Proposed Construction Method Research Articles

Experimental study on seismic behavior of full-scale fully prefabricated steel frame: Global response and composite action

To investigate the seismic behavior of a fully prefabricated steel frame with new type construction process, to provide a unique set of data on frame test, and to lay the foundation for follow-up research, a full-scale test was performed under cyclic loads. This frame was composed of box cold-formed columns, hot-rolled I-section beams, end-plate joints, rod flexible braces, and prefabricated concrete slabs. A recently proposed type of bolted end-plate joint and a new proposed construction method were used in this test. Because limited concrete casting and field welding were involved during the structural assembly process, construction efficiency was improved. The design details of the test specimen, the test setup, the loading protocol, the construction process, and the measurement arrangement are introduced. Test observations of braces, beams, joints, columns, and slab behavior are described in detail. Hysteresis behavior of the frame is discussed, including hysteresis curves, backbone curves, overall deformation and energy dissipation behavior. The composite action of the prefabricated slabs under cyclic loads is also studied. The results indicate that the specimen exhibited satisfactory cyclic behavior, horizontal load-carrying capacity and ductility performance, with no obvious degradation in strength was observed even at the large overall drift ratio of 7.69%. Plastic hinges formed at beam-ends and column bases. The frame’s lateral stiffness in the initial position degraded significantly following brace buckling, however, no soft-story mechanisms were developed.

A family of reconfigurable deployable polyhedral mechanisms based on semiregular and Johnson polyhedra

This paper proposes and designs reconfigurable double angulated element (RDAE) and reconfigurable multiple angulated element (RMAE). A family of reconfigurable deployable polyhedral mechanisms (RDPM) based on semiregular and Johnson polyhedra are synthesized by using RDAE and RMAE. The obtained RDPMs can deploy in Hoberman sphere motion (HSM) and Radially Reciprocating Motion (RRM). The constraint conditions and geometric parameters (angles and link lengths) of RDAE are identified by considering the constraints of two pairs of angulated elements and three intersected axes. The kinematics of RDAE in HSM mode and RRM mode are also analyzed. RMAE is further investigated with its constraints and parameters identified. The construction steps of RDPMs based on semiregular and Johnson polyhedra are introduced separately, and reconfigurable deployable triangular prismatic mechanism and reconfigurable deployable triangular cupola mechanism as two examples are constructed in computer as well as in reality to verify the feasibility of RDAE, RMAE and the proposed construction method.

How to approach Carnot cycle via zeotropic working fluid: Research methodology and case study

A great amount of researches on thermodynamic cycles have been active in recent years, such as ORC (organic Rankine cycle), Kalina cycle, et al. However, the ultimate aim of such researches, which could even be traced back to more than one century ago, has not changed with a tireless pursuing to Carnot cycle. In exiting researches, the working fluid, as a medium for energy conversion, is commonly considered to play an important role in the thermodynamic cycle: (1) relative to ideal cycle, most of actual power cycles in the engineering field cannot operate without working fluid; (2) energy efficiency, considering the analysis of second-law efficiency, of actual cycle has a significant decrease due to the introduction of working fluid. Thus, working fluid is a hot spot in the research of thermodynamic cycle in recent years.Zeotropic mixture, which commonly consists of two or more pure working fluids, has flexibility in thermos-physical properties with a possible potential to enhance the cycle performance. The effects of thermos-physical properties of zeotropic mixture should be considered when determining the cycle structure and the design of components. This paper presents a novel construction method of thermodynamic cycle based on the zeotropic mixture. By adding the thermodynamic coordinate of working fluid, a 3D cycle diagram based on the traditional temperature and entropy cycle diagram is applied for performance analysis of cycle. According the proposed construction method, a baseline cycle, composed by ORC sub-system and compositions regulating sub-system, is put forward and available compositions regulating techniques for such cycle are discussed as well. Finally, a representative case is described briefly and the features are summarized. This work provides a new methodology view to guide researchers in energy-efficient design of thermodynamic cycles.

Construction and Encoding of QC-LDPC Codes Using Group Rings

Quasi-cyclic (QC) low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes which are known as QC-LDPC codes, have many applications due to their simple encoding implementation by the means of cyclic shift registers. In this paper, we construct QC-LDPC codes from group rings. A group ring is a free module (at the same time a ring) constructed in a natural way from any given ring and any given group. We present a structure based on the elements of a group ring for constructing QC-LDPC codes. Some of the previously addressed methods for constructing QC-LDPC codes based on finite fields are special cases of the proposed construction method. The constructed QC-LDPC codes perform very well over the additive white Gaussian noise channel with iterative decoding in terms of bit-error probability and block-error probability. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed codes have competitive performance in comparison with the similar existing LDPC codes. Finally, we propose a new encoding method for the proposed group ring-based QC-LDPC codes that can be implemented faster than the current encoding methods. The encoding complexity of the proposed method is analyzed mathematically, and indicates a significate reduction in the required number of operations, even when compared to the available efficient encoding methods that have linear time and space complexities.

