

Wallis, C. G. R., W. Y. & McEwen, J. D. (2017). Sparse image reconstruction on the sphere: Analysis and synthesis. IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 26(11):5176–5187.

Published

2026-07-23

Issue

Section

Applied Mathematics