Investigation of the capabilities of yield functions on describing the deformation behavior of 5754O aluminum alloy sheet under combined loading paths

The combined loading tests of 5754O aluminum alloy sheet are used to verify the yield function. Three yield functions are implemented into the commercial finite element model (FEM) code ABAQUS as a user material subroutine UMAT for the FEM simulation of the combined loading tests. The comparison of the simulating and experimental results shows that the modified Yld2000-2d yield function can describe the mechanical behavior of 5754O aluminum alloy sheet under combined loading paths reasonably while other three yield functions do not. The performance of the modified Yld2000-2d yield function on describing the mechanical behavior under combined loading paths is analyzed in detail. It is concluded that the modified Yld2000-2d yield function can be adopted to describe the deformation behavior of 5754O aluminum alloy sheet for industrial applications.     

Imprecise reliability assessment for heavy numerical control machine tools against small sample size problem

Small sample size problem is one of the main problems that heavy numerical control (NC) machine tools encounter in their reliability assessment. In order to deal with the small sample size problem, many indirect reliability data such as reliability data of similar products, expert opinion, and engineers’ experience are used in reliability assessment. However, the existing mathematical theories cannot simultaneously process the above reliability data of multiple types, and thus imprecise probability theory is introduced. Imprecise probability theory can simultaneously process multiple reliability data by quantifying multiple uncertainties (stochastic uncertainty, fuzzy uncertainty, epistemic uncertainty, etc.) together. Although imprecise probability theory has so many advantages, the existing natural extension models are complex and the computation result is imprecise. Therefore, they need some improvement for the better application of reliability engineering. This paper proposes an improved imprecise reliability assessment method by introducing empirical probability distributions to natural extension model, and the improved natural extension model is applied to the reliability assessment of heavy NC machine tool spindle to illustrate its effectiveness.     

Study of tunnel thruster performance and flow by quasi-steady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes simulation

A numerical approach based on the solution of the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes(RANS) equations using the shear-stress transport(SST) turbulence model has been employed to investigate the hydrodynamic performance and flow of tunnel thrusters.The flow passages between adjacent blades are discretized with prismatic cells so that the boundary layer flow is resolved down to the viscous sub-layer.The hydrodynamic performances predicted by the quasi-steady approach agree well with the experimental data for three impellers covering a range of blade area and pitch.Through analysis of the flow field,the reason why the hub of impeller also contributes to thrust which can amount to 40%—60% of the impeller thrust,and the mechanism of the impeller inducing an axial force on the hull are elucidated.     

Serum levels of RBP4 might not be determined by diabetes mellitus but by kidney function and renal replacement therapy

It has been reported that retinol-binding protein 4(RBP4) is associated to adiposity,insulin resistance,and type 2 diabetes.Meanwhile,circulating RBP4 levels are also affected by renal function.The aim of the present study is to investigate whether serum levels of RBP4 are primarily associated with different stages of chronic kidney disease(CKD) or type 2 diabetes,if there is more potential relevance between RBP4 and renal replacement therapy.The serum levels of RBP4 were assessed by commercial competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay(ELISA)kit in 212 patients with the CKD stages 1—5 and in 24 healthy controls,while its correlation with clinical and metabolic parameters was analyzed.The serum level of RBP4 had a strong correlation with estimated glomerular filtration rate(e GFR)(P 0.001).Stratified by e GFR and treatment,no more differences in RBP4 serum concentration were detected between type 2 diabetic and non-diabetic subjects [CKD stages 1—5,non-dialysis(ND),hemodialysis(HD) and peritoneal dialysis(PD);P 0.05 for all].The elevation of RBP4 become higher in HD than in PD and ND in CKD5 patients(P = 0.008 and P = 0.04,respectively),while there was no significant difference between PD and ND groups.Multivariate linear regression analysis demonstrated three independent predictors of e GFR(β =-0.676,P 0.001),C-reactive protein(CRP)(β =-0.573,P 0.001) and creatine(β = 0.509,P = 0.024) in the study population.The study results demonstrated that the serum level of RBP4 was negatively related to the e GFR,whether diabetes mellitus(DM) affected the blood concentration of RBP4 or not.And the serum level of RBP4 exhibited significant difference in different renal replacement therapies.     

