Search

This article details a new optimizing algorithm called Adaptive Chaotic Mutation Particle Swarm Optimization (ACM-PSO). The new algorithm is used to perform aerodynamic parameter estimation on a spinning symmetric projectile. The main creative ideas of this new algorithm are as follows. First, a self-adaptive weight function is used so that the inertial weight can be adjusted dynamically by itself. Second, the initialized particle is generated by chaos theory. Last, a method that can be used to judge whether the algorithm has fallen into a local optimum is established. The common testing function is used to test the new algorithm, and the result shows that, compared with the basic particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm, it is more likely to have a quick convergence and high accuracy and precision, leading to extensive application. Simulated ballistic data are used as testing data, and the data are subjected to the new algorithm to identify the aerodynamic parameters of a spinning symmetric projectile. The result shows that the algorithm proposed in this paper can effectively identify the aerodynamic parameters with high precision and a quick convergence velocity and is therefore suitable for use in actual engineering.

The fixed point technique has been employed in the stability analysis of time-delays bidirectional associative memory (BAM) neural networks with impulse. By formulating a contraction mapping in a product space, a new LMI-based exponential stability criterion was derived. Lately, fixed point methods have educed various good results inspiring this work, but those criteria cannot be programmed by a computer. In this paper, LMI conditions of the obtained result can be applicable to computer Matlab LMI toolbox which meets the need of the large-scale calculation in real engineering. Moreover, a numerical example and a comparable table are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

An approach for solving of the axisymmetric biharmonic boundary value problems for semi-infinite cylindrical domain was developed in the paper. On the lateral surface of the domain homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions are prescribed. On the remaining part of the domain’s boundary four different biharmonic boundary pieces of data are considered. To solve the formulated biharmonic problems the method of least squares on the boundary combined with the method of homogeneous solutions was used. That enabled reducing the problems to infinite systems of linear algebraic equations which can be solved with the use of reduction method. Convergence of the solution obtained with developed approach was studied numerically on some characteristic examples. The developed approach can be used particularly to solve axisymmetric elasticity problems for cylindrical bodies, the heights of which are equal to or exceed their diameters, when on their lateral surface normal and tangential tractions are prescribed and on the cylinder’s end faces various types of boundary conditions in stresses in displacements or mixed ones are given.

Preference mining plays an important role in e-commerce and video websites for enhancing user satisfaction and loyalty. Some classical methods are not available for the cold-start problem when the user or the item is new. In this paper, we propose a new model, called parametric neighborhood rough set on two universes (NRSTU), to describe the user and item data structures. Furthermore, the neighborhood lower approximation operator is used for defining the preference rules. Then, we provide the means for recommending items to users by using these rules. Finally, we give an experimental example to show the details of NRSTU-based preference mining for cold-start problem. The parameters of the model are also discussed. The experimental results show that the proposed method presents an effective solution for preference mining. In particular, NRSTU improves the recommendation accuracy by about 19% compared to the traditional method.

This paper is concerned with the solution for impulsive differential equations with Hadamard fractional derivatives. The general solution of this impulsive fractional system is found by considering the limit case in which impulses approach zero. Next, an example is provided to expound the theoretical result.

In this paper, we have studied compactness in fuzzy soft topological spaces which is a generalization of the corresponding concept by R. Lowen in the case of fuzzy topological spaces. Several basic desirable results have been established. In particular, we have proved the counterparts of Alexander’s subbase lemma and Tychonoff theorem for fuzzy soft topological spaces.

Inertia properties of rigid body such as ground, aerial, and space vehicles may be changed by several occasions, and this variation of the properties influences the control accuracy of the rigid body. For this reason, accurate inertia properties need to be obtained for precise control. An estimation process is required for both noisy gyro measurements and the time derivative of the gyro measurements. In this paper, an estimation method is proposed for having reliable estimates of inertia properties. First, the Euler equations of motion are reformulated to obtain a regressor matrix. Next, the extended Kalman filter is adopted to reduce the noise effects in gyro angular velocity measurements. Last, the inertia properties are estimated using linear least squares. To achieve reliable and accurate angular accelerations, a Savitzky-Golay filter based on an even number sampled data is utilized. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithm for the case of a space vehicle. The numerical simulation results show that the proposed algorithm provides accurate inertia property estimates in the presence of noisy measurements.

