Proposed Construction Method Research Articles

Strategy for promoting utilization of non-biodegradable wastes in affordable housing in India

Non-biodegradable wastes like plastic have posed threat to environment due to its rigidity and long-lasting properties. Dumping them in the landfill affects the future land requirements, which has eventually become a concern among government and urban local bodies. Like glass bottles and metal-cans, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic bottles also consume additional space in landfill in terms of volume and do not disintegrate for at least 100 years. Some architects and environmentalists have used PET bottles as eco-friendly brick showcasing its compressive strength and potentials, higher than traditional brick and reducing the overall construction cost compared to brick masonry. The aim of the research is to investigate the feasibility of using PET bottles as an alternative construction practice for the dwelling units of the urban poor as an “innovative method of construction of low-cost dwelling”. It also analyses the various central and state government schemes and discusses about the participatory roles played by each sector for proposed method of construction. The primary study comprising of data collection through questionnaire was conducted in Bhubaneswar City, a metropolitan area considered under Smart City scheme. The findings from the study shows that at least 8000 dwelling units of 37 m2 of carpet area can be built using PET bottles for exterior wall and partitions. The last section summarises the role of various government schemes, participation of government, non-governmental organizations and people belonging to economical weaker sections is necessary for successful implementation of affordable housing. The future scope of the research can be directed towards making this proposed strategy economically feasible and considered as an environmental awareness strategy to achieve the control on waste generation being transported to landfill as well as providing affordable housing to urban poor in India.

Construction of 1-Bit Transmit Signal Vectors for Downlink MU-MISO Systems: QAM Constellations

In this paper, we investigate the construction of a transmit signal for downlink multiuser multiple-input single-output (MU-MISO) systems under the cost-effective 1-bit digital-to-analog converters (DACs). Due to the coarse nonliner property, conventional precoding methods, developed under infinite-resolution DACs, could not yield an attractive performance having a severe error-floor. Finding an optimal transmit signal, moreover, is computationally implausible due to its combinatorial nature. This challenging problem has been partially solved in our earlier work focusing on phase-shift-keying constellations. Our major contribution is to extend it into more practical quadrature-amplitude-modulation constellations in a non-trivial way. We first derive the so-called feasibility condition to guarantee that every user's noiseless received signal belongs to a desired decision region, and then transform it as linear constraints. Taking the robustness to an additive noise into account, the proposed construction method is formulated as a mixed integer linear programming problem. We construct an efficient algorithm to solve it (equivalently, to generate an 1-bit transmit signal). Via simulation results, we demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method with respect to a computational complexity and detection performance.

Secondary constructions of (non)weakly regular plateaued functions over finite fields

Plateaued (vectorial) functions over finite fields have diverse applications in symmetric cryptography, coding theory, and sequence theory. Constructing these functions is an attractive research topic in the literature. We can distinguish two kinds of constructions of plateaued functions: secondary constructions and primary constructions. The first method uses already known functions to obtain new functions while the latter do not need to use previously constructed functions to obtain new functions. In this work, the first secondary constructions of (non)weakly regular plateaued (vectorial) functions are presented over the finite fields of odd characteristics. We also introduce some recursive constructions of (non)weakly regular plateaued $p$-ary functions by using already known such functions. We obtain nontrivial plateaued functions from the previously known trivial plateaued (partially bent) functions in the proposed construction methods.

A construction method of visual conceptual scenario for hydrological conceptual modeling

With the increasing complexity of hydrological systems, hydrological modeling by modelers from different research areas has been regarded as an effective way to solve complex hydrological issues. As the first step of hydrological modeling, conceptual modeling plays an important role in supporting modeling idea communication among interdisciplinary modelers. Currently, conceptual modeling methods usually show the modeling ideas by using the block-based diagrams. However, further research need to be explored to express the spatial and temporal distribution of these modeling elements and their dynamic interaction relationships, thus promoting the communication of modeling ideas and reaching a common understanding of the modeling system among modelers. Visual conceptual scenario is the production of hydrological conceptual modeling and can be used to express modelers’ cognition of modeling system. This article proposes a construction method of visual conceptual scenario. The conceptual component that represents the modeling elements, the rules that constrain the scenario construction, and a dynamic interaction method that supports the visualization of dynamic hydrological process are designed. Finally, a study case of identifying the impact of energy base water project on the groundwater is designed to illustrate the feasibility and practicability of the proposed construction method of visual conceptual scenario.

