Recent developments on applications of sequential loop closing and diagonal dominance control schemes to industrial multivariable system

With a focus on an industrial multivariable system, two subsystems including the flow and the level outputs are analysed and controlled, which have applicability in both real and academic environments. In such a case, at first, each subsystem is distinctively represented by its model, since the outcomes point out that the chosen models have the same behavior as corresponding ones. Then, the industrial multivariable system and its presentation are achieved in line with the integration of these subsystems, since the interaction between them can not actually be ignored. To analyze the interaction presented, the Gershgorin bands need to be acquired, where the results are used to modify the system parameters to appropriate values. Subsequently, in the view of modeling results, the control concept in two different techniques including sequential loop closing control （SLCC） scheme and diagonal dominance control （DDC） schemes is proposed to implement on the system through the Profibus network, as long as the OPC （OLE for process control） server is utilized to communicate between the control schemes presented and the multivariable system. The real test scenarios are carried out and the corresponding outcomes in their present forms are acquired. In the same way, the proposed control schemes results are compared with each other, where the real consequences verify the validity of them in the field of the presented industrial multivariable system control.     

An adaptive waveform-detection threshold joint optimization method for target tracking

The joint optimization of detection threshold and waveform parameters for target tracking which comes from the idea of cognitive radar is investigated for the modified probabilistic data association （MPDA） filter. The transmitted waveforms and detection threshold are adaptively selected to enhance the tracking performance. The modified Riccati equation is adopted to predict the error covariance which is used as the criterion function, while the optimization problem is solved through the genetic algorithm （GA）. The detection probability, false alarm probability and measurement noise covariance are all considered together, which significantly improves the tracking performance of the joint detection and tracking system. Simulation results show that the proposed adaptive waveform-detection threshold joint optimization method outperforms the adaptive threshold method and the fixed parameters method, which will reduce the tracking error. The average reduction of range error between the adaptive joint method and the fixed parameters method is about 0.6 m, while that between the adaptive joint method and the adaptive threshold only method is about 0.3 m. Similar error reduction occurs for the velocity error and acceleration error.     

Adaptive robust motion trajectory tracking control of pneumatic cylinders

High-accuracy motion trajectory tracking control of a pneumatic cylinder driven by a proportional directional control valve was considered. A mathematical model of the system was developed firstly. Due to the time-varying friction force in the cylinder, unmodeled dynamics, and unknown disturbances, there exist large extent of parametric uncertainties and rather severe uncertain nonlinearities in the pneumatic system. To deal with these uncertainties effectively, an adaptive robust controller was constructed in this work. The proposed controller employs on-line recursive least squares estimation （RLSE） to reduce the extent of parametric uncertainties, and utilizes the sliding mode control method to attenuate the effects of parameter estimation errors, unmodeled dynamics and disturbances. Therefore, a prescribed motion tracking transient performance and final tracking accuracy can be guaranteed. Since the system model uncertainties are unmatched, the recursive backstepping design technology was applied. In order to solve the conflicts between the sliding mode control design and the adaptive control design, the projection mapping was used to condition the RLSE algorithm so that the parameter estimates are kept within a known bounded convex set. Extensive experimental results were presented to illustrate the excellent achievable performance of the proposed controller and performance robustness to the load variation and sudden disturbance.     

Modeling and control for hydraulic transmission of unmanned ground vehicle简

Variable pump driving variable motor （VPDVM） is the future development trend of the hydraulic transmission of an unmanned ground vehicle （UGV）. VPDVM is a dual-input single-output nonlinear system with coupling, which is difficult to control High pressure automatic variables bang-bang （HABB） was proposed to achieve the desired motor speed. First, the VPDVM nonlinear mathematic model was introduced, then linearized by feedback linearization theory, and the zero-dynamic stability was proved. The HABB control algorithm was proposed for VPDVM, in which the variable motor was controlled by high pressure automatic variables （HA） and the variable pump was controlled by bang-bang. Finally, simulation of VPDVM controlled by HABB was developed. Simulation results demonstrate the HABB can implement the desired motor speed rapidly and has strong robustness against the variations of desired motor speed, load and pump speed.     

