Monte Carlo criticality analysis under material distribution uncertainty

Analysis framework under material distribution uncertainty is not yet established for the Monte Carlo (MC) criticality calculation of continuously mixed media formed via molten core concrete interaction. To approach this issue, one group cross-sections have specifically been prepared for burned fuel, stainless steel and concrete, and the effect of spatially continuous variation of volume fractions is inspected. Trigonometric functions and randomized Weierstrass functions (RWFs) are utilized to represent the spatially continuous variation. Here, trigonometric functions enable the amount of each material to be exactly preserved, and RWF is a randomized trigonometric series that can be generated within specified upper and lower bounds. With these functions, one can assess the influence of indeterminate material distribution. MC particle transport is conducted using the delta-tracking. Numerical results indicate that the effective multiplication factor (k_eff) under RWF variation can depart significantly from the k_eff of a reference uniform medium. These numerical results also show that the deterministic modeling of spatial variation provides a bound measure for extreme results from random realizations.     

Changes in bioactive compounds and antioxidant activity during convective drying of murta (Ugni molinae T.) berries

Murta (Ugni molinae T.) berries were air‐dried at five temperatures (40, 50, 60, 70 and 80 °C), and the changes in β‐carotene, phenolic acids, total phenolic and flavonoid contents and antioxidant capacities (DPPH and ORAC) were investigated. The berries showed a high content of β‐carotene, which decreased during drying temperature between 40 °C and 80 °C. Free and bound phenolic acids were also determined, showing gallic acid to be the prevalent phenolic acid. Total phenolic and flavonoid contents in the dried berries showed a higher decrease at lower temperature due to longer drying time. The radical‐scavenging activity also showed higher antioxidant activity at higher drying temperatures (70–80 °C) than at lower drying temperatures (40–50 °C). Total phenolic content (TPC) and flavonoids showed good correlation with antioxidant capacity. Murta berries proved to be an excellent source of antioxidants and bioactive compounds and are therefore a potential ingredient for new functional food products.     

Design of functionally graded joints using a polyurethane-based adhesive with varying amounts of acrylate

Adhesives with graded properties along the bondline are being developed to increase the strength of adhesively bonded joints. Efforts to do this in the past have resulted in mixed results. Two adhesive parameters need to be considered: the geometry of the gradation and the material properties of the adhesive at different gradation levels. In order to consider both of these aspects, a computational model was created to aid in not only the design of adhesive gradations but also judge whether a specific adhesive gradation method will be able to result in strength increases. In this study, the model was introduced and compared with published results. A new adhesive gradation system was created by using a polyurethane-based adhesive with varying amounts of acrylate, and a numerical analysis was performed to determine the potential advantages of the adhesive gradation.     

三车道公路隧道照明灯具布置参数研究

随着公路隧道数量和里程的增加,隧道运营过程中的照明将会消耗更巨大的电能,这是运营单位所承担的主要负担,如何有效的降低该能耗已经成为重要的问题。国内外专家学者对此作了大量研究,通常使照明灯具达到最好的照明效果是降低电能消耗的有效途径之一。采用DIALux照明仿真软件,分别建立隧道照明灯具两侧对称布置和交错布置模型,以洞内路面亮度、照度和均匀度满足交通安全要求为约束条件,分析了不同布灯形式和灯具不同照射角度情况对隧道内照明环境的影响,通过综合分析比较,得出当灯具交错布置、发光轴线与竖直面夹角为15°时的照明环境最好。     

液态法白酒、固态法白酒和固液法白酒的总酯与色谱总酯量的差异分析

固态法白酒、液态法白酒、固液法白酒总酯与气相色谱分析数据单酯总和存在一定的差异,其原因主要由总酯的表示方法造成的。     

Particle filtering with analytically guided sampling

Particle filtering (PF) is a popular nonlinear estimation technique and has been widely used in a variety of applications such as target tracking. Within the PF framework, one critical design choice is the selection of the proposal distribution from which particles are drawn. In this paper, we advocate using as proposal distribution a Gaussian-mixture-based approximation of the posterior probability density function (pdf) after taking into account the most recent measurement. The novelty of our approach is that the parameters of each Gaussian used in the mixture are determined analytically to match the modes of the underlying unknown posterior pdf. As a result, particles are sampled along the most probable regions of the state space, hence reducing the probability of particle depletion. Based on the analytically determined proposal distribution, we introduce a novel PF, termed analytically guided sampling-based PF, which is validated in range-only and bearing-only target tracking.     

A novel symmetric/asymmetric multilevel current source inverter topology with lower number of components and lowest power rating of switches

A novel multilevel current source inverter (MCSI) configuration is introduced in this paper. The ability of handling with asymmetrical DC sources is one of the substantial advantages of the proposed inverter. In asymmetric mode, by appropriate selection of DC sources magnitude, a considerable increase can be obtained in the number of output levels without any manipulation on inverters’ hardware. In MCSIs, the number of required circuit devices is very important because the overall costs, circuit size, reliability and control complexity are dependent on them directly. The proposed inverter can generate all desired current levels using a lower number of elements. Besides, it is known that reduction of number of switches from conventional inverters imposes an undesired increase in total semiconductor device power (SDP). But, the total SDP of the proposed inverter is kept equal to conventional inverter. To validate the superiority of the proposed inverter, a full comparison is provided. Also, the computer simulation and experimental results are presented.     

Speech and noise power estimation using Gamma modeling

In speech enhancement, having an accurate estimation of the power of the speech and noise signals forming the noisy observation is critical, as it can highly affect the performance of the enhancement algorithm. A method is introduced in which the distributions of the power of the speech and noise periodograms are modeled using the Gamma distribution to extract their shape parameters. These shape parameters are later used in the observed noisy speech to estimate the power when forming speech and noise periodograms. This method results in more accurate and faster power estimation with respect to the well‐known minimum statistics power estimation algorithm and together with the maximum a posteriori speech enhancement algorithm exhibits good speech enhancement performance.