Investigation of the potential of asymptotic homogenization for elastic composites via a three-dimensional computational study

Asymptotic homogenization is employed assuming a sharp length scale separation between the periodic structure (fine scale) and the whole composite (coarse scale). A classical approach yields the linear elastic-type coarse scale model, where the effective elastic coefficients are computed solving fine scale periodic cell problems. We generalize the existing results by considering an arbitrary number of subphases and general periodic cell shapes. We focus on the stress jump conditions arising in the cell problems and explicitly compute the corresponding interface loads. The latter represent a key driving force to obtain nontrivial cell problems solutions whenever discontinuities of the coefficients between the host medium (matrix) and the subphases occur. The numerical simulations illustrate the geometrically induced anisotropy and foster the comparison between asymptotic homogenization and well established Eshelby based techniques. We show that the method can be routinely implemented in three dimensions and should be applied to hierarchical hard tissues whenever the precise shape and arrangement of the subphases cannot be ignored. Our numerical results are benchmarked exploiting the semi-analytical solution which holds for cylindrical aligned fibers.     

Virtual-Point-Based asymptotic tracking control of 4WS vehicles

This paper studies the lateral and longitudinal path tracking control of four-wheel steering vehicles. By the introduction of virtual points, a robust and adaptive path tracking control strategy is proposed to simultaneously counteract modeling uncertainties, unexpected disturbances, and coupling effects. An adaptive model-based feedforward adaptive term and the robust integral of the sign of the error (RISE) feedback term can be used to yield an asymptotic tracking result, which improve the tracking performance and reduce the control effort. The stability of closed-loop system is analyzed using a Lyapunov-based method. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the performance of the proposed controller under different driving conditions.     

An online fault tolerant actor-critic neuro-control for a class of nonlinear systems using neural network HJB approach

In this paper, we propose an actor-critic neuro-control for a class of continuous-time nonlinear systems under nonlinear abrupt faults, which is combined with an adaptive fault diagnosis observer (AFDO). Together with its estimation laws, an AFDO scheme, which estimates the faults in real time, is designed based on Lyapunov analysis. Then, based on the designed AFDO, a fault tolerant actor- critic control scheme is proposed where the critic neural network (NN) is used to approximate the value function and the actor NN updates the fault tolerant policy based on the approximated value function in the critic NN. The weight update laws for critic NN and actor NN are designed using the gradient descent method. By Lyapunov analysis, we prove the uniform ultimately boundedness (UUB) of all the states, their estimation errors, and NN weights of the fault tolerant system under the unpredictable faults. Finally, we verify the effectiveness of the proposed method through numerical simulations.     

Stability Analysis of Networked Control Systems based on <Emphasis Type="Italic">L</Emphasis><Subscript>p</Subscript> Properties

To handle the communication constraint imposed by the serial communication channel in networked control systems (NCSs), we discuss a popular dynamic scheduling protocol called Maximum-Error-First (MEF) protocol. An important parameter in this protocol is the maximum allowable transmission interval (MATI), which indicates the communication cost for the task of control. To take as large MATI as possible under the constraint of guaranteeing stability is one formalization of the design requirement to consume as little communication resources as possible with the control performances ensured. A method to estimate this parameter based on the ? _p norm is suggested in this paper, which gives larger estimation than some methods do in the literature through simulation examples.     

Multiple-model Rao-Blackwellized particle probability hypothesis density filter for multitarget tracking

Multitarget tracking (MTT) is a frequent topic in visual surveillance systems. Although the multiple-model probability hypothesis density (MM-PHD) filter plays an important role in the MTT, both computerized intractability and imprecise estimate are still inevitable. To solve the problems, a novel filter is presented in this paper. Different from the previous work, the Rao-Blackwellized particle filtering algorithm is incorporated with the MM-PHD filter to reduce computational load, where the sequence Monte Carlo method is adopted to estimate the nonlinear state of targets, and the linear state is predicted using the Kalman filter with the information embedded in the estimated nonlinear state. With respect to tracking precision, we find that the reweighting scheme can be realized for the numberestimate of both undetected targets and false alarms. The result is useful in balancing the required particle number in order to stabilize target estimates during the surveillance period. The illustrative simulation is finally provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed filter.     