An iterative calibration method for nonlinear coefficients of marine triaxial accelerometers

Single-axis rotation technique is often used in the marine laser inertial navigation system so as to modulate the constant biases of non-axial gyroscopes and accelerometers to attain better navigation performance. However, two significant accelerometer nonlinear errors need to be attacked to improve the modulation effect. Firstly, the asymmetry scale factor inaccuracy enlarges the errors of frequent zero-cross oscillating specific force measured by non-axial accelerometers. Secondly, the traditional linear model of accelerometers can hardly measure the continued or intermittent acceleration accurately. These two nonlinear errors degrade the high-precision specific force measurement and the calibration of nonlinear coefficients because triaxial accelerometers is urgent for the marine navigation. Based on the digital signal sampling property, the square coefficients and cross-coupling coefficients of accelerometers are considered. Meanwhile, the asymmetry scale factors are considered in the I-F conversion unit. Thus, a nonlinear model of specific force measurement is established compared to the linear model. Based on the three-axis turntable, the triaxial gyroscopes are utilized to measure the specific force observation for triaxial accelerometers. Considering the nonlinear combination, the standard calibration parameters and asymmetry factors are separately estimated by a two-step iterative identification procedure. Besides, an efficient specific force calculation model is approximately derived to reduce the real-time computation cost. Simulation results illustrate the sufficient estimation accuracy of nonlinear coefficients. The experiments demonstrate that the nonlinear model shows much higher accuracy than the linear model in both the gravimetry and sway navigation validations.     

Thermal-environment characteristics and comfort of combined radiant-floor （Korean heating system ondol） and convective cooling system

The thermal-environment characteristics of the existing forced-convection cooling system were compared with those of the convective cooling system, which combined the radiant-floor cooling system using floor-heating panel typically applied to apartments in South Korea with the forced-convection cooling system using improved fan coil unit. The subjective warm/cool-feeling responses to the combined radiant-floor and convective cooling system in the questionnaire survey conducted among the test subjects were analyzed to establish the basic data for the combined cooling system. The results show that in the thermal-equilibrium condition, the vertical air temperature difference in the model living room is larger in the forced-convection-cooling condition. Most of the subjects feel a proper warm/cool feeling on their entire body, but they feel colder on the foot and lower body in the combined-cooling condition.     

Finite difference method for dynamic response analysis of anchorage system简

Based on some assumptions, the dynamic analysis model of anchorage system is established. The dynamic governing equation is expressed as finite difference format and programmed by using MATLAB language. Compared with theoretical method, the finite difference method has been verified to be feasible by a case study. It is found that under seismic loading, the dynamic response of anchorage system is synchronously fluctuated with the seismic vibration. The change of displacement amplitude of material points is slight, and comparatively speaking, the displacement amplitude of the outside point is a little larger than that of the inside point, which shows amplification effect of surface. While the axial force amplitude transforms considerably from the inside to the outside. It increases first and reaches the peak value in the intersection between the anchoring section and free section, then decreases slowly in the free section. When considering damping effect of anchorage system, the finite difference method can reflect the time attenuation characteristic better, and the calculating result would be safer and more reasonable than the dynamic steady-state theoretical method. What is more, the finite difference method can be applied to the dynamic response analysis of harmonic and seismic random vibration for all kinds of anchor, and hence has a broad application prospect.     

Modeling approaches to pressure balance dynamic system in shield tunneling简

In order to deal with modeling problem of a pressure balance system with time-delay, nonlinear, time-varying and uncertain characteristics, an intelligent modeling procedure is proposed, which is based on artificial neural network （ANN） and input-output data of the system during shield tunneling and can overcome the precision problem in mechanistic modeling （MM） approach. The computational results show that the training algorithm with Gauss-Newton optimization has fast convergent speed. The experimental investigation indicates that, compared with mechanistic modeling approach, intelligent modeling procedure can obviously increase the precision in both soil pressure fitting and forecasting period. The effectiveness and accuracy of proposed intelligent modeling procedure are verified in laboratory tests.     