A new hybrid reliability index definition and its application to the structure buckling reliability analysis of supercavitating projectiles

As structure buckling problems easily arise when supercavitating projectiles operate with high underwater velocity, it is necessary to perform structure buckling reliability analysis. Now it is widely known that probabilistic and non-probabilistic uncertain information exists in engineering analysis. Based on reliability comprehensive index of multi-ellipsoid convex set, probabilistic uncertain information is added and transferred into non-probabilistic interval variable. The hybrid reliability is calculated by a combined method of modified limit step length iteration algorithm(MLSLIA) and Monte-Carlo method. The results of engineering examples show that the convergence of MLSLIA is better than that of limit step length iteration algorithm(LSLIA). Structure buckling hybrid reliability increases with the increase of ratio of base diameter to cavitator diameter, and decreases with the increase of initial launch velocity. Also the changes of uncertain degree of projectile velocity and cavitator drag coefficient affect structure buckling hybrid reliability index obviously. Therefore, uncertain degree of projectile velocity and cavitator drag coefficient should be controlled in project for high structure buckling reliability.     

Research of order allocation model based on cloud and hybrid genetic algorithm under ecommerce environment

For massive order allocation problem of the third party logistics (TPL) in ecommerce, this paper proposes a general order allocation model based on cloud architecture and hybrid genetic algorithm (GA), implementing cloud deployable MapReduce (MR) code to parallelize allocation process, using heuristic rule to fix illegal chromosome during encoding process and adopting mixed integer programming (MIP) as fitness function to guarantee rationality of chromosome fitness. The simulation experiment shows that in mass processing of orders, the model performance in a multi-server cluster environment is remarkable superior to that in stand-alone environment. This model can be directly applied to cloud based logistics information platform (LIP) in near future, implementing fast auto-allocation for massive concurrent orders, with great application value.     

Simultaneous localization and mapping of autonomous underwater vehicle using looking forward sonar

A method of underwater simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) based on on-board looking forward sonar is proposed. The real-time data flow is obtained to form the underwater acoustic images and these images are pre-processed and positions of objects are extracted for SLAM. Extended Kalman filter (EKF) is selected as the kernel approach to enable the underwater vehicle to construct a feature map, and the EKF can locate the underwater vehicle through the map. In order to improve the association efficiency, a novel association method based on ant colony algorithm is introduced. Results obtained on simulation data and real acoustic vision data in tank are displayed and discussed. The proposed method maintains better association efficiency and reduces navigation error, and is effective and feasible.     

Degradation of selected indoor air pollutants: Comparison study of photocatalytic,ozone-assisted photocatalytic and amine adsorption processes

Indoor air pollutants impact human health, comfort and productivity. The method of photocatalysis has been applied mainly in flow reactors and little information is available on indoor air pollutant removal in airtight reactors. In the paper, experiments were carried out to remove formaldehyde (HCHO), ammonia (NH₃) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the airtight and ventilated chambers. Results demonstrated that 90.4% of HCHO, 92.3% of NH₃ and 57.9% of VOCs were removed in the amine adsorption process, while 67.5% (hereinbefore, these are the mass fraction) of HCHO, 60.0% of NH₃, and 61.2% of VOCs were removed in the photocatalytic process. However, ozone-assisted photocatalytic process showed great potential to degrade indoor air pollutants in the ventilated chamber. Factors and mechanisms of the photocatalytic degradation of HCHO, NH₃ and VOCs were also discussed.     

Skin detection method based on cascaded AdaBoost classifier

Skin detection has been considered as the principal step in many machine vision systems, such as face detection and adult image filtering. Among all these techniques, skin color is the most welcome cue because of its robustness. However, traditional color-based approaches poorly perform on the classification of skin-like pixels. In this paper, we propose a new skin detection method based on the cascaded adaptive boosting (AdaBoost) classifier, which consists of minimum-risk based Bayesian classifier and models in different color spaces such as HSV (hue-saturation-value), YCgCb (brightness-green-blue) and YCgCr (brightness-green-red). In addition, we have constructed our own database that is larger and more suitable for training and testing on filtering adult images than the Compaq data set. Experimental results show that our method behaves better than the state-of-the-art pixel-based skin detection techniques on processing images with skin-like background.     

Development of an electric active rollcontrol (ARC) algorithm for a SUV

Cornering maneuvers with reduced body roll and without loss in comfort are leading requirements for car manufacturers. An electric active roll control (ARC) system controls body roll angle with motor-driven actuators installed in the centers of the front and rear stabilizer bars. A vehicle analysis model developed using a CarSim S/W was validated using vehicle test data. Two ARC algorithms for a sports utility vehicle (SUV) were designed using a sliding-mode control algorithm based on a nonlinear roll model and an estimated lateral acceleration based on a linearized roll model. Co-simulation with the Matlab simulink controller model and the CarSim vehicle model were conducted to evaluate the performance of two ARC control algorithms. To validate the ARC performance in a real vehicle, vehicle tests were conducted at KATECH proving ground using a small SUV equipped with two ARC actuators, upper and lower controllers and a few subsystems. From the simulation and vehicle validation test results, the proposed ARC control algorithm for the developed ARC actuator prototypes improves the vehicle’s dynamic performance.