Dynamic performance of a long curved river-crossing pipeline system with multiple floating bodies during immersion process

In this study, the dynamic performance of a long curved river-crossing pipeline with multiple floating bodies during immersion process is investigated in detail. Based on the pipeline theory, six degree-of-freedom buoy theory, winch theory, and multi-body coupling theory, a numerical model of the immersion system with multiple floating bodies is established. The numerical calculation method is observed to conform well with the field measurement results. The dynamic performance of the immersion system is comprehensively investigated based on varying key parameters, e.g. the deflation time of the airbags, lowering speed of the suspension cables, and airbag deflation methods. The results from the numerical simulations indicate that the immersion process for the pipeline with the proposed construction method is safe, stable, and controllable. The presented numerical calculations and results can provide valuable construction recommendations to avoid potential engineering risks and ensure the economic efficiency of this or future similar projects.

Spatial basis interpretation for implementing the acoustic imaging of non-synchronous measurements

Acoustic imaging from non-synchronous measurements is a powerful method that can achieve excellent performance of a densely sampled large array by using an arbitrary prototype array. It has attracted significant interest recently since it is beyond the fundamental limitation of the working frequency determined by the size and microphone spacing of an array. One basic assumption of the non-synchronous measurements theory is the spatial continuity of the acoustic field, which is implemented by introducing the spatial basis function. Nevertheless, a comprehensive investigation of spatial basis function in the context of non-synchronous measurements is still missing. Two kinds of methods are proposed to construct spatial basis functions based on the homogeneous Helmholtz equation solution in this paper. One is the generalized harmonic polynomials (GHPs) and the other is the plane wave expansion (the quasi-uniform plane wave and the non-uniform plane wave). Comparisons of their spectral matrix completion errors show that the proposed construction methods of spatial bases can both yield low errors. Moreover, the construction of the proposed bases is simple to be implemented with only one dimension parameter to be chosen and suitable for the complex sound field. The effectiveness of the proposed bases in the non-synchronous measurements is also validated with simulations and an experiment.

Methods of constructing models and optimizing the operating modes of a chemical engineering system for the production of benzene in a fuzzy environment

The study object: the chemical engineering system for production of benzene and optimization of the system operation modes based on modeling. An approach to the effective solution of problems of optimization of operating modes of real chemical engineering systems was proposed. Since such systems are usually multicriterial and characterized by the fuzziness of initial information, an approach to the development of their models and optimization of their operating modes in a fuzzy environment was proposed. The essence of this approach lies in the construction of mathematical models and optimization of system operation modes based on the system analysis methodology using available information of deterministic, statistical, and fuzzy nature. Statements of the problems of optimization by means of chemical engineering systems in a fuzzy environment have been obtained by modifying various principles of optimality for working in a fuzzy environment. Based on a modification of the principles of maximin and Pareto optimality, a heuristic algorithm for solving the formulated optimization problem was proposed based on the use of knowledge and experience of decision-makers. The proposed method of model construction and an optimization algorithm were implemented in practice when constructing models of benzene and rectification columns of a chemical engineering system of production of benzene when formulating and solving the problem of optimizing their operation modes in a fuzzy environment. Analysis and comparison of optimization results allow us to conclude about the effectiveness of the proposed fuzzy approach to solving optimization problems in a fuzzy environment. As a result of optimization of the benzene production process, the benzene yield increased by 1.45 thousand t or by 1.1 %, the raffinate output volume increased by 0.4 thousand t in conditions of upholding constraints on benzene quality. The proposed approach makes it possible to assess the degree of upholding of fuzzy constraints

On Systematic Polarization-Adjusted Convolutional (PAC) Codes

Polarization-adjusted convolutional (PAC) codes were recently proposed and arouse the interest of the channel coding community because they were shown to approach theoretical bounds for the (128,64) code size. In this letter, we propose systematic PAC codes. Thanks to the systematic property, improvement in the bit-error rate of up to 0.2 dB is observed, while preserving the frame-error rate performance. Moreover, a genetic-algorithm-based construction method targeted to approach the theoretical bound is provided. It is then shown that using the proposed construction method systematic and non-systematic PAC codes can approach the theoretical bound even for higher code sizes such as (256,128).