Solution of pavement temperature field in ＂Environment-Surface＂ system through Green＇s function

In order to simplify the boundary conditions of pavement temperature field, the ＂Environment-Surface＂ system which considered the natural environment and pavement surface was established. Based on this system, the partial differential equations of the one-dimensional heat conduction in the pavement were established on the basis of the heat transfer theory. Furthermore, the function forms of the initial and boundary conditions of the equations were created through the field experiments. The general solution of the pavement one-dimensional heat conduction partial differential equations was acquired by using Green＇s function, and the explicit expression of pavement temperature field under specific constraint conditions was derived. For the purpose of analysis, the pavement temperatures in different seasons were calculated using the explicit expression of pavement temperature field, and the calculation accuracy was analyzed through the comparison between measured and calculated values. Then, the relationship between fitting accuracy and calculation accuracy of pavement temperatures was analyzed. The analysis results show that： the usage of ＂Environment-Surface＂ system simplifies the calculation of pavement temperature field; the relative error between calculated and measured values is generally less than 7% and is seldom influenced by seasons; there is a positive correlation between the calculation accuracy and the fitting accuracy of pavement surface temperature; high fitting accuracy would result in less error of pavement temperature prediction.     

Numerical simulation and optimization of red mud separation thickener with self-dilute feed简

In order to acquire the flow pattern and investigate the settling behavior of the red mud in the separation thickener, computational fluid dynamics （CFD）, custom subroutines and agglomerates settling theory were employed to simulate the three-dimensional flow field in an industrial scale thickener with the introduction of a self-dilute feed system. The simulation results show good agreement with the measurement onsite and the flow patterns of the thickener are presented and discussed on both velocity and concentration field. Optimization experiments on feed well and self-dilute system were also carried out, and indicate that the optimal thickener system can dilute the solid concentration in feed well from 110 g/L to 86 g/L which would help the agglomerates＇ formation and improve the red mud settling speed. Furthermore, the additional power of recirculation pump can be saved and flocculants dosage was reduced from 105g/t to 85g/t in the operation.     

Layout problem of multi-component systems arising for improving maintainability

To improve the mainlainability design efficiency and quality, a layout optimization method for maintainability of multi-component systems was proposed. The impact of the component layout design on system maintainability was analyzed, and the layout problem for maintainability was presented. It was formulated as an optimization problem, where maintainability, layout space and distance requirement were formulated as objective functions. A multi-objective particle swarm optimization algorithm, in which the constrained-domination relationship and the update strategy of the global best were simply modified, was then used to obtain Pareto optimal solutions for the maintainability layout design problem. Finally, application in oxygen generation system of a spacecraft was studied in detail to illustrate the effectiveness and usefulness of the proposed method. The results show that the concurrent maintainability design can be carried out during the layout design process by solving the layout optimization problem for maintainability.     

Hyperchaos behaviors and chaos synchronization of two unidirectional coupled simplified Lorenz systems简

To design a hyperchaotic generator and apply chaos into secure communication, a linear unidirectional coupling control is applied to two identical simplified Lorenz systems. The dynamical evolution process of the coupled system is investigated with variations of the system parameter and coupling coefficients. Particularly, the influence of coupling strength on dynamics of the coupled system is analyzed in detail. The range of the coupling strength in which the coupled system can generate hyperchaos or realize synchronization is determined, including phase portraits, Lyapunov exponents, and Poincare section. And the critical value of the system parameter between hyperchaos and synchronization is also found with fixed coupled strength. In addition, abundant dynamical behaviors such as four-wing hyperchaotic, two-wing chaotic, single-wing coexisting attractors and periodic orbits are observed and chaos synchronization error curves are also drawn by varying system parameter c. Numerical simulations are implemented to verify the results of these investigations.     

