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Conventional statistical models provide inaccurate predictions of concrete crack openings because they do not consider the nonlinear temperature response and the residual characteristics of concrete. To address this problem, this study introduces a nonlinear temperature factor and develops an improved statistical model of crack openings. The chaotic characteristics of residual time series of the improved statistical model are analyzed based on chaos theory and phase-space reconstruction theory. These theories are integrated with back-propagation (BP) artificial neural networks and genetic algorithms (GAs) to establish a GA-BP neural network model for predicting residuals. Finally, a hybrid model is developed for predicting the concrete crack opening behavior. The predictions of the conventional statistical model, the statistical model considering nonlinear temperature component, and the hybrid model are compared using the case study on the crack openings of a regulating sluice. The results show that the proposed hybrid model in this study for predicting concrete crack openings is significantly more accurate than the conventional statistical model and the statistical model considering nonlinear temperature component. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lane-changing and overtaking are conventional maneuvers on roads, and the reference trajectory is one of the prerequisites to execute these maneuvers. This study proposes a universal trajectory planning method for automated lane-changing and overtaking maneuvers, in which the trajectory is regarded as the combination of a path and its traffic state profiles. The two-dimensional path is represented by a suitable curve to connect the initial position with final position of the ego vehicle. Based on the planned path, its traffic state profiles are generated by solving a nonlinear mathematical optimization model. Moreover, the study discretizes the time horizon into several time intervals and determines the parameters to obtain the continuous and smooth profiles, which guarantees the safety and comfort of the ego vehicle. Finally, a series of simulation experiments are performed in the MATLAB platform and the results show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed universal trajectory planning method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel navigation strategy of robot to achieve reaching target and obstacle avoidance in unknown dynamic environment. Considering possible generation of uncertainty, disturbances brought to system are separated into two parts, i.e., bounded part and unbounded part. A dual-layer closed-loop control system is then designed to deal with two kinds of disturbances, respectively. In order to realize global optimization of navigation, recurrent fuzzy neural network is used to predict optimal motion of robot for its ability of processing nonlinearity and learning. Extended Kalman filter method is used to train RFNN online. Moving horizon technique is used for RFNN motion planner to guarantee optimization in dynamic environment. Then, model predictive control is designed against bounded disturbances to drive robot to track predicted trajectories and limit robot’s position in a tube with good robustness. A novel iterative online learning method is also proposed to estimate intrinsic error of system using online data that makes system adaptive. Feasibility and stability of proposed method are analyzed. By examining our navigation method on mobile robot, effectiveness is proved in both simulation and hardware experiments. Robustness and optimization of proposed navigation method can be guaranteed in dynamic environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stockbridge dampers are widely used to mitigate the vortex-induced vibrations of overhead electrical line conductors and of many other cable or cable-like structures exposed to the action of wind. Aim of this work is to develop a simple, but accurate, mechanical model of a Stockbridge damper to use in the assessment of such structures vibrations. The model is based on a beam-like description of the messenger cable and on a nonlinear formulation of the cross sections cyclic bending behaviour. At the cross-sectional level, the mechanical behaviour of the messenger cable is reproduced with the classic Bouc-Wen hysteretic model, which has been recognized as adequate to represent the local behaviour mainly controlled by interwire sliding processes. The Bouc-Wen model parameters are identified from experimental results available in literature and used at the local (cross-sectional) level to characterize the mechanical behaviour of the messenger cable. The descending global behaviour of the Stockbridge damper compares very favourably with the experimental results in terms of the impedance function at the clamp and allows for the confident use of the proposed model inside the assessing process of full power lines. The important role of the end zones of the messenger cable is highlighted. In these zones, a boundary layer like transition is found to occur for the bending stiffness of the messenger cable cross section. This largely affects the global behaviour of the Stockbridge damper. The length of these zones complements the model parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Triaxial unloading creep tests of layered rock specimen of Jinping II hydropower station were carried out using the rock creep testing machine; thus the creep deformation curves under different confining pressures were acquired. The test results showed that, in addition to the obvious unloading creep characteristics of rock specimen, the nonlinear accelerating creep deformation emerged under the last stage confining stress condition, and the whole creep curves presented the typical rock creep three stages. On the other hand, the Burgers creep model constitutive equations under the three-dimensional stress state were also deduced. Based on the creep test data, through identifying the creep parameters using the optimized algorithm, the corresponding parameters of triaxial creep constitutive model were obtained. By comparative analysis of creep parameters, it can be concluded that creep parameters nonlinearly degraded with the decrease of confining pressure gradually. Moreover, when the load is below the long-term strength of rock, the creep parameters are only related to the unloading ratio, while in the