ALBERT

Description: A new method used to analyze the aeroelastic stability of a helicopter hingeless blade in hovering has been developed, which is especially suitable for a blade with advanced geometric configuration. This method uses a modified doublet-lattice method (MDLM) and a 3-D finite element (FE) model for building the aeroelastic equation of a blade in hovering. Thereafter, the flutter solution of the equation is calculated by the V-g method, assuming blade motions to be small perturbations about the steady equilibrium deflection. The MDLM, which is suitable to calculate the unsteady aerodynamic force of nonplanar rotor blade in hovering, is developed from the doublet-lattice method (DLM). The structural analysis tool is the commercial software ANSYS. The comparisons of the obtained results against those in the literatures show the capabilities of the MDLM and the method of structural analysis. The flutter stabilities of swept tip blades with different aspect ratios are analyzed using the new method developed in this work and the usual method on the basis of the unsteady strip theory and beam model. It shows that considerable differences appear in the flutter rotational velocities with the decrease of the aspect ratio. The flutter rotational velocities obtained by the present method are evidently lower than those obtained by the usual method.

Description: The comprehensive understanding of the variation law of soil thermal conductivity is the prerequisite of design and construction of engineering applications in permafrost regions. Compared with the unfrozen soil, the specimen preparation and experimental procedures of frozen soil thermal conductivity testing are more complex and challengeable. In this work, considering for essentially multiphase and porous structural characteristic information reflection of unfrozen soil thermal conductivity, prediction models of frozen soil thermal conductivity using nonlinear regression and Support Vector Regression (SVR) methods have been developed. Thermal conductivity of multiple types of soil samples which are sampled from the Qinghai-Tibet Engineering Corridor (QTEC) are tested by the transient plane source (TPS) method. Correlations of thermal conductivity between unfrozen and frozen soil has been analyzed and recognized. Based on the measurement data of unfrozen soil thermal conductivity, the prediction models of frozen soil thermal conductivity for 7 typical soils in the QTEC are proposed. To further facilitate engineering applications, the prediction models of two soil categories (coarse and fine-grained soil) have also been proposed. The results demonstrate that, compared with nonideal prediction accuracy of using water content and dry density as the fitting parameter, the ternary fitting model has a higher thermal conductivity prediction accuracy for 7 types of frozen soils (more than 98% of the soil specimens’ relative error are within 20%). The SVR model can further improve the frozen soil thermal conductivity prediction accuracy and more than 98% of the soil specimens’ relative error are within 15%. For coarse and fine-grained soil categories, the above two models still have reliable prediction accuracy and determine coefficient (R2) ranges from 0.8 to 0.91, which validates the applicability for small sample soils. This study provides feasible prediction models for frozen soil thermal conductivity and guidelines of the thermal design and freeze-thaw damage prevention for engineering structures in cold regions.

Description: Background. Insulin receptor substrate 1 (IRS-1) is an important molecule of the insulin signal transduction pathway and has been associated with the occurrence and development of many tumors, including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Our study was designed to determine the expression and significance of IRS-1 in human HCC. Methods. Two hundred and forty specimens were drawn from 140 patients, including 100 HCC tissues and 100 paracancerous (PC) tissues from 100 HCC patients, 20 liver cirrhosis (LC) tissues from 20 LC patients, and 20 chronic hepatitis (CH) tissues from 20 CH patients. Baseline and pathological characteristics were included, and the expression of IRS-1 was examined by immunohistochemical (IHC) staining. Binary logistic regression model calculation was used for multivariate analysis. Results. The total positive rates of IRS-1 expression were 41.0%, 17.0%, 15.0%, and 10.0% in HCC, PC, LC and CH tissues, respectively. IRS-1-positive signals were brown in color and located in the nucleus and cytoplasm. Compared with PC, LC, and CH tissues, a significantly increased expression was observed in human HCC tissues (P

Description: Coral mud, a kind of special material used for constructing islets in reclamation projects, is widely spread in the South China Sea. Combined with microstructure research, a series of triaxial tests were performed in this paper to study the static shear strength characteristics and potential factors that can influence them. The effective stress path was similar to the total stress path because of the unique microstructure resulting in a high strength and a high dissipation rate of the pore pressure in the coral mud. The initial void ratio and the initial confining pressure affected the strength and deformation characteristics of the coral mud. When the soil came to failure, the pore pressure coefficient Af varied linearly with the initial void ratio. The critical friction angle was greatly influenced by the confining pressure, and its magnitude first developed to a peak value and then decreased as the void ratio increased. This change showed that there was a linear relationship between the initial elastic modulus E0i and lgp0 as well as between the secant modulus E50 and p0. The estimation ability of Cam-Clay was verified in this research. The value of parameter λ was determined incrementally by a larger initial void ratio, while the value of parameter M decreased smoothly first and then rose slightly; the selection of parameter κ was approximately 0.0035. The results supported that the Cam-Clay model is able to simulate the stress-strain relationship of coral mud, and a referenced estimation can be reliably and efficiently obtained for the reclamation projects of constructing islets.