The thresholding process finds the proper threshold values by optimizing a criterion, which can be considered as a constrained optimization problem. The computation time of traditional thresholding techniques will increase dramatically for multilevel thresholding. To greatly overcome this problem, swarm intelligence algorithm is widely used to search optimal thresholds. In this paper, an improved glowworm swarm optimization (IGSO) algorithm has been presented to find the optimal multilevel thresholds of color image based on the between-class variance and minimum cross entropy (MCE). The proposed methods are examined on standard set of color test images by using various numbers of threshold values. The results are then compared with those of basic glowworm swarm optimization, adaptive particle swarm optimization (APSO), and self-adaptive differential evolution (SaDE). The simulation results show that the proposed method can find the optimal thresholds accurately and efficiently and is an effective multilevel thresholding method for color image segmentation.

Correlation coefficients are commonly found with crisp data. In this paper, we use Pearson’s correlation coefficient and propose a method for evaluating correlation coefficients for fuzzy interval data. Our empirical studies involve the relationship between mathematics achievement and other projects.

This paper proposes an improved DDA method based on explicitly solving contact constraints. The potential energy function generated by contacting, which contains only displacement variables as an unknown, is deduced based on the approximated step function and Lagrange interpolation, and the displacement variables and contact constraints are obtained via the variable metric method by analyzing the potential energy extremum. There is no need to conduct the open-close iteration during the process of calculation. The improved DDA method based on explicitly solving contact constraints has high precision and a more stable and more robust computational convergence. The accuracy and iterative stability of the improved DDA method are verified using two numerical examples.

Aiming at complicated faults detection of distillation column industrial process, it has faced a grave challenge. In this paper, a new indiscernibility dynamic kernel principal component analysis (I-DKPCA) method is presented and applied to distillation column. Compared with traditional statistical techniques, I-DKPCA not only can capture nonlinear property and dynamic characteristic of processes but also can extract relevant variables from all the variables. Applying this new method to distillation column process (a hardware-in-the-loop simulation system), the results prove the proposed method has great advantages, that is, lower missing rate and higher detection rate for the faults, compared with KPCA and DPCA.

By combining with sparse kernel methods, least-squares temporal difference (LSTD) algorithms can construct the feature dictionary automatically and obtain a better generalization ability. However, the previous kernel-based LSTD algorithms do not consider regularization and their sparsification processes are batch or offline, which hinder their widespread applications in online learning problems. In this paper, we combine the following five techniques and propose two novel kernel recursive LSTD algorithms: (i) online sparsification, which can cope with unknown state regions and be used for online learning, (ii)L2andL1regularization, which can avoid overfitting and eliminate the influence of noise, (iii) recursive least squares, which can eliminate matrix-inversion operations and reduce computational complexity, (iv) a sliding-window approach, which can avoid caching all history samples and reduce the computational cost, and (v) the fixed-point subiteration and online pruning, which can makeL1regularization easy to implement. Finally, simulation results on two 50-state chain problems demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithms.

Image segmentation technology has been widely used to detect the surface defects in metal industries effectively. In some fields of the manufacturing industry, the determination of defects is more concerned than the accurate location and shape of defects. However, most of current image segmentation algorithms are complex or have difficulty determining the defect. This paper presents a novel method for determining and roughly locating the surface defects of steel strips based on Singular Value Decomposition. The method has no need of image segmentation. The gray level matrix of a digital image is projected on its singular vectors obtained by Singular Value Decomposition. A defect is reflected as a sudden change on the projections. Therefore, the defects can be determined and roughly located according to the sudden changes. The experimental results suggest that this method is valid and convenient for determining the surface defects directly.

Neutrosophic set (NS) is a generalization of fuzzy set (FS) that is designed for some practical situations in which each element has different truth membership function, indeterminacy membership function, and falsity membership function. In this paper, we study the multiattribute group decision making (MAGDM) problems under neutrosophic environment with the incompletely known or completely unknown attribute weight. We first define the single-valued neutrosophic ideal solution (SVNIS) and the weighted distance measure and establish the program models to derive the attribute weights. Then, we give a practical application in the framework of SVNS; the result shows that our method is reasonable and effective in dealing with decision making (DM) problems. Furthermore, we extend the method to interval-valued neutrosophic set (IVNS).