case that the load is larger than the long-term strength of rock, the unloading creep parameters are related to both unloading ratio and creep time. According to the creep parameters under the first-stage stress level, and through introducing unloading ratio damage factor to describe the degrading rule of creep parameters on other stress levels, the method of uniformity determining the creep parameters was proposed. It was assumed that the damage degree in rock interior was relative to both unloading ratio and creep time; a nonlinear creep damage model of rock under unloading was proposed, which could better reflect the nonlinear characteristics of rock creep. The results showed that rock nonlinear creep damage model achieved perfectly consistent results with the creep test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although frozen soil is in nature the discrete material, it is generally treated as the continuum material. The mechanical properties of frozen soil are so complex to describe adequately by conventional continuum mechanics method. In this study, the nonlinear microcontact model incorporating rolling resistance is proposed to investigate the particle-scale mechanical properties of frozen soil. The failure mechanism of frozen soil is explicated based on the evolution of contact force chains and propagation of microcracks. In addition, the effects of contact stiffness ratio and friction coefficient on stress-strain curve and energy evolution are evaluated. The results show that the nonlinear microcontact model incorporating rolling resistance can better describe the experimental data. At a higher axial strain, the contact force chains near shear band which can give rise to the soil arch effect rotate away from the shear band inclination but not so much as to become perpendicular to it. The propagation of microcracks can be divided into two phases. The stress-strain curve is strongly influenced by contact stiffness ratio. In addition, friction coefficient does not significantly affect the initial tangential modulus. Compared with frictional coefficient, the effect of contact stiffness ratio on stress-strain curve and energy evolution is greater. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the problem of fixed-time stability of hydraulic turbine governing system with the elastic water hammer nonlinear model. To control and improve the quality of hydraulic turbine governing system, a new fixed-time control strategy is proposed, which can stabilize the water turbine governing system within a fixed time. Compared with the finite-time control strategy where the convergence rate depends on the initial state, the settling time of the fixed-time control scheme can be adjusted to the required value regardless of the initial conditions. Finally, we numerically show that the fixed-time control is more effective than and superior to the finite-time control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cuttings transport problem has long been recognized as one of the key difficulties in drilling horizontal wells, and the models in cuttings transport research are usually formulated with highly nonlinear equations set. When using Newton methods to solve real engineering problems with nonlinear equations set, the problems of result dependence on initial values, Jacobian matrix singularity, and variable outflow of its definition domain in iterations are three of the often-encountered difficulties. In this paper, the ant colony algorithm is applied to solve the two-layer cuttings transport model with highly nonlinear equations set. The solution-searching process of solving nonlinear equations set is transformed into an optimization process of searching the minimum value of an objective function by applying ant colony algorithm. Analyzing the results of the example, it can be concluded that ant colony algorithm can be used to solve the highly nonlinear cuttings transport model with good solution accuracy; transforming the solution-searching process of solving nonlinear equations set into an optimization process of searching the minimum value of the objective function is necessary; the real engineering problem should be simplified as much as possible to decrease the number of unknown variables and facilitate the use of ant colony algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The structure of the optimization procedure may affect the control quality of nonlinear model predictive control (MPC). In this paper, a data-driven optimization framework for nonlinear MPC is proposed, where the linguistic model is employed as the prediction model. The linguistic model consists of a series of fuzzy rules, whose antecedents are the membership functions of the input variables and the consequents are the predicted output represented by linear combinations of the input variables. The linear properties of the consequents lead to a quadratic optimization framework without online linearisation, which has analytical solution in the calculation of control sequence. Both the parameters in the antecedents and the consequents are calculated by a hybrid-learning algorithm based on plant data, and the data-driven determination of the parameters leads to an optimization framework with optimized controller parameters, which could provide higher control accuracy. Experiments are conducted in the process control of biochemical continuous sterilization, and the performance of the proposed method is compared with those of the methods of MPC based on linear model, the nonlinear MPC with neural network approximator, and MPC nonlinear with successive linearisations. The experimental results verify that the proposed framework could achieve higher control accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Isomap is a widely used nonlinear method for dimensionality reduction. Landmark-Isomap (L-Isomap) has been proposed to improve the scalability of Isomap. In this paper, we focus on two important issues that were not taken into account in L-Isomap, landmark point selection and topological stability. At first, we present a novel landmark point selection method. It first uses a greedy strategy to select some points as landmark candidates and then removes the candidate points that are neighbours of other candidates. The remaining candidate points are the landmark points. The selection method can promote the computation efficiency without sacrificing accuracy. For the topological stability, we define edge density