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A novel double-emitter ultrasonic system for distance measurements based on the correlation method is presented. The proposed distance measurement method may be particularly useful in difficult conditions, e.g. for media parameters undergoing fast changes or in cases when obstacles and mechanical interference produce false reflections. The system is a development of a previously studied single-head idea. The present article covers a comparison of the two systems in terms of efficiency and precision. Experimental research described in this paper indicated that adding the second head improved the measurement exactness – standard deviation decreased by 40%. The correlation method is also described in detail, also giving the criterion for the quality of the measurement signal.

The article presents modelling using artificial neural networks (ANN) of the phenomenon of creep of comply polymer SIKA PS which can be used in various applications in civil engineering. Data for modelling was gathered in compressive experiments conveyed under a set of fixed conditions of compressive stress and temperature. Part of the datawas pre-processed by smoothing and rediscretisation and served as inputs and targets for network training and part of the data was left raw as control set for verification of prognosing capability. Assumed neural network architectures were one- and two-layer feedforward networks with Bayesian regularisation as a learning method. Altogether 55 networks with 8 to 12 neurons in varying structural configurations were trained. Fitting and prognosing verification was performed using mean absolute relative error as a measure; also, results were plotted and assessed visually. In result, the research allowed for formulation of a new rheological model for comply polymer SIKA PS in time, stress and temperature field domain with fitting quality of mean absolute relative error 1.3% and prognosis quality of mean absolute relative error 8.73%. The model was formulated with the use of a two-layer network with 5, 5 neurons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]