It is well observed that some infectious diseases show a feature of periodicity; that is, the disease may prevail during a certain season and vanish afterwards. In the effort of understanding this specific phenomenon, in this paper, we propose a spreading model with a time-variant infectivity function considering both the features of periodicity and agent variability. We apply the modified model to a scale-free network frame with tunable power-law coefficient to find out the characteristics of periodic spreading dynamics. Our work consists of both theoretical derivation and a series of corresponding numerical simulations in order to find out the influence of the parameters of both network topology and the modified model on spreading dynamics in the underlined networks. The experiments prove the success of our model in producing a periodic behavior of spreading, and the results agree well with theoretical calculations.

Feature selection plays a critical role in text categorization. During feature selecting, high-frequency terms and the interclass and intraclass relative contributions of terms all have significant effects on classification results. So we put forward a feature selection approach, IIRCT, based on interclass and intraclass relative contributions of terms in the paper. In our proposed algorithm, three critical factors, which are term frequency and the interclass relative contribution and the intraclass relative contribution of terms, are all considered synthetically. Finally, experiments are made with the help of kNN classifier. And the corresponding results on 20 NewsGroup and SougouCS corpora show that IIRCT algorithm achieves better performance than DF,t-Test, and CMFS algorithms.

This paper is concerned with dynamic output feedback controller (DOFC) design problem for singular fractional-order systems with the fractional-orderαsatisfying0<α<2. Based on the stability theory of fractional-order system, sufficient and necessary conditions are derived for the admissibility of the systems, which are more convenient to analytical design of stabilizing controllers than the existing results. A full-order DOFC is then synthesized based on the obtained conditions and the characteristics of Moore-Penrose inverse. Finally, a numerical example is presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

In the statistical analysis of data, a model might be awfully fitted with the presence of outliers. Besides, it has been well established to use residuals for identification of outliers. The asymptotic properties of residuals can be utilized to contribute diagnostic tools. However, it is now evident that most of the existing diagnostic methods have failed in identifying multiple outliers. Therefore, this paper proposed a diagnostic method for the identification of multiple outliers in GLM, where traditionally used outlier detection methods are effortless as they undergo masking or swamping dilemma. Hence, an investigation was carried out to determine the capability of the proposed GSCPR method. The findings obtained from the numerical examples indicated that the performance of the proposed method was satisfactory for the identification of multiple outliers. Meanwhile, in the simulation study, two scenarios were considered to assess the validity of the proposed method. The proposed method consistently displayed higher percentage of correct detection, as well as lower rates of swamping and masking, regardless of the sample size and the contamination levels.

A three-dimensional numerical wave flume is employed to investigate the forces exerted by internal solitary waves (ISWs) on a pair of circular cylinders in tandem arrangement, using large-eddy simulation (LES) model. The effect of the centre-to-centre distance (L) ranging from 1.5 to 5 diameters (D) is studied for various ISWs amplitudes (ηa) in the two-layer fluid system. Vertical-averaged vorticity distribution and vertical-averaged pressure gradient distribution in each layer are presented to investigate the different hydrodynamic interference between cylinders and the ISWs forces on each cylinder at variousL. Furthermore, the force behaviors of the two cylinders are also compared with that of an isolated cylinder in the same environment. The interaction between the two piles occurs in both layers, and it is found that, for1.5≤L/D<3.5, strong mutual interference appears between two cylinders; for3.5≤L/D<5, the two cylinders continue to influence each other in a weak-interference state; forL/D≥5, the interaction gradually decreases into a noninteracting state. This paper tries to provide some references to structural arrangement of double-cylinder structure and grouped-cylinder structure in stratified flow environment.

Finite element discrete models of various engineering 1D structures may be considered as structures of certain periodic characteristics. The source of this periodicity comes from the discontinuity of stress/strain field between the elements. This behaviour remains unnoticeable, when low frequency dynamics of these structures is investigated. At high frequency regimes, however, its influence may be strong enough to dominate calculated structural responses distorting or even falsifying them completely. In this paper, certain computational aspects of structural periodicity of 1D FE discrete models are discussed by the authors. In this discussion, the authors focus their attention on an exemplary problem of 1D rod modelled according to the elementary theory.

