美国数学建模竞赛特等奖论文——2002 A O The Fountain That Math Built【数学建模】.pdfVIP

The Fountain That Math Built 221 The Fountain That Math Built Alex McCauley Josh Michener Jadrian Miles North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics Durham, NC Advisor: Daniel J. Teague Introduction We are presented with a fountain in the center of a large plaza, which we wish to be as attractive as possible but not to splash passersby on windy days. Our task is to design an algorithm that controls the flow rate of the fountain, given input from a nearby anemometer. During calm, the fountain sprays out water at a steady rate. When the wind picks up, the flow should be attenuated so as to keep the water within the fountain’s pool; in this way, we strike a balance between esthetics and comfort. We consider the water stream from the fountain as a collection of different- sized droplets that initially leave the fountain nozzle in the shape of a perfect cylinder. This cylinder is broken into its component droplets by the wind, with smaller droplets carried farther. In the reference frame of the air, a droplet is moving through stationary air and experiencing a drag force as a result; since the air is moving with a constant velocity relative to the fountain, the force on the droplet is the same in either frame of reference. Modeling this interaction as laminar flow, we arrive at equations for the drag forces. From these equations, we derive the acceleration of the droplet, which we integrate to find the equations of motion for the droplet. These allow us to find the time when the droplet hits the ground and—assuming that it lands at the very edge of the pool—the time when it reaches its maximum range from the horizontal position equation. Equating these and solving the initial flow rate, we arrive at an equation for the optimal flow rate at a given constant wind speed. Since the wind speeds are not constant, the algorithm must make its best prediction of wind speed a