Quantitative Evaluation of the Seismic Reinforcement Effect Based on Observed Microtremors

To validate the seismic retrofitting of buildings quantitatively, we observed microtremors in the Uji campus buildings at Kyoto University. We compared the dynamic characteristics derived from the resonant frequency of microtremors in a five-story steel-frame structure and a three-story reinforced-concrete (RC) building before and after retrofitting. We calculated the weight of the building from the retrofitting design plan and constructed a numerical model of the structure by estimating the building stiffness that fits the resonant frequency. Assuming the characteristics of the restoring force for each story of the numerical model from previous studies, we calculated the non-linear response of the building to the strong motions predicted for earthquakes occurring at the Obaku fault system that runs right in front of the Uji campus. We compared the response of the numerical models constructed before and after retrofitting to verify the effects of the seismic retrofitting. We found that the proposed method of dynamic response model construction using microtremor observations is effective when the reinforcement members are rigidly fixed to the existing structure, as is the case for RC buildings.

Formation of contractile 3D bovine muscle tissue for construction of millimetre-thick cultured steak

Owing to the increase in the global demand of meat, cultured meat technology is being developed to circumvent a shortage of meat in the future. However, methods for construction of millimetre-thick bovine muscle tissues with highly aligned myotubes have not yet been established. Here, we propose a culture method for constructing 3D-cultured bovine muscle tissue containing myotubes aligned along its long-axial direction, which contracted in response to electrical stimulation. First, we optimised the composition of biomaterials used in the construction and the electrical stimulation applied to the tissue during culture. Subsequently, we fabricated millimetre-thick bovine muscle tissues containing highly aligned myotubes by accumulating bovine myoblast-laden hydrogel modules. The microbial content of the bovine muscle tissue cultured for 14 days was below the detection limit, indicating that the muscle tissues were sterile, unlike commercial meat. Therefore, the proposed construction method for bovine muscle tissues will be useful for the production of clean cultured steak meat simulating real meat.

Risk Analysis of Tunnel Construction Scheme Change based on Field Monitoring and Numerical Analysis

Because of the surrounding environment restriction, some sections of the Lanzhou Metro Line 2 were forced to change the original open excavation method to the concealed excavation method. Among them, the ingate is the transitional section connecting the shaft and the cross passage, which is accompanied by the force conversion of the structure during the plan change process, and accidents are prone to occur. Combining this project situation, a construction scheme for turning the shaft from the cross passage into the ingate of mine line was proposed, and the finite element software is used to simulate the scheme. Numerical analysis shows that the stability of the tunnel supporting structure, shaft, and cross passage all meet the design requirements. The final ground settlement caused by the proposed construction method is 7.1 mm, and the settlement of the vault is 11.97 mm. It also turns out that the proposed construction method causes less deformation, and the method can be applied to the construction of the ingate conversion. The rationality of the method and numerical model was further verified by the comparison between the monitored data of surface settlement and vault sinking and numerical simulation results. Finally, the modified concealed excavation method and the original open excavation construction method is compared. It is concluded that the concealed excavation method is superior to the original open excavation method in terms of construction schedule, construction safety, economic benefits, and impact of construction on the surrounding environment. It indicates that it is a good choice to replace the construction method early if necessary. The successful implementation of this project can provide a reference for the design and implementation of similar urban subway projects.

Development of a Comprehensive Driving Cycle for Construction Machinery Used for Energy Recovery System Evaluation: A Case Study of Medium Hydraulic Excavators