for each edge in the neighbourhood graph. According to the geometrical characteristic of the short-circuit edges, we provide a method to eliminate the short-circuit edge without breaking the data integrity. The approach that integrates L-Isomap with these two improvements is referred to as Robust L-Isomap (RL-Isomap). The effective performance of RL-Isomap is confirmed through several numerical experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The uncertain nonlinear systems can be modeled with fuzzy equations by incorporating the fuzzy set theory. In this paper, the fuzzy equations are applied as the models for the uncertain nonlinear systems. The nonlinear modeling process is to find the coefficients of the fuzzy equations. We use the neural networks to approximate the coefficients of the fuzzy equations. The approximation theory for crisp models is extended into the fuzzy equation model. The upper bounds of the modeling errors are estimated. Numerical experiments along with comparisons demonstrate the excellent behavior of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the control methods for roll instability of articulated steering vehicles (ASVs) by taking wheel loaders as the research object. An eight-degrees-of-freedom nonlinear dynamics model of ASVs was built on the basis of multibody dynamics. Three methods, namely, active braking (the front and rear axles have the same braking torque), active steering, and adjusting the swing bridge (applying a control torque between the rear body and rear axle), were adopted to analyze the effects on the roll stability of ASVs through the dynamic model. The results show that active braking is conducive to the roll stability of ASVs during turning, active steering can improve the roll stability of ASVs during turning and passing over obstacles, and adjusting the swing bridge can improve the roll stability of ASVs by changing the vehicle posture and the position of the gravity center. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pressure regulator is a common device used to regulate the working pressure for plants and machines. In aerospace propulsion systems, it is used to pressurize liquid propellant rocket tanks at specified pressure for obtaining the required propellant mass flow rate. In this paper, a generalized model is developed to perform dynamic analysis of a pressure regulator so that constant pressure at outlet can be attained. A nonlinear mathematical model of pressure regulator is developed that consists of dynamic equation of pressure, temperature, equation of mass flow rate, and moving shaft inside regulator. The system of nonlinear and coupled differential equations is numerically simulated and computation of pressure and temperature is carried out for required conditions and given design parameters. Valve opening and mass flow rate are also found as a function of given inlet pressure and time. In the end, an analytical solution based on constant mass flow rate assumption is compared with nonlinear formulation. The results demonstrate a high degree of confidence in the nonlinear modeling framework proposed in this paper. The proposed model solves a real problem of liquid rocket propulsion system. For the real system under consideration, inlet pressure of regulator is decreased linearly from 150 bar to 60 bar and outlet pressure of nearly 15 bar is required from pressure regulator for the complete operating time of 19 s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A three-dimensional deformable finite element model of wheel-rail system is established. The vertical vibration natural frequencies are calculated by modal analysis. The improved central difference method by ABAQUS explicit nonlinear dynamics module is chosen to calculate the vertical vibration of wheel axle. Through the vibration measurement experiment of LMA wheel by China Academy of Railway Sciences, the contact parameter is optimized and the model is modified. According to the nonlinear simulation results, the important influence of vertical track irregularity on the wheel set high-frequency vibration is discovered. The advantage frequencies through spectrum are close to the vertical vibration natural frequencies of seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth mode. When the velocity is 350 km/h, system’s nonlinear dynamic characteristic is higher than the results at 200 km/h. The critical wavelength of vertical track irregularity on the wheel vertical vibration is about 0.8 m. In addition, a particular attention should be paid to one situation that the main dominant frequency amplitude is more than 50% of the acceleration amplitude even if the peak acceleration is low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accelerated degradation test (ADT) has been widely used to assess highly reliable products’ lifetime. To conduct an ADT, an appropriate degradation model and test plan should be determined in advance. Although many historical studies have proposed quite a few models, there is still room for improvement. Hence we propose a Nonlinear Generalized Wiener Process (NGWP) model with consideration of the effects of stress level, product-to-product variability, and measurement errors for a higher estimation accuracy and a wider range of use. Then under the constraints of sample size, test duration, and test cost, the plans of constant-stress ADT (CSADT) with multiple stress levels based on the NGWP are designed by minimizing the asymptotic variance of the reliability estimation of the products under normal operation conditions. An optimization algorithm is developed to determine the optimal stress levels, the number of units allocated to each level, inspection frequency, and measurement times simultaneously. In addition, a comparison based on degradation data of LEDs is made to show better goodness-of-fit of the NGWP than that of other models. Finally, optimal two-level and three-level CSADT plans under various constraints and a detailed sensitivity analysis are demonstrated through examples in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study begins with the establishment of a three-dimension business cycle model based on the condition of a fixed exchange rate. Using the established model, the reported study proceeds to describe and discuss the existence of the equilibrium and stability of the economic system near the equilibrium point as a function of the speed of market regulation and the degree of capital liquidity and a stable region is defined. In addition, the condition of Hopf bifurcation is discussed and the stability of a periodic solution, which is generated by the Hopf bifurcation and the direction of the Hopf bifurcation, is provided. Finally, a numerical simulation is provided to confirm the theoretical results. This study plays an important role in theoretical understanding of business cycle models and it is crucial for decision makers in formulating macroeconomic policies as detailed in the conclusions of this report. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the process of ultralow altitude airdrop, many factors such as actuator input dead-zone, backlash, uncertain external atmospheric disturbance, and model unknown nonlinearity affect the precision of trajectory tracking. In response, a robust adaptive neural network dynamic surface controller is developed. As a result, the aircraft longitudinal dynamics with actuator input nonlinearity is derived; the unknown nonlinear model functions are approximated by means of the RBF neural network. Also, an adaption strategy is used to achieve robustness against model uncertainties. Finally, it has been proved that all the signals in the closed-loop system are bounded and the tracking error converges to a small residual set asymptotically. Simulation results demonstrate the perfect tracking performance and strong robustness of the proposed method, which is not only applicable to the actuator with input dead-zone but also suitable for the backlash nonlinearity. At the same time, it can effectively overcome the effects of dead-zone and the atmospheric disturbance on the system and ensure the fast track of the desired flight path angle instruction, which overthrows the assumption that system functions must be known. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A dynamic model for a ball-end milling process that includes the consideration of cutting force nonlinearities and regenerative chatter effects is presented. The nonlinear cutting force is approximated using a Fourier series and then expanded into a Taylor series up to the third order. A series of nonlinear analyses was performed to investigate the nonlinear dynamic behavior of a ball-end milling system, and the differences between the nonlinear analysis approach and its linear counterpart were examined. A bifurcation analysis of points near the critical equilibrium points was performed using the method of multiple scales (MMS) and the method of harmonic balance (MHB) to analyse the local chatter behaviors of the system. The bifurcation analysis was conducted at two subcritical Hopf bifurcation points. It was also found that a ball-end milling system with nonlinear cutting forces near its critical equilibrium points is conditionally stable. The analysis and simulation results were compared with experimental data reported in the literature, and the physical significance of the results is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internal model control (IMC) design method based on quasi-LPV (Linear Parameter Varying) system is proposed. In this method, the nonlinear model is firstly transformed to the linear model based on quasi-LPV method; then, the quadrotor nonlinear motion function is transformed to transfer function matrix based on the transformation model from the state space to the transfer function; further, IMC is designed to control the controlled object represented by transfer function matrix and realize quadrotor trajectory tracking. The performance of the controller proposed in this paper is tested by tracking for three reference trajectories with drastic changes. The simulation results indicate that the control method proposed in this paper has stronger robustness to parameters uncertainty and disturbance rejection performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are various models to predict financial time series like the RMB exchange rate. In this paper, considering the complex characteristics of RMB exchange rate, we build a nonlinear combination model of the autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average (ARFIMA) model, the support vector machine (SVM) model, and the back-propagation neural network (BPNN) model to forecast the RMB exchange rate. The basic idea of the nonlinear combination model (NCM) is to make the prediction more effective by combining different models’ advantages, and the weight of the combination model is determined by a nonlinear weighted mechanism. The RMB exchange rate against US dollar (RMB/USD) and the RMB exchange rate against Euro (RMB/EUR) are used as the empirical examples to evaluate the performance of NCM. The results show that the prediction performance of the nonlinear combination model is better than the single models and the linear combination models, and the nonlinear combination model is suitable for the prediction of the special time series, such as the RMB exchange rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the lifespan of a gas turbine engine, abrupt faults and performance degradation of its gas-path components may happen; however the performance degradation is not easily foreseeable when the level of degradation is small. Gas path analysis (GPA) method has been widely applied to monitor gas turbine engine health status as it can easily obtain the magnitudes of the detected component faults. However, when the number of components within engine is large or/and the measurement noise level is high, the smearing effect may be strong and the degraded components may not be recognized. In order to improve diagnostic effect, a nonlinear steady-state model based gas turbine health status estimation approach with improved particle swarm optimization algorithm (PSO-GPA) has been proposed in this study. The proposed approach has been tested in ten test cases where the degradation of a model three-shaft marine engine has been analyzed. These case studies have shown that the approach can accurately search and isolate the degraded components and further quantify the degradation for major gas-path components. Compared with the typical GPA method, the approach has shown better measurement noise immunity and diagnostic accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A belief rule-based (BRB) system provides a generic nonlinear modeling and inference mechanism. It is capable of modeling complex causal relationships by utilizing both quantitative information and qualitative knowledge. In this paper, a BRB system is firstly developed to model the highly nonlinear relationship between circuit component parameters and the performance of the circuit by utilizing available knowledge from circuit simulations and circuit designers. By using rule inference in the BRB system and clustering analysis, the acceptability regions of the component parameters can be separated from the value domains of the component parameters. Using the established nonlinear relationship represented by the BRB system, an optimization method is then proposed to seek the optimal feasibility region in the acceptability regions so that the volume of the tolerance region of the component parameters can be maximized. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology is demonstrated through two typical numerical examples of the nonlinear performance functions with nonconvex and disconnected acceptability regions and high-dimensional input parameters and a real-world application in the parameter design of a track circuit for Chinese high-speed railway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Annular furnaces have multivariate, nonlinear, large time lag, and cross coupling characteristics. The prediction and control of the exit temperature of a tube billet are important but difficult. We establish a prediction model for the final temperature of a tube billet through OS-ELM-DRPLS method. We address the complex production characteristics, integrate the advantages of PLS and ELM algorithms in establishing linear and nonlinear models, and consider model update and data lag. Based on the proposed model, we design a prediction control algorithm for tube billet temperature. The algorithm is validated using the practical production data of Baosteel Co., Ltd. Results show that the model achieves the precision required in industrial applications. The temperature of the tube billet can be controlled within the required temperature range through compensation control method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from a nonlinear model for a pendulum-cart system, on which viscous friction is considered, a Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy augmented model (TSFAM) as well as a TSFAM with uncertainty (TSFAMwU) is proposed. Since the design of a T-S fuzzy controller is based on the T-S fuzzy model of the nonlinear system, then, to address the trajectory tracking problem of the pendulum-cart system, three T-S fuzzy controllers are proposed via parallel distributed compensation: (1) a T-S fuzzy servo controller (TSFSC) designed from the TSFAM; (2) a robust TSFSC (RTSFSC) designed from the TSFAMwU; and (3) a robust T-S fuzzy dynamic regulator (RTSFDR) designed from the RTSFSC with the addition of a T-S fuzzy observer, which estimates cart and pendulum velocities. Both TSFAM and TSFAMwU are comprised of two fuzzy rules and designed via local approximation in fuzzy partition spaces technique. Feedback gains for the three fuzzy controllers are obtained via linear matrix inequalities approach. A swing-up controller is developed to swing the pendulum up from its pendant position to its upright position. Real-time experiments validate the effectiveness of the proposed schemes, keeping the pendulum in its upright position while the cart follows a reference signal, standing out the RTSFDR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research on calculation of torque and drag in highly deviated wells has demonstrated a significant gap against oil exploration and development; with the increasingly rigorous situation, the drill string dynamics and the contact or friction of drill pipe with borehole wall under the drill string action of dynamic need more attention and urgent research work. Based on full-hole system dynamics, three-dimensional nonlinear dynamic model and dynamic torque and drag model were established in highly deviated well by using the finite element method. An application of analyzing typical torque and drag problems presented here provides a means to more accurate description of the contact relation between drill string and wellbore. The results show that those models established in this paper have complete adaptability for a complex three-dimensional borehole trajectory. For the actual well application, it will help to evaluate security performance of drill string in complex working conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming at the nonlinear characteristics of VIENNA rectifier and using differential geometry theory, a dual closed-loop control strategy is proposed, that is, outer voltage loop using sliding mode control strategy and inner current loop using feedback linearization control strategy. On the basis of establishing the nonlinear mathematical model of VIENNA rectifier in d-q synchronous rotating coordinate system, an affine nonlinear model of VIENNA rectifier is established. The theory of feedback linearization is utilized to linearize the inner current loop so as to realize the d-q axis variable decoupling. The control law of outer voltage loop is deduced by utilizing sliding mode control and index reaching law. In order to verify the feasibility of the proposed control strategy, simulation model is built in simulation platform of Matlab/Simulink. Simulation results verify the validity of the proposed control strategy, and the controller has a strong robustness in the case of parameter variations or load disturbances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumer satisfaction with a product's form plays an essential role in determining the likelihood of its commercial success. A consumer perception-centered design approach is proposed in this study to aid product designers with incorporating consumers' perceptions of product forms in the design process. The consumer perception-centered design approach uses the linear modeling technique (multiple linear regression) and the nonlinear modeling technique (neural network) to determine the satisfying product form design for matching a given product image. A series of experimental evaluations are conducted to collect evaluation results for examining the relationship between the automobile profile features and the consumers' perceptions of the automobile image. The result of predictive performance comparison shows that both the nonlinear neural network modeling technique and the multiple linear regression technique are comparably good for predicting the consumers' likely response to a particular