Description: To overcome the shortage of low SNR (signal to noise ratio) of the multipole generator vibration signal which brings rigid difficulty to the fault diagnosis, a new method which combines the Time-Wavelet Energy Spectrum (TWES) with the Multipoint Optimal Minimum Entropy Deconvolution Adjusted (MOMEDA) algorithm is proposed. This method uses TWES to extract and enhance the characteristic signal, while employing MOMEDA to optimize the spectrum structure and filter the noise. The application of this method to the simulating signal as well as the test stator vibration signal in a 6-pole generator before and after rotor interturn short circuit fault validates the effectiveness of the method. Moreover, the comparison among the proposed method and some other general methods such as the Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) and the maximum correlative kurtosis deconvolution (MCKD) suggests that the proposed method is superior to these methods.

Description: This paper studies the multiconsensus problem of multiagent networks based on sampled data information via the pulse-modulated intermittent control (PMIC) which is a general control framework unifying impulsive control, intermittent control, and sampling control. Two kinds of multiconsensus, including stationary multiconsensus and dynamic multiconsensus of multiagent networks, are taken into consideration in such control framework. Based on the eigenvalue analysis and algebraic graph theory, some necessary and sufficient conditions on the feedback gains and the control period are established to ensure the multiconsensus. Finally, several simulation results are included to show the theoretical results.

Description: In this paper, an alternative sparsity constrained deconvolution beamforming utilizing the smoothing fast iterative shrinkage-thresholding algorithm (SFISTA) is proposed for sound source identification. Theoretical background and solving procedures are introduced. The influence of SFISTA regularization and smoothing parameters on the sound source identification performance is analyzed, and the recommended values of the parameters are obtained for the presented cases. Compared with the sparsity constrained deconvolution approach for the mapping of acoustic sources (SC-DAMAS) and the fast iterative shrinkage-thresholding algorithm (FISTA), the proposed SFISTA with appropriate regularization and smoothing parameters has faster convergence speed, higher quantification accuracy and computational efficiency, and more insensitivity to measurement noise.

Description: Because of low resilient modulus, high plasticity soil is often not allowed to fill road subgrades and is discarded as construction and demolition waste (CDW). To make use of the CDW, this study explored the possibility of improving high plasticity soil with gravel and examined the effect of gravel gradation on the resilient modulus of the soil-gravel mixture. A series of dynamic triaxial tests, tests of voids in coarse aggregate, and X-ray CT scans were carried out on high plasticity soil-gravel mixtures of different gravel contents and gravel gradation types. The test results show that there is a critical gravel content, that is, 44.1%. When the gravel content is less than 44.1%, the mixture shows a dense suspended structure and its modulus increases slowly with increasing gravel content. When the gravel content is greater than 44.1%, the mixture exhibits a dense skeleton structure and the modulus increases rapidly as the gravel content rises. Moreover, as the gravel gradation tends to the lower type, coarse aggregates increase in quantity and contact each other to form a dense skeleton; thus, the modulus increases accordingly. As the gravel gradation approaches the upper type, coarse aggregates decrease in quantity and tend to suspend in the soil, so the modulus decreases. With the increase in contact number, the skeleton structure is continuously improved, and thus the modulus is enhanced progressively. The results indicate that the gravel mixing method with a gravel content of 40%–45% can effectively improve high plasticity soil and shows great environmental and economic benefits.

Description: The selection of restoration methods for ancient architectures is of great significance for the protection of human cultural heritage. This paper proposes a novel restoration methods selection approach for wood components of Chinese ancient architectures, in which a multicriteria group decision-making (MCGDM) method with decision-making information is in the form of single-valued neutrosophic sets (SNNSs). Firstly, it establishes an index system by comprehensively considering subjective and objective criteria. In addition, the best-worst method (BWM) and the entropy weight method are combined to produce index weights. Furthermore, the TODIM method is utilized by the single-valued neutrosophic sets to prioritize restoration methods. Finally, a specific case of wood component restoration is conducted to demonstrate the practicability of the proposed model. The robustness and effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by sensitivity analysis and comparison analysis.

Description: This paper addresses the problem of nonlinear robust adaptive output feedback controller for a class of underactuated aerial vehicles with input and output constraints. To solve the problem, the modular design strategy is proposed for the control design. By using the neural networks (NNs) to approximate system uncertainties and observers to reconstruct system states, robust adaptive output feedback controllers are developed. By using a combination of saturation functions and barrier functions, input and output constraints are simultaneously dealt with. The design methodology shows that a cascaded system of an input-to-state stable (ISS) subsystem driven by an ultimate bounded (UB) subsystem enjoys ultimate boundedness property. In addition, the tracking error converges to adjustable neighbourhoods of the origin.