Energy recovery and hybrid power technology are new directions in construction machinery energy-saving research. Thus far, however, no uniform standard method exists to evaluate the efficiency of novel energy-saving concept systems in early stages of development. Efficiency assessment is valuable and credible only by relying on driving cycles that are consistent with actual data. As representative products of construction machinery, hydraulic excavators are multifunctional, object-uncertain, and heavily influenced by operator habits. It is therefore challenging to develop standard excavator driving cycles. Aiming at the energy efficiency evaluation of new energy-saving products characterized by energy recovery and power system optimization, taking medium-sized hydraulic excavator as an example, this paper proposes an evaluation method of energy-saving efficiency and a classification construction method of comprehensive driving cycle of hydraulic excavator based on actual operating data with load demand power and boom recoverable power as combined variables. First, based on the analysis of general driving cycle variables for excavators with different energy-saving schemes, a load demand power model and boom recoverable power model based on machine sensing data are established. Second, 10 excavators were selected at different locations in southern China, and 30 days of real-world working data were recorded. Third, according to the periodic characteristics of working data, a method for dividing microcycle operation structure is proposed. The microcycle sample space based on the data conversion of working data is constructed and classified via the clustering algorithm. Finally, a comprehensive excavator driving cycle based on the classification results is constructed through the Markov method. Results show that the energy-saving efficiency of the three classification driving cycles was 17.45%, 13.60%, and 11.88%, respectively; the comprehensive energy-saving efficiency was 15.76%. The deviations in maximum load demand power and maximum boom recoverable power between the constructed comprehensive cycle and the sample space were 7.81% and 8.61%; the average deviation of characteristic parameters was 4.26%. The comprehensive driving cycles can fairly reflect the general characteristics of real-world working conditions. The proposed construction method of comprehensive driving cycles based on sample space is therefore reliable and holds great promise for evaluating the energy-saving efficiency of new energy-saving concept systems.

Progressive Rate-Filling: A Framework for Agile Construction of Multilevel Polar-Coded Modulation

We propose the progressive rate-filling method as a framework to study agile construction of multilevel polar-coded modulation. We show that the bit indices within each component polar code can follow a fixed, precomputed ranking sequence (e.g., the Polar sequence in the 5G standard) while their allocated rates (i.e., the number of information bits of each component polar code) can be fast computed by exploiting the target sum-rate approximation and proper rate-filling methods. In particular, we propose two rate-filling methods based on the capacity and the rate considering the finite blocklength effect. The proposed construction methods can be performed independently of the actual channel condition with ${O(m)}$ ( ${m}$ denotes the modulation order) complexity and robust to diverse modulation and coding schemes (MCSs) in the 5G standard, which is a desired feature for practical systems.

Generalized Modulation Scheme of GBOC for Global Navigation Satellite System

The Generalized Binary Offset Carrier (GBOC) modulations can offer additional degrees of freedom for shaping the spectrum of navigation signal and provide superior performance in code tracking, multipath and compatibility than traditional Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK) and Binary Offset Carrier (BOC) modulations. This paper proposes a generalized modulation scheme for GBOC modulation design. Firstly, the generalized waveform of GBOC modulations is proposed. Then, the proposed construction method of GBOC modulations is presented, and the consistency with traditional GBOC modulations is investigated. Finally, the generalized autocorrelation functions of GBOC modulations are derived based on the inverse Fourier transform method. The results show the new modulation scheme has good consistency with traditional method and can provide the opportunity for flexible satellite payload design.

Automatic Construction of Chinese Herbal Prescriptions From Tongue Images Using CNNs and Auxiliary Latent Therapy Topics

The tongue image provides important physical information of humans. It is of great importance for diagnoses and treatments in clinical medicine. Herbal prescriptions are simple, noninvasive, and have low side effects. Thus, they are widely applied in China. Studies on the automatic construction technology of herbal prescriptions based on tongue images have great significance for deep learning to explore the relevance of tongue images for herbal prescriptions, it can be applied to healthcare services in mobile medical systems. In order to adapt to the tongue image in a variety of photographic environments and construct herbal prescriptions, a neural network framework for prescription construction is designed. It includes single/double convolution channels and fully connected layers. Furthermore, it proposes the auxiliary therapy topic loss mechanism to model the therapy of Chinese doctors and alleviate the interference of sparse output labels on the diversity of results. The experiment use the real-world tongue images and the corresponding prescriptions and the results can generate prescriptions that are close to the real samples, which verifies the feasibility of the proposed method for the automatic construction of herbal prescriptions from tongue images. Also, it provides a reference for automatic herbal prescription construction from more physical information.

Analytical Construction of Linear Loop Response with Delay Covered by Feedback

Disclosed is a method of obtaining an analytical description of a response of a linear chain with a lag covered by feedback. The process is considered at consecutive intervals. Their duration is equal to the time of net lag. The possibility of obtaining an analytical description of the process is achieved by solving the linear differential equation of the open circuit, and not the differential-difference equation of the closed circuit. An example of analytical construction of the response of the simplest chain with a delay covered by negative feedback is given, and its digital modeling is carried out. The coincidence of the results of the calculation and digital modeling of the circuit confirmed the correctness of the proposed method of analytical response construction.