automobile profile since the predictive performance difference between the two modeling techniques is very slight in this study. Although this study has chosen a 2D automobile profile for illustration purposes, the concept of the proposed approach is expansively applicable to 3D automotive form design or other consumer product forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reliable power and temperature control in pressurized water reactor (PWR) nuclear power plant is necessary to guarantee high efficiency and plant safety. Since the nuclear plants are quite nonlinear, the paper presents nonlinear fuzzy model predictive control (MPC), by incorporating the realistic constraints, to realize the plant optimization. T-S fuzzy modeling on nuclear power plant is utilized to approximate the nonlinear plant, based on which the nonlinear MPC controller is devised via parallel distributed compensation (PDC) scheme in order to solve the nonlinear constraint optimization problem. Improved performance compared to the traditional PID controller for a TMI-type PWR is obtained in the simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The normal proportional derivative (PD) control is modified to a new dual form for the regulation of a ball and plate system. First, to analyze this controller, a novel complete nonlinear model of the ball and plate system is obtained. Second, an asymptotic stable dual PD control with a nonlinear compensation is developed. Finally, the experimental results of ball and plate system are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Iterative learning control (ILC), due to its advantage of requiring less system knowledge, can serve as a feedforward signal in system control. ILC can be combined with model predictive control (MPC) to constitute a feedforward-feedback configuration. In this scheme, ILC provides most of the control signal and copes with the repetitive disturbances. MPC provides the supplementary control for regulation purpose and also for nonrepeating disturbance rejection. Considering the nonlinear industrial process, this paper establishes the plant nonlinear fuzzy model to constitute the fuzzy model-based feedback-assisted ILC. The integrated control strategy can achieve wide-range operation and good tracking performance. The performance of the feedback-assisted ILC is illustrated by a steam-boiler system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Operating conditions dependent large pressure variations are one of the working characteristics of combination electronic unit pump (CEUP) fuel injection system for diesel engines. We propose a precise and accurate nonlinear numerical model of pressure inside HP fuel pipeline of CEUP using wave equation (WE) including both viscous and frequency dependent frictions. We have proved that developed hyperbolic approximation gives more realistic description of pressure wave as compared to classical viscous damped wave equation. Frictional effects of various frequencies on pressure wave have been averaged out across valid frequencies to represent the combined effect of all frequencies on pressure wave. Dynamic variations of key fuel properties including density, acoustic wave speed, and bulk modulus with varying pressures have also been incorporated. Based on developed model we present analysis on effect of fuel pipeline length on pressure wave propagation and variation of key fuel properties with both conventional diesel and alternate fuel rapeseed methyl ester (RME) for CEUP pipeline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In modern automobiles, electronic throttle is aDC-motor-driven valve that regulates air inflow into the vehicl's combustion system. The electronic throttle is increasingly being used in order to improve the vehicle drivability, fuel economy, and emissions. Electronic throttle system has the nonlinear dynamical characteristics with the unknown disturbance and parameters. At first, the dynamical nonlinear model of the electronic throttle is built in this paper. Based on the model and using the backstepping design technique, a new adaptive backstepping sliding-mode controller of the electronic throttle is developed. During the backstepping design process, parameter adaptive law is designed to estimate the unknown parameter, and sliding-mode control term is applied to compensate the unknown disturbance. The proposed controller can make the actual angle of the electronic throttle track its set point with the satisfactory performance. Finally, a computer simulation is performed, and simulation results verify that the proposed control method can achieve favorable tracking performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with nonlinear modeling and identification of an electrohydraulic control system for improving its tracking performance. We build the nonlinear state space model for analyzing the highly nonlinear system and then develop aHammerstein- Wiener (H-W) model which consists of a static input nonlinear block with two-segment polynomial nonlinearities, a linear timeinvariant dynamic block, and a static output nonlinear block with single polynomial nonlinearity to describe it. We simplify the H-Wmodel into a linear-in-parameters structure by using the key termseparation principle and then use a modified recursive least square method with iterative estimation of internal variables to identify all the unknown parameters simultaneously. It is found that the proposedH-Wmodel approximates the actual system better than the independentHammerstein, Wiener, and ARXmodels. The prediction error of the H-Wmodel is about 13%, 54%, and 58% less than the Hammerstein, Wiener, and ARX models, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key requirement of lunar rover autonomous navigation is to acquire state information accurately in real-time during its motion and set up a gradual parameter- based nonlinear kinematics model for the rover. In this paper, we propose a dual- extended-Kalman-filter- (dual-EKF-) based realtime celestial navigation (RCN) method. The proposed method considers the rover position and velocity on the lunar surface as the system parameters and establishes a constant velocity (CV) model. In addition, the attitude quaternion is considered as the system state, and the quaternion differential equation is established as the state equation, which incorporates the output of angular rate gyroscope. Therefore, the measurement equation can be established