H∞ Preview Control of A Class of Uncertain Discrete‐Time Systems

AbstractThis paper investigates the problem of H∞ preview tracking control with robust performance for uncertain discrete‐time systems. In order to avoid applying the difference operator to the time‐varying matrix, by taking advantage of the difference between the system state variables, input variables, and the corresponding auxiliary variables, instead of the usual difference between system states, an augmented error system including previewed information is constructed, which converts the tracking problem into a regulator problem. A sufficient condition based on the free‐weighting matrices technique and the Lyapunov stability theory is derived for the robust asymptotic stability of uncertain systems. Moreover, a state feedback control law with preview action design method is obtained via the linear matrix inequality approach. Based on these, a state observer for preview control systems is formulated. Previewable reference signals are fully utilized through reformulation of the output equation while designing the state observer. The proposed construction method of augmented error system is applicable to uncertain discrete‐time systems in which the uncertainties are general. Also an integrator is introduced to ensure the closed‐loop system tracking performance with no static error. The numerical results also show the effectiveness of the preview control law for uncertain systems in the paper.

Construction of Fractional Repetition Codes with Variable Parameters for Distributed Storage Systems

In this paper, we propose a new class of regular fractional repetition (FR) codes constructed from perfect difference families and quasi-perfect difference families to store big data in distributed storage systems. The main advantage of the proposed construction method is that it supports a wide range of code parameter values compared to existing ones, which is an important feature to be adopted in practical systems. When using one instance of the proposed codes for a given parameter set, we show that the amount of stored data is very close to that of an existing state-of-the-art optimal FR code.

A new web-supervised method for image dataset constructions

The goal of this work is to automatically collect a large number of highly relevant natural images from Internet for given queries. A novel automatic image dataset construction framework is proposed by employing multiple query expansions. In specific, the given queries are first expanded by searching in the Google Books Ngrams Corpora to obtain a richer semantic descriptions, from which the visually non-salient and less relevant expansions are then filtered. After retrieving images from the Internet with filtered expansions, we further filter noisy images by clustering and progressively Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) based methods. To evaluate the performance of our proposed method for image dataset construction, we build an image dataset with 10 categories. We then run object detections on our image dataset with three other image datasets which were constructed by weak supervised, web supervised and full supervised learning, the experimental results indicated the effectiveness of our method is superior to weak supervised and web supervised state-of-the-art methods. In addition, we do a cross-dataset classification to evaluate the performance of our dataset with two publically available manual labelled dataset STL-10 and CIFAR-10.

Inter-Group Complementary Sequence Set Based on Interleaved Periodic Complementary Sequences

By interleaving multiple shift versions of complementary sequence, a new method of constructing inter-group complementary (IGC) sequences is proposed. The resultant sequence set has zero correlation zone (ZCZ) properties in each sequence group and any two sequences from different sequence groups possess ideal periodic cross-correlation properties. When a suitable shift sequence is chosen, the constructed IGC sequence set will be optimal in terms of the corresponding theoretical bound. Compared with the existing constructions of IGC sequences, the proposed construction method may provide not only flexible ZCZ width but also flexible element sequence length, which will ensure a more freedom for the design and realization of IGC wireless communication systems.

A New Construction Method for Large Girth Quasi-Cyclic LDPC Codes with Optimized Lower Bound using Chinese Remainder Theorem

This paper presents a new construction algorithm of Quasi-cyclic low-density parity-check (QC-LDPC) codes of medium to large block-length by combining QC-LDPC codes of small block-length as their component codes, via Chinese remainder theorem. Such component codes were constructed by permuting each column block sequentially to attain the desire local girth. After combining all component codes to generate an expanded parity-check matrix, the resulting girth is greater than or at least equal to the highest girth of component codes. We investigate a lower bound for circulant permutation matrices in the proposed method, which provides efficient and fast encoding for a desired girth, and has very simple structure and more economical in terms of hardware implementation. As already proven, a high girth parameter of the parity-check matrix ensures a good error correcting performance. Thus, simulation results show that our proposed construction method of the parity-check matrix significantly outperforms the other well-known existing methods, has low error-floor, and can reduce encoding complexity for medium to large block-length QC-LDPC codes.

