Structural health monitoring system based on multi-agent coordination and fusion for large structure

In practical applications of structural health monitoring technology, a large number of distributed sensors are usually adopted to monitor the big dimension structures and different kinds of damage. The monitored structures are usually divided into different sub-structures and monitored by different sensor sets. Under this situation, how to manage the distributed sensor set and fuse different methods to obtain a fast and accurate evaluation result is an important problem to be addressed deeply. In the paper, a multi-agent fusion and coordination system is presented to deal with the damage identification for the strain distribution and joint failure in the large structure. Firstly, the monitoring system is adopted to distributedly monitor two kinds of damages, and it self-judges whether the static load happens in the monitored sub-region, and focuses on the static load on the sub-region boundary to obtain the sensor network information with blackboard model. Then, the improved contract net protocol is used to dynamically distribute the damage evaluation module for monitoring two kinds of damage uninterruptedly. Lastly, a reliable assessment for the whole structure is given by combing various heterogeneous classifiers strengths with voting-based fusion. The proposed multi-agent system is illustrated through a large aerospace aluminum plate structure experiment. The result shows that the method can significantly improve the monitoring performance for the large-scale structure.     

SDN中基于KMOBPSO的高可靠性控制器部署算法

针对SDN中控制器系统的单节点故障问题,兼顾系统成本和系统时延,应用N+1冗余备份模型来提高SDN控制器部署的可靠性,并将其抽象为多目标优化问题.同时,提出了一种融合K-means聚类算法和遗传算子的多目标二进制粒子群算法——KMOBPSO算法,以求解SDN控制器高可靠性部署问题的解.仿真结果表明,所提算法具有求解精度高、分布均匀、沿Pareto前沿面覆盖广的特点,能够显著提高SDN中控制器部署的可靠性.     

Electronic structure and absolute band edge position of tetragonal AgInS2 photocatalyst: A hybrid density functional study

Energy bands, effective mass of carriers, absolute band edge positions and optical properties of tetragonal AgInS₂ were calculated using a first-principles approach with the exchange correlation described by B3LYP hybrid functional. The results indicate that tetragonal AgInS₂ has a direct band gap of 1.93 eV, which reproduce well experimental value. Calculated effective masses of electrons and holes are both small which are beneficial to separation and migration of electron and hole pairs. This implies that AgInS₂ has good photocatalytic performance. The calculated optical characteristics indicate that AgInS₂ has a slight anisotropy for both the real and imaginary parts of the dielectric function and exhibits large optical absorption in the visible light region. Furthermore, the calculated band edge positions in (100), (010) and (001) surfaces indicate that tetragonal AgInS₂ is beneficial to the reduction and oxidation of water to hydrogen and oxygen under visible light irradiation.     

应变纤锌矿ZnO/MgxZn1-xO量子点中离子施主束缚激子的光学性质

Within the framework of the effective-mass approximation and the dipole approximation, considering the three-dimensional confinement of the electron and hole and the strong built-in electric field(BEF) in strained wurtzite Zn O/Mg0:25Zn0:75O quantum dots(QDs), the optical properties of ionized donor-bound excitons(D+, X)are investigated theoretically using a variational method. The computations are performed in the case of finite band offset. Numerical results indicate that the optical properties of(D+, X) complexes sensitively depend on the donor position, the QD size and the BEF. The binding energy of(D+, X) complexes is larger when the donor is located in the vicinity of the left interface of the QDs, and it decreases with increasing QD size. The oscillator strength reduces with an increase in the dot height and increases with an increase in the dot radius. Furthermore, when the QD size decreases, the absorption peak intensity shows a marked increment, and the absorption coefficient peak has a blueshift. The strong BEF causes a redshift of the absorption coefficient peak and causes the absorption peak intensity to decrease remarkably. The physical reasons for these relationships have been analyzed in depth.     

Coil‐Type Asymmetric Supercapacitor Electrical Cables

Cable‐shaped supercapacitors (SCs) have recently aroused significant attention due to their attractive properties such as small size, lightweight, and bendability. Current cable‐shaped SCs have symmetric device configuration. However, if an asymmetric design is used in cable‐shaped supercapacitors, they would become more attractive due to broader cell operation voltages, which results in higher energy densities. Here, a novel coil‐type asymmetric supercapacitor electrical cable (CASEC) is reported with enhanced cell operation voltage and extraordinary mechanical‐electrochemical stability. The CASECs show excellent charge–discharge profiles, extraordinary rate capability (95.4%), high energy density (0.85 mWh cm⁻³), remarkable flexibility and bendability, and superior bending cycle stability (≈93.0% after 4000 cycles at different bending states). In addition, the CASECs not only exhibit the capability to store energy but also to transmit electricity simultaneously and independently. The integrated electrical conduction and storage capability of CASECS offer many potential applications in solar energy storage and electronic gadgets.     