with sun direction vector from the sun sensor and speed observation from the speedometer. The gyro continuous output ensures the algorithm real-time operation. Finally,we use the dual-EKF method to solve the system equations. Simulation results show that the proposed method can acquire the rover position and heading information in real time and greatly improve the navigation accuracy. Our method overcomes the disadvantage of the cumulative error in inertial navigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nonlinear model is crucial to prepare, supervise, and analyze mechanical system. In this paper, a new nonparametric and output-only identification procedure for nonlinear damping is studied. By introducing the concept of the stochastic state space, we formulate a stochastic inverse problem for a nonlinear damping. The solution of the stochastic inverse problem is designed as probabilistic expression via the hierarchical Bayesian formulation by considering various uncertainties such as the information insufficiency in parameter of interests or errors in measurement. The probability space is estimated using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). The applicability of the proposed method is demonstrated through numerical experiment and particular application to a realistic problem related to ship roll motion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Logistic regression (LR) is a conventional statistical technique used for data classification problem. Logistic regression is a model-based method, and it uses nonlinear model structure. Another technique used for classification is feedforward artificial neural networks. Feedforward artificial neural network is a data-based method which can model nonlinear models through its activation function. In this study, a hybrid approach of model-based logistic regression technique and databased artificial neural network was proposed for classification purposes. The proposed approach was applied to lung cancer data, and obtained results were compared. It was seen that the proposed hybrid approach was superior to logistic regression and feedforward artificial neural networks with respect to many criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The generalized synchronization between two complex networks with nonlinear coupling and time-varying delay is investigated in this paper. The novel adaptive schemes of constructing controller response network are proposed to realize generalized synchronization with the drive network to a given mapping. Two specific examples show and verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing Nonlinear Anisotropic Diffusion (NAD) methods in image smoothing cannot obtain satisfied results near singularities and isolated points because of the discretization errors. In this paper, we propose a new scheme, named Enclosed Laplacian Operator of Nonlinear Anisotropic Diffusion (ELONAD), which allows us to provide a unified framework for points in flat regions, edge points and corners, even can delete isolated points and spurs. ELONAD extends two diffusion directions of classical NAD to eight or more enclosed directions. Thus it not only performs NAD according to modules of enclosed directions which can reduce the influence of traction errors greatly, but also distinguishes isolated points and small spurs from corners which must be preserved. Smoothing results for test patterns and real images using different discretization schemes are also given to test and verify our discussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an efficient numerical technique for stress analysis of three-dimensional infinite media containing cracks and localized complex regions. To enhance the computational efficiency of the boundary element methods generally found inefficient to treat nonlinearities and non-homogeneous data present within a domain and the finite element method (FEM) potentially demanding substantial computational cost in the modeling of an unbounded medium containing cracks, a coupling procedure exploiting positive features of both the FEM and a symmetric Galerkin boundary element method (SGBEM) is proposed. The former is utilized to model a finite, small part of the domain containing a complex region whereas the latter is employed to treat the remaining unbounded part possibly containing cracks. Use of boundary integral equations to form the key governing equation for the unbounded region offers essential benefits including the reduction of the spatial dimension and the corresponding discretization effort without the domain truncation. In addition, all involved boundary integral equations contain only weakly singular kernels thus allowing continuous interpolation functions to be utilized in the approximation and also easing the numerical integration. Nonlinearities and other complex behaviors within the localized regions are efficiently modeled by utilizing vast features of the FEM. A selected set of results is then reported to demonstrate the accuracy and capability of the technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the existence of monotone positive solutions for an elastic beam equation with nonlinear boundary conditions. By applying monotone iteration method, we not only obtain the existence of monotone positive solutions but also establish iterative schemes for approximating the solutions. It is worth mentioning that these iterative schemes start off with zero function or quadratic function, which is very useful and feasible for computational purpose. An example is also included to illustrate the main results obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses a new methodology for servo pneumatic actuators mathematical modeling and selection from the dynamic behavior study in engineering applications. The pneumatic actuator is very common in industrial application because it has the following advantages: its maintenance is easy and simple, with relatively low cost, self-cooling properties, good power density (power/dimension rate), fast acting with high accelerations, and installation flexibility. The proposed fifth-order nonlinear mathematical model represents the main characteristics of this nonlinear dynamic system, as servo valve dead zone, air flow-pressure relationship through valve orifice, air compressibility, and friction effects between contact surfaces in actuator seals. Simulation results show the dynamic performance for different pneumatic