The object of this paper is to study and develop the generalized fractional calculus operators involving Appell’s functionF3(·)due to Marichev-Saigo-Maeda. Here, we establish the generalized fractional calculus formulas involving Bessel-Struve kernel functionSαλz, λ,z∈Cto obtain the results in terms of generalized Wright functions. The representations of Bessel-Struve kernel function in terms of exponential function and its relation with Bessel and Struve function are also discussed. The pathway integral representations of Bessel-Struve kernel function are also given in this study.

To solve the multiobjective optimization problem on hypersonic glider vehicle trajectory design subjected to complex constraints, this paper proposes a multiobjective trajectory optimization method that combines the boundary intersection method and pseudospectral method. The multiobjective trajectory optimization problem (MTOP) is established based on the analysis of the feature of hypersonic glider vehicle trajectory. The MTOP is translated into a set of general optimization subproblems by using the boundary intersection method and pseudospectral method. The subproblems are solved by nonlinear programming algorithm. In this method, the solution that has been solved is employed as the initial guess for the next subproblem so that the time consumption of the entire multiobjective trajectory optimization problem shortens. The maximal range and minimal peak heat problem is solved by the proposed method. The numerical results demonstrate that the proposed method can obtain the Pareto front of the optimal trajectory, which can provide the reference for the trajectory design of hypersonic glider vehicle.

As a linear dimensionality reduction method, nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) has been widely used in many fields, such as machine learning and data mining. However, there are still two major drawbacks for NMF: (a) NMF can only perform semantic factorization in Euclidean space, and it fails to discover the intrinsic geometrical structure of high-dimensional data distribution. (b) NMF suffers from noisy data, which are commonly encountered in real-world applications. To address these issues, in this paper, we present a new robust structure preserving nonnegative matrix factorization (RSPNMF) framework. In RSPNMF, a local affinity graph and a distant repulsion graph are constructed to encode the geometrical information, and noisy data influence is alleviated by characterizing the data reconstruction term of NMF withl2,1-norm instead ofl2-norm. With incorporation of the local and distant structure preservation regularization term into the robust NMF framework, our algorithm can discover a low-dimensional embedding subspace with the nature of structure preservation. RSPNMF is formulated as an optimization problem and solved by an effective iterative multiplicative update algorithm. Experimental results on some facial image datasets clustering show significant performance improvement of RSPNMF in comparison with the state-of-the-art algorithms.

This paper is concerned with the structural controllability analysis for discrete-time linear control systems with time-delay. By adding virtual delay nodes, the linear systems with time-delay are transformed into corresponding linear systems without time-delay, and the structural controllability of them is equivalent. That is to say, the time-delay does not affect or change the controllability of the systems. Several examples are also presented to illustrate the theoretical results.

It is challenging to save acquisition time and reconstruct a medical magnetic resonance (MR) image with important details and features from its compressive measurements. In this paper, a novel method is proposed for longitudinal compressive sensing (LCS) MR imaging (MRI), where the similarity between reference and acquired image is combined with joint sparsifying transform. Furthermore, the joint sparsifying transform with the wavelet and the Contourlet can efficiently represent both isotropic and anisotropic features and the objective function is solved by extended smooth-based monotone version of the fast iterative shrinkage thresholding algorithm (SFISTA). The experiment results demonstrate that the existing regularization model obtains better performance with less acquisition time and recovers both edges and fine details of MR images, much better than the existing regularization model based on the similarity and the wavelet transform for LCS-MRI.

This paper concerns the recursive utility maximization problem for terminal wealth under partial information. We first transform our problem under partial information into the one under full information. When the generator of the recursive utility is concave, we adopt the variational formulation of the recursive utility which leads to a stochastic game problem and characterization of the saddle point of the game is obtained. Then, we study the K-ignorance case and explicit saddle points of several examples are obtained. At last, when the generator of the recursive utility is smooth, we employ the terminal perturbation method to characterize the optimal terminal wealth.

