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- Creators: Armbruster, Dieter
- Creators: School of International Letters and Cultures
of nonidentical oscillators where oscillators are imbued with their own frequency and
coupled with other oscillators though a network of interactions. As the coupling
strength increases, there is a bifurcation to complete synchronization where all oscillators
move with the same frequency and show a collective rhythm. Kuramoto-like
dynamics are considered a relevant model for instabilities of the AC-power grid which
operates in synchrony under standard conditions but exhibits, in a state of failure,
segmentation of the grid into desynchronized clusters.
In this dissertation the minimum coupling strength required to ensure total frequency
synchronization in a Kuramoto system, called the critical coupling, is investigated.
For coupling strength below the critical coupling, clusters of oscillators form
where oscillators within a cluster are on average oscillating with the same long-term
frequency. A unified order parameter based approach is developed to create approximations
of the critical coupling. Some of the new approximations provide strict lower
bounds for the critical coupling. In addition, these approximations allow for predictions
of the partially synchronized clusters that emerge in the bifurcation from the
synchronized state.
Merging the order parameter approach with graph theoretical concepts leads to a
characterization of this bifurcation as a weighted graph partitioning problem on an
arbitrary networks which then leads to an optimization problem that can efficiently
estimate the partially synchronized clusters. Numerical experiments on random Kuramoto
systems show the high accuracy of these methods. An interpretation of the
methods in the context of power systems is provided.
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