Workers’ rest allowance and smoothing of the workload in assembly lines

Ergonomic aspects have a crucial role in manual assembly systems. They impact on the workers’ health, final product quality and productivity. For these reasons, there is the necessity to integrate them into the assembly line balancing phase as, whereas, only time and cost variables are considered. In this study, human energy expenditures are considered as ergonomic aspects and we integrate them, for the first time, into the assembly line balancing problem type 2 through the rest allowance evaluation. We consider as an objective function the minimization of the smoothness index. Firstly, a new optimal method based on mixed integer linear programming and a new linearization methodology are proposed. Then, a heuristic approach is introduced. To complete the study, a computational experimentation is presented to validate the mathematical model and to compare the methodologies proposed in terms of computational time, complexity and solution. Additionally, we provide a detailed analysis of the impact that rest allowance evaluation can have on productivity comparing the results obtained, taking into account the rest allowance integration before, during and after the assembly balancing process.     

A modified particle swarm optimization with multiple subpopulations for multimodal function optimization problems

In this paper, a modified particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is developed for solving multimodal function optimization problems. The difference between the proposed method and the general PSO is to split up the original single population into several subpopulations according to the order of particles. The best particle within each subpopulation is recorded and then applied into the velocity updating formula to replace the original global best particle in the whole population. To update all particles in each subpopulation, the modified velocity formula is utilized. Based on the idea of multiple subpopulations, for the multimodal function optimization the several optima including the global and local solutions may probably be found by these best particles separately. To show the efficiency of the proposed method, two kinds of function optimizations are provided, including a single modal function optimization and a complex multimodal function optimization. Simulation results will demonstrate the convergence behavior of particles by the number of iterations, and the global and local system solutions are solved by these best particles of subpopulations.     

Rethinking Enterprise Architecture for Sustainable Energy System Development

The development of a sustainable energy system throughout an enterprise is a complex task, which requires an agile holistic approach. Such an approach needs to include a variety of objectives including energy strategy formation and strategic decision-making, which are directly related to the analysis and management of the main areas of sustainable development:The economic, technological, environmental, and social. These multidimensional requirements of sustainability are often difficult to achieve within the enterprise, because these aspects are interrelated and influenced by various internal and external environment factors. This paper first reviews the main challenges for an energy system, and then demonstrates how a strategic agile enterprise architecture driven approach could effectively guide the sustainable energy system development. The study presented in this paper provides a holistic approach that contributes to the advancement and usage of literature dealing with issues of sustainable energy system development and agile enterprise architecture, which has not been discussed before to any great extent.     

Top illuminated organic photodetectors with dielectric/metal/dielectric transparent anode

The top illuminated organic photodetectors (OPDs) with a Dielectric/Metal/Dielectric (DMD) transparent anode are fabricated. The transparent electrode is composed of molybdenum trioxide (MoO₃)/silver (Ag)/MoO₃ layers and zinc oxide (ZnO)/aluminum (Al) is used for bottom cathode. The optimized DMD electrode has an optical transmittance of 85.7% at the wavelength of 546 nm and sheet resistance of ∼6 Ω/sq. The fabricated OPDs exhibit a high detectivity and wide range linearity.     

Hierarchical multi-reservoir optimization modeling for real-world complexity with application to the Three Gorges system

High dimensionality in real-world multi-reservoir systems greatly hinders the application and popularity of evolutionary algorithms, especially for systems with heterogeneous units. An efficient hierarchical optimization framework is presented for search space reduction, determining the best water distributions, not only between cascade reservoirs, but also among different types of hydropower units. The framework is applied to the Three Gorges Project (TGP) system and the results demonstrate that the difficulties of multi-reservoir optimization caused by high dimensionality can be effectively solved by the proposed hierarchical method. For the day studied, power output could be increased by 6.79 GWh using an optimal decision with the same amount of water actually used; while the same amount of power could be generated with 2.59 × 10⁷ m³ less water compared to the historical policy. The methodology proposed is general in that it can be used for other reservoir systems and other types of heterogeneous unit generators.