In recent years, high elongation materials are widely used. Therefore, it is important to investigate the tensile properties of high elongation materials for engineering applications. Video extensometer is equipment for measuring the materials’ tensile properties. It uses image processing technology to match data points and measures the actual deformation. However, when measuring high elongation materials, motion blur will appear on the collected images, which can affect the accuracy of image matching. In this paper, we proposed an image matching method which is based on Local Phase Quantization (LPQ) features to reduce the interference of the motion blur and improve the accuracy of the image matching algorithms as well. The experimental results on simulations show that the proposed initialization method is sufficiently accurate to enable the correct convergence of the subsequent optimization in the presence of motion blur. The experiment of uniaxial tensile also verifies the accuracy and robustness of the method.

This paper investigates a homotopy-based method for embedding with hundreds of thousands of data items that yields a parallel algorithm suitable for running on a distributed system. Current eigenvalue-based embedding algorithms attempt to use a sparsification of the distance matrix to approximate a low-dimensional representation when handling large-scale data sets. The main reason of taking approximation is that it is still hindered by the eigendecomposition bottleneck for high-dimensional matrices in the embedding process. In this study, a homotopy continuation algorithm is applied for improving this embedding model by parallelizing the corresponding eigendecomposition. The eigenvalue solution is converted to the operation of ordinary differential equations with initialized values, and all isolated positive eigenvalues and corresponding eigenvectors can be obtained in parallel according to predicting eigenpaths. Experiments on the real data sets show that the homotopy-based approach is potential to be implemented for millions of data sets.

One of the most important issues in application of noninteger order systems concerns their implementation. One of the possible approaches is the approximation of convolution operation with the impulse response of noninteger system. In this paper, new results on the Laguerre Impulse Response Approximation method are presented. Among the others, a new proof ofL1convergence of approximation is given, allowing less strict assumptions. Additionally, more general results are given including one regarding functions that are in the joint part ofL1andL2spaces. The method was also illustrated with examples of use: analysis of “fractional order lag” system, application to noninteger order filters design, and parametric optimization of fractional controllers.

The sparse representation based classifier (SRC) and its kernel version (KSRC) have been employed for hyperspectral image (HSI) classification. However, the state-of-the-art SRC often aims at extended surface objects with linear mixture in smooth scene and assumes that the number of classes is given. Considering the small target with complex background, a sparse representation based binary hypothesis (SRBBH) model is established in this paper. In this model, a query pixel is represented in two ways, which are, respectively, by background dictionary and by union dictionary. The background dictionary is composed of samples selected from the local dual concentric window centered at the query pixel. Thus, for each pixel the classification issue becomes an adaptive multiclass classification problem, where only the number of desired classes is required. Furthermore, the kernel method is employed to improve the interclass separability. In kernel space, the coding vector is obtained by using kernel-based orthogonal matching pursuit (KOMP) algorithm. Then the query pixel can be labeled by the characteristics of the coding vectors. Instead of directly using the reconstruction residuals, the different impacts the background dictionary and union dictionary have on reconstruction are used for validation and classification. It enhances the discrimination and hence improves the performance.

This paper is concerned with a class of fully fuzzy bilevel linear programming problems where all the coefficients and decision variables of both objective functions and the constraints are fuzzy numbers. A new approach based on deviation degree measures and a ranking function method is proposed to solve these problems. We first introduce concepts of the feasible region and the fuzzy optimal solution of a fully fuzzy bilevel linear programming problem. In order to obtain a fuzzy optimal solution of the problem, we apply deviation degree measures to deal with the fuzzy constraints and use a ranking function method of fuzzy numbers to rank the upper and lower level fuzzy objective functions. Then the fully fuzzy bilevel linear programming problem can be transformed into a deterministic bilevel programming problem. Considering the overall balance between improving objective function values and decreasing allowed deviation degrees, the computational procedure for finding a fuzzy optimal solution is proposed. Finally, a numerical example is provided to illustrate the proposed approach. The results indicate that the proposed approach gives a better optimal solution in comparison with the existing method.