A Nearly Optimal Method of Polar Code Constructions for the AWGN Channel

Polar code is a kind of capacity-approaching code with explicit structure as part of the next generation wireless communication standard. The performance of the polar code is directly determined by the construction method, in which there are three important parameters: code rate $(R)$ , block-length $(N)$ , and designSNR ( DSNR ). It is very difficult to obtain an optimal construction because all these three parameters should be optimized in a recursive structure model. In this article, an efficient method, which constructs the desired optimal polar code by simultaneously selecting the three parameters in terms of the error probability, is presented. In the proposed construction, a dimensionality reduction search method is used to solve a fore mentioned optimization problem and to find the relation between the performance of polar code and design parameters. At the same time, the optimal parameters $N$ and $R$ can be obtained under any DSNR by taking the average group accuracy rate as the evaluation criterion. Through this method, the appropriate solution of three parameters in the construction of the polar code can be determined according to the required error probability. The proposed construction method is verified by numerical simulation, and the optimal performance to $N$ , $R $ and DSNR is compared and discussed.

Reliability-Oriented and Resource-Efficient Service Function Chain Construction and Backup

In the network function virtualization (NFV) environment, network services are usually provided in the form of service function chains (SFCs), which defines the link order of virtual network functions required in service requests and are mapped to the physical network. Although NFV facilitates the flexible provision of network services, service interruptions may occur as a result of software and hardware failures. Current solutions mostly use the backup method to ensure the reliability of SFCs. However, these methods ignore the SFC construction phase that has an impact on reliability. Besides, the resource efficiency still requires improvement. To address these issues, reliability-oriented SFC construction and backup problems are investigated in this work. First, an instance-sharing and reliable construction algorithm (ISRCA) is proposed to aggregate multiple SFCs into a service function graph (SFG), and perform reliability screening for the SFG set. After mapping the SFG to the physical network, a node-ranking algorithm with centrality and reliability (NRCR) is proposed for backup node selection and backup instance deployment to improve the reliability of SFCs that have not met the requirements. Experimental results demonstrate that under the premise of ensuring reliability, the proposed backup method can reduce the consumption of bandwidth resources by about 11.7%, when combined with the proposed construction method, it can further reduce the backup resources by 13.9%.

Process maps with metabolic constraints for bioethanol production by continuous fermentation

This paper presents a method of preparing process maps for the bioethanol production process by continuous fermentation. The proposed method of process map construction is based on the nonlinear analysis of bioreactor steady states and the metabolic interpretation method of the steady state branches. The nonlinear analysis of bioreactor steady states was performed relative to the dilution rate and the mass recirculation coefficient. It revealed the presence of nonlinear phenomena in the system, such as Hopf bifurcation points and limit points. The use of the qualitative interpretation method of bifurcation diagrams allowed the detection of metabolic change points and multiple steady state areas in which the metabolic activity of biomass cells undergoes changes. Taking this information into account together with the determined gradient profile of bioethanol concentrations has made it possible to construct a process map with metabolic constraints.

Construction of freeform mirrors for an off-axis telecentric scanning system through multiple surfaces expansion and mixing

In this paper, a direct design method for an off-axis two-mirror telecentric scanning system with a linear field of view (FOV) is proposed. A single freeform mirror structure is firstly considered, in which the aberration free geometry of the off-axis parabolic (OAP) surface is leveraged to provide the focusing function and build surface contour of the sub-region on the mirror for each FOV. Multiple OAP surfaces for construction of the freeform mirror are located at an OAP base to satisfy the telecentric condition. The imaging distortion of this single freeform mirror structure is analyzed and found unavoidable due to the unsymmetrical geometry of the OAP base. A freeform reflective corrector is supplemented, and it is constructed from multiple plane surfaces located at a curved base to fulfill the f-theta scanning geometry. Thus, a two-mirror structure composed of one freeform primary mirror and one freeform reflective corrector is established. Each plane-OAP surfaces pair corresponds to a specific FOV. These multiple OAP surfaces and multiple plane surfaces are then expanded and mixed respectively, to construct the freeform primary mirror and freeform reflective corrector. An f-theta two-mirror freeform scanning system with ±10.4° linear FOV is designed using the proposed construction method. The design result is diffraction-limited, and a scanning error less than 5 μm and telecentricity angle less than 0.2° are achieved.