cylinders in order to see which features contribute to a better behavior of the system. The knowledge of this behavior allows an appropriate choice of pneumatic actuator, mainly contributing to the success of their precise control in several applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A modified PRP nonlinear conjugate gradient method to solve unconstrained optimization problems is proposed. The important property of the proposed method is that the sufficient descent property is guaranteed independent of any line search. By the use of the Wolfe line search, the global convergence of the proposed method is established for nonconvex minimization. Numerical results show that the proposed method is effective and promising by comparing with the VPRP, CG-DESCENT, and DL+ methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the dynamics of a periodically driven Duffing resonator coupled elastically to a van der Pol oscillator in the case of 1:1 internal resonance in the cases of weak and strong coupling. Whilst strong coupling leads to dominating synchronization, the weak coupling case leads to a multitude of complex behaviours. A two-time scales method is used to obtain the frequency-amplitude modulation. The internal resonance leads to an antiresonance response of the Duffing resonator and a stagnant response (a small shoulder in the curve) of the van der Pol oscillator. The stability of the dynamic motions is also analyzed. The coupled system shows a hysteretic response pattern and symmetry-breaking facets. Chaotic behaviour of the coupled system is also observed and the dependence of the system dynamics on the parameters are also studied using bifurcation analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2-DOF controllable close-chain linkage mechanism is investigated in this paper. Based on the characteristics of the multi-DOF nonlinear coupling dynamic equation of the system established by the finite element method, an analytic method of multiple-scales Newmark is presented after thinking about the method of perturbation and the method of numerical analysis. Firstly, the first-order approximate solution of the dynamic responses of the system at the time of t is calculated by the multiple scales method. Then, taken the first-order approximate solution as the initialization of the generalized coordinate of the system, the stable dynamic response of the system is obtained by the implicit Newmark method. The simulation and experimental results are given in the end. The studies indicate that the method of multiple-scales Newmark is correct and practicable to study the dynamic characteristics of such kind of multi-DOF nonlinear coupling system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We focus on nonlinearity for images and propose a new method which can preserve curve edges in image smoothing using nonlinear anisotropic diffusion (NAD). Unlike existing methods which diffuse only among the spatial variants, the new method suggests that the diffusion should be performed both among the time variants and spatial variants, named time and space nonlinear anisotropic diffusion (TSNAD). That is, not only the differences of the spatial variants should be estimated by the nearby spatial points but also the differences of the time variants should be approximated by the weighted time differences of nearby points, according to the differences of gray levels between them and the consideration point. Since the time differences of nearby points using NAD can find more points with similar gray levels which form a curve belt for the center pixel on a curve edge, TSNAD can provide satisfied smoothing results while preserving curve edges. The experiments for digital images also show us the ability of TSNAD to preserve curve edges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Furuta's pendulum has been an excellent benchmark for the automatic control community in the last years, providing, among others, a better understanding of model-based Nonlinear Control Techniques. Since most of these techniques are based on invariants and/or integrals of motion then, the dynamic model plays an important role. This paper describes, in detail, the successful dynamical model developed for the available laboratory pendulum. The success relies on a basic dynamical model derived from Classical Mechanics which has been augmented to compensate the non-conservative torques. Thus, the quasi-conservative "practical" model developed allows to design all the controllers as if the system was strictly conservative. A survey of all the nonlinear controllers designed and experimentally tested on the available laboratory pendulum is also reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the robust output regulation problem for a class of nonlinear switched power converters after its linearization by means of a change of the control vector variable. The methodology employs a dynamic state feedback control law and considers parametric uncertainty due to unknown values of resistive loads. Restrictions arising from the fact that the control gains exhibit fixed values are taken into account. The proposed technique is exemplified with the output voltage regulation of a Noninverting Buck-Boost converter and tested through realistic numerical simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new semianalytical approach for geometrically nonlinear vibration analysis of Euler-Bernoulli beams with different boundary conditions. The method makes use of Linstedt-Poincaré perturbation technique to transform the nonlinear governing equations into a linear differential equation system, whose solutions are then sought through the use of differential quadrature approximation in space domain and an analytical series expansion in time domain. Validation of the present method is conducted in numerical examples through direct comparisons with existing solutions, showing that the proposed semianalytical method has excellent convergence and can give very accurate results at a long time interval. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Leontief-type input-output inclusion problem based on a set-valued consuming map is studied. By applying nonlinear analysis approach, in particular using the surjection and continuity technique with respect to set-valued maps, solvability and stability results with and without continuity assumption concerning this inclusion are obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]