Analyses of noncommensurate sampling used in high-precision regenerative pseudo-noise ranging systems简

A high-precision pseudo-noise ranging system is often required in satellite-formation missions. But in an actual PN ranging system, digital signal processing limits the ranging accuracy, only level up with meter-scale. Using non-integer chip to sample time ratio, noncommensurate sampling was seen as an effective solution to cope with the drawback of digital effects. However, researchers only paid attention to selecting specific ratios or giving a simulation model to verify the effectiveness of the noncommensurate ratios. A qualitative analysis model is proposed to characterize the relationship between the range accuracy and the noncommensurate sampling parameters. Moreover, a method is also presented which can be used to choose the noncommensurate ratio and the correlation length to get higher phase delay distinguishability and lower range jitter. The simulation results indicate the correctness of our analyses and the optimal ranging accuracy can be up to centimeter-level with the proposed approach.     

Membrane-inspired quantum bee colony optimization and its applications for decision engine

In order to effectively solve combinatorial optimization problems, a membrane-inspired quantum bee colony optimization （MQBCO） is proposed for scientific computing and engineering applications. The proposed MQBCO algorithm applies the membrane computing theory to quantum bee colony optimization （QBCO）, which is an effective discrete optimization algorithm. The global convergence performance of MQBCO is proved by Markov theory, and the validity of MQBCO is verified by testing the classical benchmark functions. Then the proposed MQBCO algorithm is used to solve decision engine problems of cognitive radio system. By hybridizing the QBCO and membrane computing theory, the quantum state and observation state of the quantum bees can be well evolved within the membrane structure. Simulation results for cognitive radio system show that the proposed decision engine method is superior to the traditional intelligent decision engine algorithms in terms of convergence, precision and stability. Simulation experiments under different communication scenarios illustrate that the balance between three objective functions and the adapted parameter configuration is consistent with the weights of three normalized objective functions.     

Human action recognition based on chaotic invariants

A new human action recognition approach was presented based on chaotic invariants and relevance vector machines （RVM）. The trajectories of reference joints estimated by skeleton graph matching were adopted for representing the nonlinear dynamical system of human action. The C-C method was used for estimating delay time and embedding dimension of a phase space which was reconstructed by each trajectory. Then, some chaotic invariants representing action can be captured in the reconstructed phase space. Finally, RVM was used to recognize action. Experiments were performed on the KTH, Weizmann and Ballet human action datasets to test and evaluate the proposed method. The experiment results show that the average recognition accuracy is over 91.2%, which validates its effectiveness.     

Performance assisted enhancement based on change point detection and Kalman filtering

A performance assisted enhancement Kalman filtering algorithm （PAE-KF） for GPS/INS integration navigation in urban areas was presented in this work. The aim of this PAE-KF algorithm was to prevent ＂deep contamination＂ caused by error GPS data. This filtering algorithm effectively combined fault estimation of raw GPS data and nonholonomic constraint of vehicle. In fault estimation, a change point detection algorithm based on abrupt change model was proposed. Statistical tool was then used to infer the future bound of GPS data, which can detect faults in GPS raw data. If any kinds of faults were detected, dead reckoning mechanism begins to compute current position. Nonholonomic constraint condition of vehicle was used to estimate velocity of vehicle and change point detection was added into classic Kalman filtering structure. Experiment on vehicle shows that even when the GPS signals are unavailable for a period of time, this method can also output high accuracy data.     

Modeling and simulation of dynamic performance of horizontal steam-launch system

Based on theory of variable-mass system thermodynamics, the dynamic mathematic models of each component of the horizontal steam-launch system were established, and by the numerical simulation of the system launching process, the thermodynamics and kinetics characteristics of the system with three valves of different flow characteristics were got. The simulation results show that the values of the peak-to-average ratios of dimensionless acceleration with the equal percentage valve, the linear valve and the quick opening valve are 1.355, 1.614 and 1.722, respectively, and the final values of the dimensionless velocities are 0.843, 0.957 and 1.0, respectively. In conclusion, the value of the dimensionless velocity with the equal percentage valve doesn＇t reach the set value of 0.90 when the dimensionless displacement is 0.82, while the system with the linear valve can meet the launching requirement, as well as the fluctuation range of dimensionless acceleration is less than that of the quick opening valve. Therefore, the system with the linear valve has the best performance among the three kinds of valves.     