A method for explaining Bayesian networks for legal evidence with scenarios

In a criminal trial, a judge or jury needs to reason about what happened based on the available evidence, often including statistical evidence. While a probabilistic approach is suitable for analysing the statistical evidence, a judge or jury may be more inclined to use a narrative or argumentative approach when considering the case as a whole. In this paper we propose a combination of two approaches, combining Bayesian networks with scenarios. Whereas a Bayesian network is a popular tool for analysing parts of a case, constructing and understanding a network for an entire case is not straightforward. We propose an explanation method for understanding a Bayesian network in terms of scenarios. This method builds on a previously proposed construction method, which we slightly adapt with the use of scenario schemes for the purpose of explaining. The resulting structure is explained in terms of scenarios, scenario quality and evidential support. A probabilistic interpretation of scenario quality is provided using the concept of scenario schemes. Finally, the method is evaluated by means of a case study.

Multistability equivalence between gene regulatory networks of different dimensionality with application to a differentiation network

SummaryThis paper formulates and addresses the problem of equivalence in terms of multistability properties between nonlinear models of gene regulatory systems of different dimensionality. Given a nonlinear dynamical model of a gene regulatory network and the structure of another higher‐dimensional gene regulatory network, the aim is to find a dynamical model for the latter that has the same equilibria and stability properties as the former. We propose construction rules for the dynamics of a high‐dimensional system, given the low‐dimensional system and the high‐dimensional network structure. These construction rules yield a multistability‐equivalent system, as we prove in this work. We demonstrate the value of our method by applying it to an example of a multistable gene regulatory network involved in mesenchymal stem cell differentiation. Here, differentiation is described by a core motif of three genetic regulators, but the detailed network contains at least nine genes. The proposed construction method allows to transfer the multistability based differentation mechanism of the core motif to the more detailed gene regulatory network. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A novel construction method of QC-LDPC codes based on CRT for optical communications

A novel construction method of quasi-cyclic low-density parity-check (QC-LDPC) codes is proposed based on Chinese remainder theory (CRT). The method can not only increase the code length without reducing the girth, but also greatly enhance the code rate, so it is easy to construct a high-rate code. The simulation results show that at the bit error rate (BER) of 10−7, the net coding gain (NCG) of the regular QC-LDPC(4 851, 4 546) code is respectively 2.06 dB, 1.36 dB, 0.53 dB and 0.31 dB more than those of the classic RS(255, 239) code in ITU-T G.975, the LDPC(32 640, 30 592) code in ITU-T G.975.1, the QC-LDPC(3 664, 3 436) code constructed by the improved combining construction method based on CRT and the irregular QC-LDPC(3 843, 3 603) code constructed by the construction method based on the Galois field (GF(q)) multiplicative group. Furthermore, all these five codes have the same code rate of 0.937. Therefore, the regular QC-LDPC(4 851, 4 546) code constructed by the proposed construction method has excellent error-correction performance, and can be more suitable for optical transmission systems.

Prediction intervals for industrial data with incomplete input using kernel-based dynamic Bayesian networks

Reliable prediction intervals (PIs) construction for industrial time series is substantially significant for decision-making in production practice. Given the industrial data feature of high level noises and incomplete input, a high order dynamic Bayesian network (DBN)-based PIs construction method for industrial time series is proposed in this study. For avoiding to designate the amount and type of the basis functions in advance, a linear combination of kernel functions is designed to describe the relationships between the nodes in the network, and a learning method based on the scoring criterion--the sparse Bayesian score, is then reported to acquire suitable model parameters such as the weights and the variances. To verify the performance of the proposed method, two types of time series which are the classical Mackey-Glass data mixed by additive noises and a real-world industrial data are employed. The results indicate the effectiveness of our proposed method for the PIs construction of the industrial data with incomplete input.

Stability Analysis of Multi-Dimensional Linear Time Invariant Discrete Systems within the Unity Shifted Unit Circle

This technical brief proposes a new approach to multi-dimensional linear time invariant discrete systems within the unity shifted unit circle which is denoted in the form of characteristic equation. The characteristic equation of multi–dimensional linear system is modified into an equivalent one- dimensional characteristic equation. Further formation of stability in the left of the z-plane, the roots of the characteristic equation f(z) =0 should lie within the shifted unit circle. Using the coefficients of the unity shifted one dimensional equivalent characteristic equation by applying minimal shifting of coefficients either left or right and elimination of coefficient method to two triangular matrixes are formed. A single square matrix is formed by adding the two triangular matrices. This matrix is used for testing the sufficient condition by proposed Jury’s inner determinant concept. Further one more indispensable condition is suggested to show the applicability of the proposed scheme. The proposed method of construction of square matrix consumes less arithmetic operation like shifting and eliminating of coefficients when compare to the construction of square matrix by Jury’s and Hurwitz matrix method.