Move blocking strategy applied to re-entrant manufacturing line scheduling

Model predictive control (MPC)-based approach to fab-wide scheduling has been suggested to solve constraint-aware production optimization and in-process inventory level control simultaneously at each scheduling instance. However, application of this approach to real fab suffers from computational difficulties brought by the need to solve a huge optimization problem on-line as real fab scheduling problems are characterized by long cycle times, multiple product types, hundreds of machines/processing steps and re-entrant product flows. This study explores the use of an offset-blocking strategy combined with a modified recursive least square (RLS) estimation in the fab-wide scheduler, in order to alleviate the difficulty. The strategy is tested on a modified version of published case study called Intel Mini-Fab (IMF) problem. Despite its simplicity, the blocking strategy showed excellent performance in the face of realistic demand changes and plant/model mismatch.     

Algorithm of gaussian sum filter based on high-order UKF for dynamic state estimation

In this work we consider the state estimation problem in nonlinear/non-Gaussian systems. A new version of Gaussian sum estimation algorithm is developed here based on high-order unscented Kalman filter (HUKF). A sigma point selection method, high-order unscented transformation (HUT) technique is proposed for the HUKF, which can approximate the Gaussian distributions more accurately. We present the systematic formulation of Gaussian filters and develop efficient and accurate numerical integration of the optimal filter. We then go on to extend the use of the HUKF to discrete-time, nonlinear systems with additive, possibly non-Gaussian noise. The resulting filtering algorithm, called the Gaussian sum high-order unscented Kalman filter (GS-HUKF) approximates the predicted and posterior densities as a finite number of weighted sums of Gaussian densities. It is corroborated in the theoretical analysis and the simulation that the proposed Gaussian sum HUKF has integrated advantages with respect to computational accuracy and time complexity for nonlinear non-Gaussian filtering problems.     

Data Fusion-based resilient control system under DoS attacks: A game theoretic approach

In this paper, the resilient control under the Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack is rebuilt within the framework of Joint Directors of Laboratories (JDL) data fusion model. The JDL data fusion process is characterized by the so-called Game-in-Game approach, where decisions are made at different layers. The interactions between different JDL levels are considered which take the form of Packet Delivery Rate of the communication channel. Some criterions to judge whether the cyber defense system is able to protect the underlying control system is provided. Finally, a numerical example is proposed to verify the validity of the proposed method.     

A novel part-based approach to mean-shift algorithm for visual tracking

Visual tracking is one of the most important problems considered in computer vision. To improve the performance of the visual tracking, a part-based approach will be a good solution. In this paper, a novel method of visual tracking algorithm named part-based mean-shift (PBMS) algorithm is presented. In the proposed PBMS, unlike the standard mean-shift (MS), the target object is divided into multiple parts and the target is tracked by tracking each individual part and combining the results. For the part-based visual tracking, the objective function in the MS is modified such that the target object is represented as a combination of the parts and iterative optimization solution is presented. Further, the proposed PBMS provides a systematic and analytic way to determine the scale of the bounding box for the target from the perspective of the objective function optimization. Simulation is conducted with several benchmark problems and the result shows that the proposed PBMS outperforms the standard MS.

     

Calibration of imprecise and inaccurate numerical models considering fidelity and robustness: a multi-objective optimization-based approach

Traditionally, model calibration is formulated as a single objective problem, where fidelity to measurements is maximized by adjusting model parameters. In such a formulation however, the model with best fidelity merely represents an optimum compromise between various forms of errors and uncertainties and thus, multiple calibrated models can be found to demonstrate comparable fidelity producing non-unique solutions. To alleviate this problem, the authors formulate model calibration as a multi-objective problem with two distinct objectives: fidelity and robustness. Herein, robustness is defined as the maximum allowable uncertainty in calibrating model parameters with which the model continues to yield acceptable agreement with measurements. The proposed approach is demonstrated through the calibration of a finite element model of a steel moment resisting frame.