Partial linear models, a family of popular semiparametric models, provide us with an interpretable and flexible assumption for modelling complex data. One challenging question in partial linear models is the structure identification for the linear components and the nonlinear components, especially for high dimensional data. This paper considers the structure identification problem in the general partial linear single-index models, where the link function is unknown. We propose two penalized methods based on a modern dimension reduction technique. Under certain regularity conditions, we show that the second estimator is able to identify the underlying true model structure correctly. The convergence rate of the new estimator is established as well.

This paper describes an improved global harmony search (IGHS) algorithm for identifying the nonlinear discrete-time systems based on second-order Volterra model. The IGHS is an improved version of the novel global harmony search (NGHS) algorithm, and it makes two significant improvements on the NGHS. First, the genetic mutation operation is modified by combining normal distribution and Cauchy distribution, which enables the IGHS to fully explore and exploit the solution space. Second, an opposition-based learning (OBL) is introduced and modified to improve the quality of harmony vectors. The IGHS algorithm is implemented on two numerical examples, and they are nonlinear discrete-time rational system and the real heat exchanger, respectively. The results of the IGHS are compared with those of the other three methods, and it has been verified to be more effective than the other three methods on solving the above two problems with different input signals and system memory sizes.

The MinMaxk-means algorithm is widely used to tackle the effect of bad initialization by minimizing the maximum intraclustering errors. Two parameters, including the exponent parameter and memory parameter, are involved in the executive process. Since different parameters have different clustering errors, it is crucial to choose appropriate parameters. In the original algorithm, a practical framework is given. Such framework extends the MinMaxk-means to automatically adapt the exponent parameter to the data set. It has been believed that if the maximum exponent parameter has been set, then the programme can reach the lowest intraclustering errors. However, our experiments show that this is not always correct. In this paper, we modified the MinMaxk-means algorithm by PSO to determine the proper values of parameters which can subject the algorithm to attain the lowest clustering errors. The proposed clustering method is tested on some favorite data sets in several different initial situations and is compared to thek-means algorithm and the original MinMaxk-means algorithm. The experimental results indicate that our proposed algorithm can reach the lowest clustering errors automatically.

As is well known, traditional spectral clustering (SC) methods are developed based on themanifold assumption, namely, that two nearby data points in the high-density region of a low-dimensional data manifold have the same cluster label. But, for some high-dimensional and sparse data, such an assumption might be invalid. Consequently, the clustering performance of SC will be degraded sharply in this case. To solve this problem, in this paper, we propose a general spectral embedded framework, which embeds the true cluster assignment matrix for high-dimensional data into a nonlinear space by a predefined embedding function. Based on this framework, several algorithms are presented by using different embedding functions, which aim at learning the final cluster assignment matrix and a transformation into a low dimensionality space simultaneously. More importantly, the proposed method can naturally handle the out-of-sample extension problem. The experimental results on benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed method significantly outperforms existing clustering methods.

Camera calibration is a necessary process in the field of vision measurement. In this paper, we propose a flexible and high-accuracy method to calibrate a camera. Firstly, we compute the center of radial distortion, which is important to obtain optimal results. Then, based on the radial distortion of the division model, the camera intrinsic parameters and distortion coefficients are solved in a linear way independently. Finally, the intrinsic parameters of the camera are optimized via the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm. In the proposed method, the distortion coefficients and intrinsic parameters are successfully decoupled; calibration accuracy is further improved through the subsequent optimization process. Moreover, whether it is for relatively small image distortion or distortion larger image, utilizing our method can get a good result. Both simulation and real data experiment demonstrate the robustness and accuracy of the proposed method. Experimental results show that the proposed method can be obtaining a higher accuracy than the classical methods.

Hybrid systems are those that inherently combine discrete and continuous dynamics. This paper considers the hybrid system model to be an extension of the discrete automata associating a continuous evolution with each discrete state. This model is called the hybrid automaton. In this work, we achieve a mathematical formulation of the steady state and we show a way to obtain the initial conditions region to reach a specific limit cycle for a class of uncoupled and coupled continuous-linear hybrid systems. The continuous-linear term is used in the sense of the system theory and, in this sense, continuous-linear hybrid automata will be defined. Thus, some properties and theorems that govern the hybrid automata dynamic behavior to evaluate a limit cycle existence have been established; this content is explained under a theoretical framework. © 2016 Antonio Favela-Contreras et al.