The structure and rate of return on portfolios investment

The aim of the article is to assess the effectiveness of investment portfolios. Portfolios are established under the proprietary algorithm that is described in detail in the article. The proposed method of construction of investment portfolios and their evaluation, requires the determination of the volatility and average return included in the portfolio of structured products, as well as determine the risk for each product. These parameters are calculated from the number of data obtained by applying a ”backward the window”, consisting in the fact that each structured product included in the study was run in theory for one year every week.

On the Encoding Complexity of Quasi-Cyclic LDPC Codes

In this paper, we propose a parity check matrix (PCM) construction technique that reduces the encoding complexity of quasi-cyclic (QC)-LDPC codes. The proposed construction method is based on a constraint selection of shifting factors, shown here to reduce the density of an inverted matrix used in several encoding algorithms. Furthermore, it demonstrates that the complexity of encoding schemes involving inverted matrices, can be defined by the density of the small inverted binary base matrix and not by the extended QC-PCM. Comparisons of the proposed codes with codes employed in international standards and with randomly shifted QC-LDPC codes of comparable characteristics, show the low complexity of the corresponding hardware implementations and a BER performance equivalent to that of previously reported codes without increasing the decoding complexity. Furthermore, adoption of the proposed method can decrease the complexity of several encoding procedures; in particular, an area reduction of 40%–55% is reported for QC-LDPC encoders, while a reduction of 86% is reported for Multi-Level-QC-LDPC encoders.

Stability analysis of subway box structure supported by modified underpinning method

When excavation under existing structure is planned for a new construction project, the underpinning method is one of the most applicable construction methods. This study introduces a new modified underpinning method which is applied to construct a new subway #9 line in Seoul Metropolitan in South Korea. The new subway line #9 was designed to pass underneath the existing subway line #2. Subway line #2 carries about 2 million passengers daily, which is 33% of total passengers using subway in Seoul, and is the only circulation line in Seoul. Subway trains are passing 540 times through this section in a day. By applying a new underpinning method, the subway box structure of line #2 is exposed 54m in the air supported by bearing piles. The proposed method was carefully monitored using heavy instrumentation system during construction.This study proposed and verified the application of the modified underpinning method, which can reduce construction period by 1.5 times and the construction cost by 1.2 times comparing with conventional method. The importance of considering construction sequence is investigated and verified by using measured load cell data. The unexpected heaving which can bring up a dangerous situation for train running stability were measured, so this study shows that the upward movement has to be analyzed in designing process. The vibration from train operation and blasting excavation was thoroughly monitored and verified that the proposed construction method can be used with safety. As the use of underground space increases, the proposed method can be a good example of underground development.

Method of automated construction of explanatory dictionary of subject area

The article deals with the method of the automated construction of explanatory dictionary based on the processing of many texts from a specific subject area. The technology of selection and grouping of source texts, based on inter-document and intra-document clustering, which allows save significant terms in the dictionary. It is developed the procedure of selection of terms (individual words and phrases) from documents, based on the calculation of the frequency of their occurrence in the text. The technique of finding of synonyms, definitions, and using other dictionaries is proposed. The formula that allows you to estimate the time spent on the various stages of compiling the dictionary is given. The results of experiments that confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method of construction of dictionary of subject area are given. The proposed method of automatic compilation of the dictionary of subject area can be used to determine the stage of requirements for software products in information systems and artificial intelligence systems.

A Matrix-Theoretic Approach to the Construction of Non-Binary Quasi-Cyclic LDPC Codes

This paper presents two simple and very flexible methods for constructing non-binary (NB) quasi-cyclic (QC) LDPC codes. The proposed construction methods have several known ingredients including base array , masking , binary to non-binary replacement , and matrix-dispersion . By proper choice and combination of these ingredients, NB-QC-LDPC codes with excellent performance can be constructed. The constructed codes can be decoded with a reduced-complexity iterative decoding scheme which significantly reduces the hardware implementation complexity.

A Novel Graph Construction Method Based on Locality Sensitive Histogram for Locality Preserving Projections

This paper presents a novel construction method of neighbor graph based on locality sensitive histogram for Locality Preserving Projections (LPP), which is called LSH Graph Construction. Unlike the conventional construction method of neighbor graph that vectorizes the original data set to compute the k-nearest neighbor graph, the LSH graph construction method which we proposed is acting on 2D image matrixes directly. Firstly, we compute each sample’s locality sensitive histogram, so that each sample can be easily divided into multiple overlapping regions. Then we construct the samples’ neighbor graph basing on corresponding region-to-region matching. Our proposed LSH Graph Construction method have the following two advantage: it can preserve samples’ intrinsic structural information and is insensitive to illumination and pose variation in some extent. We apply LSH Graph Construction into the famous dimensionality algorithm: LPP to develope a new algorithm called LSHG-LPP. Experiments on two wellknown face databases (Yale and ORL face databases) demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms LPP.