A practical robust nonlinear controller for maglev levitation system

In order to explore the precise dynamic response of the maglev train and verify the validity of proposed controller, a maglev guideway-electromagnet-air spring-cabin coupled model is developed in the first step. Based on the coupled model, the stresses of the modules are analyzed, and it is pointed out that the inherent nonlinearity, the inner coupling, misalignments between the sensors and actuators, and external disturbances are the main issues that should be considered for the maglev engineering. Furthermore, a feedback linearization controller based on the mathematical model of a maglev module is derived, in which the nonlinearity, coupling and misalignments are taken into account. Then, to attenuate the effect of external disturbances, a disturbance observer is proposed and the dynamics of the estimation error is analyzed using the input-to-state stability theory. It shows that the error is negligible under a low-frequency disturbance. However, at the high-frequency range, the error is unacceptable and the disturbances can not be compensated in time, which lead to over designed fluctuations of levitation gap, even a clash between the upper surface of electromagnet and lower surface of guideway. To solve this problem, a novel nonlinear acceleration feedback is put forward to enhancing the attenuation ability of fast varying disturbances. Finally, numerical comparisons show that the proposed controller outperforms the traditional feedback linearization controller and maintains good robustness under disturbances.     

Fuzzy robust path tracking strategy of an active pelagic trawl system with coordinated ship and winch regulation简

A fuzzy robust path tracking strategy of an active pelagic trawl system with ship and winch regulation is proposed. First, nonlinear mathematic model of the pelagic trawl system was derived using Lagrange equation and further simplified as a low order model for the convenience of controller design. Then, an active path tracking strategy of pelagic trawl system was investigated to improve the catching efficiency of the target fish near the sea bottom. By means of the active tracking control, the pelagic trawl net can be positioned dynamically to follow a specified trajectory via the coordinated winch and ship regulation. In addition, considering the system nonlinearities, modeling uncertainties and the unknown exogenous disturbance of the trawl system model, a nonlinear robust H2/H~ controller based on Takagi-Sugeno （T-S） fuzzy model was presented, and the simulation comparison with linear robust H2/H∞ controller and PID method was conducted for the validation of the nonlinear fuzzy robust controller. The nonlinear simulation results show that the average tracking error is 0.4 m for the fuzzy robust H2/H∞ control and 125.8 m for the vertical and horizontal displacement, respectively, which is much smaller than linear H2/H∞ controller and the PID controller. The investigation results illustrate that the fuzzy robust controller is effective for the active path tracking control of the pelagic trawl system.     

Matched glass-to-Kovar seals in N2 and Ar atmospheres

The oxidation of Kovar alloy was investigated, the wetting and spreading behavior of hard and soft glasses on Kovar alloy were studed by using the sessile drop method, and the quality and the seal strength of glass-Kovar seals were tested. The experimental results indicated that the preoxidation of Kovar alloy for approximately 10 min at 700℃ in air resulted in excellent adherence in glass-Kovar seals. The wetting and spreading behavior of glass on preoxidized Kovar alloy were superior to that on nonoxidized Kovar alloy. The wetting ability of ASF110 glass, at 950℃ and 980℃ in Ar and N2 atmospheres, was significantly superior to that of ASF200R and ASF700 glasses. The seal quality of the glass-preoxidized Kovar seal was superior to that of the glass-nonoxidized Kovar seal. The shear strength of the ASFll0 glass-preoxidized Kovar seal, which was prepared at 980℃ for 20 min in an Ar atmosphere, was approximately 3.9 MPa.