This paper presents a robust control design for the class of underactuated uncertain nonlinear systems. Either the nonlinear model of the underactuated systems is transformed into an input output form and then an integral manifold is devised for the control design purpose or an integral manifold is defined directly for the concerned class. Having defined the integral manifolds discontinuous control laws are designed which are capable of maintaining sliding mode from the very beginning. The closed loop stability of these systems is presented in an impressive way. The effectiveness and demand of the designed control laws are verified via the simulation and experimental results of ball and beam system.

The Cattaneo-Vernotte equation is a generalization of the heat and particle diffusion equations; this mathematical model combines waves and diffusion with a finite velocity of propagation. In disordered systems the diffusion can be anomalous. In these kinds of systems, the mean-square displacement is proportional to a fractional power of time not equal to one. The anomalous diffusion concept is naturally obtained from diffusion equations using the fractional calculus approach. In this paper we present an alternative representation of the Cattaneo-Vernotte equation using the fractional calculus approach; the spatial-time derivatives of fractional order are approximated using the Caputo-type derivative in the range(0,2]. In this alternative representation we introduce the appropriate fractional dimensional parameters which characterize consistently the existence of the fractional space-time derivatives into the fractional Cattaneo-Vernotte equation. Finally, consider the Dirichlet conditions, the Fourier method was used to find the full solution of the fractional Cattaneo-Vernotte equation in analytic way, and Caputo and Riesz fractional derivatives are considered. The advantage of our representation appears according to the comparison between our model and models presented in the literature, which are not acceptable physically due to the dimensional incompatibility of the solutions. The classical cases are recovered when the fractional derivative exponents are equal to1.

This paper addresses the problem of distributed fusion when the conditional independence assumptions on sensor measurements or local estimates are not met. A new data fusion algorithm called Copula fusion is presented. The proposed method is grounded on Copula statistical modeling and Bayesian analysis. The primary advantage of the Copula-based methodology is that it could reveal the unknown correlation that allows one to build joint probability distributions with potentially arbitrary underlying marginals and a desired intermodal dependence. The proposed fusion algorithm requires no a priori knowledge of communications patterns or network connectivity. The simulation results show that the Copula fusion brings a consistent estimate for a wide range of process noises.

The current challenge to the engineering profession is to carry out probabilistic methods in practice. The design point method in generalized random space (DPG method) associated with the method of divided difference can be utilized to deal with the complex problem of probability calculation of implicit performance function with nonnormal and correlated variables. For a practical concrete gravity dam, the suggested method is performed to calculate the instability probability of the dam foundation over multiple sliding places. The general conclusions drawn in the paper are identical to those in other research and the method is proved to be feasible, accurate, and efficient. As the same analysis principle, the method can also be used in other similar fields, such as in fields of slopes, earth-rock dams, levees, and embankments.

This paper selects improved maximum likelihood method to conduct parameter estimation of Heston model, and results show that the share option pricing performance of Hang Seng Index is better and pricing error of at-the-money options is the smallest. By comparing parameter estimation of samples in different intervals, it has been found that parameter estimated results of two-year market data are obviously inferior to estimated effect of one-year data.

A smart space is embedded with several components such as sensors, actuators, and computing devices that enable the sensing and control of the environment, and the inhabitants interact with the devices in the smart space whenever they need to. To model a smart space, a dynamic relationship needs to be established among the elements of the space whereby the interactions with devices are considered a dynamic-process state. In this paper, a linear model of a smart space is presented using a state equation, where the two coefficient matricesLandHneed to be defined to model the smart space, and the coefficient matrixLis used to determine the states of the devices; similarly, the situation of the smart space is determined using coefficientH. An algorithm is presented to make a linear model from the logical functions that are used to describe the system. This model is flexible in terms of the control of the smart-space environment because the environmental factors are represented by a matrix element. This linear smart-space model is helpful for the control of a context-aware system, and we use an example to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed model.

This paper proposes a novel method for parametrisation and remeshing incomplete and irregular polygonal meshes. Spherical harmonics basis functions are used for parametrisation. This involves least squares fitting of spherical harmonics basis functions to the surface mesh. Tikhonov regularisation is then used to improve the parametrisation before remeshing the surface. Experiments show that the proposed techniques are effective for parametrising and remeshing polygonal meshes.

The goal of minimal attribute reduction is to find the minimal subsetRof the condition attribute setCsuch thatRhas the same classification quality asC. This problem is well known to be NP-hard. When only one minimal attribute reduction is required, it was transformed into a nonlinearly constrained combinatorial optimization problem over a Boolean space and some heuristic search approaches were used. In this case, the fitness function is one of the keys of this problem. It required that the fitness function must satisfy the equivalence between the optimal solution and the minimal attribute reduction. Unfortunately, the existing fitness functions either do not meet the equivalence, or are too complicated. In this paper, a simple and better fitness function based on positive domain was given. Theoretical proof shows that the optimal solution is equivalent to minimal attribute reduction. Experimental results show that the proposed fitness function is better than the existing fitness function for each algorithm in test.

Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is one of the key issues in optimization of modern logistics system. In this paper, a modified VRP model with hard time window is established and a Hybrid Optimization Algorithm (HOA) based on Fractal Space Filling Curves (SFC) method and Genetic Algorithm (GA) is introduced. By incorporating the proposed algorithm, SFC method can find an initial and feasible solution very fast; GA is used to improve the initial solution. Thereafter, experimental software was developed and a large number of experimental computations from Solomon’s benchmark have been studied. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the HOA.

This paper presents an Improved Genetic Algorithm with Two-Level Approximation (IGATA) to minimize truss weight by simultaneously optimizing size, shape, and topology variables. On the basis of a previously presented truss sizing/topology optimization method based on two-level approximation and genetic algorithm (GA), a new method for adding shape variables is presented, in which the nodal positions are corresponding to a set of coordinate lists. A uniform optimization model including size/shape/topology variables is established. First, a first-level approximate problem is constructed to transform the original implicit problem to an explicit problem. To solve this explicit problem which involves size/shape/topology variables, GA is used to optimize individuals which include discrete topology variables and shape variables. When calculating the fitness value of each member in the current generation, a second-level approximation method is used to optimize the continuous size variables. With the introduction of shape variables, the original optimization algorithm was improved in individual coding strategy as well as GA execution techniques. Meanwhile, the update strategy of the first-level approximation problem was also improved. The results of numerical examples show that the proposed method is effective in dealing with the three kinds of design variables simultaneously, and the required computational cost for structural analysis is quite small.

This paper presents an improved genetic algorithm (GA) with gene recombination for bus crew-scheduling problem in bus company. Unlike existing methods that rely on designing a fixed potential shift set by software, our new method does not need such a potential shift set information. In our method, satisfied shifts are generated through gene recombination in genetic algorithm. We conduct extensive studies based on real-life instances from Beijing Bus Group. Compared with results generated by the current manual method, ant colony algorithm, and CPLEX, computational results show that our algorithms demonstrated very good computational performances. In our tests, the number of the maximum reducing shifts can be beyond 30, especially when trip number is very large. The high relative percentage deviation demonstrated the effectiveness of the algorithm proposed.

Necessary and sufficient condition for stochastic stability of discrete-time linear switched system with a random switching signal is considered in this paper, assuming that the switching signal allows fixed dwell time before a Markov switch occurs. It is shown that the stochastic stability of the system is equivalent to that of an auxiliary system with state transformations at switching time, whose switching signal is a Markov chain. The stochastic stability is studied using a stochastic Lyapunov approach. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated by a numerical example.

In rock mass engineering, the criterion of rock mass stability has complex nonlinear characteristics, so the process of instability for local rock mass system cannot be quantified by the traditional ways of displacement criterion and the criterion of development of plastic zones, which are strongly empirical. Based on the research about the criterion of rock mass stability, criterion of improved strain energy catastrophe is put forward by virtue of catastrophe theory in this paper. After regularizing potential function, the stability of the system can be determined by catastrophe characteristic values. Take a certain slope for example; the results show that the criterion can quantitatively reflect the behavioral process of instability for rock mass system, which is consistent with the engineering practice and possesses a certain engineering reference value.