Simulation–optimization mechanism for expansion strategy using real option theory

A right expansion strategy can bring a company more market shares and profits, and hence increase shareholders’ equities. However, limited financial resources and various uncertainties require business practitioners to achieve their goals while controlling the risks incurred at an acceptable level. Therefore, justification of expansion investments is an important and complex topic in industry. The traditional investment analysis tools such as net present value (NPV) often tend to undervalue investment decisions. We formulate the expansion investments using real options, and develop a financial model to assess the option value. Monte Carlo simulation is considered a good way to estimate the value of the option. This valuation gives decision makers a way to choose the appropriate expansion strategy based on an integrated view of the market dynamics, but optimization is still a difficult problem to resolve. This paper presents a model of optimization under uncertainty combining system simulation with GA-based optimization to resolve the expansion problem. An industry case is used to demonstrate the application of real options to value expansion investment by using simulation–optimization. This approach also provides some new insights for the real options theory.     

汽车电动助力转向器的控制器研制

研究了日本N4样机的电动助力转向系统的电机电流-输入扭矩特性.采用ATmega16L单片机为处理器,以直流有刷电机为执行器,应用PID补偿算法,设计了电动助力转向控制器.在试验台上进行了电机电流-输入扭矩特性试验,试验结果表明,该控制器的助力曲线接近日本N4样机,能取得比较满意的助力效果.     

Optimal replacement policy for a two-dissimilar-component cold standby system with different repair actions

In this paper, a cold standby repairable system consisting of two dissimilar components and one repairman is studied. When failures occur, the repair of both component 1 and component 2 are not ‘as good as new’. The consecutive operating times of component 1 after repair constitute a decreasing geometric process, while the repair times of component 1 are independent and identically distributed. For component 2, its failure is rectified by minimal repair, and the repair time is negligible. Component 1 has priority in use when both components are good. The replacement policy N is based on the failure number of component 1. Under policy N, we derive the explicit expression of the long-run average cost rate C(N) as well as the average number of repairs of component 2 before the system replaced. The optimal replacement policy N*, which minimises the long-run average cost rate C(N), is obtained theoretically. If the failure rate r(t) of component 2 is increasing, the existence and uniqueness of the optimal policy N* is also proved. Finally, a numerical example is given to validate the developed theoretical model. Some sensitivity analyses are provided to show the influence of some parameters, such as the costs for replacement and repair, and the parameters of the lifetime and repair time distributions of both components, to the optimal replacement policy N* and corresponding average cost rate C(N*).     

Dual graph regularized NMF model for social event detection from Flickr data

In this work, we aim to discover real-world events from Flickr data by devising a three-stage event detection framework. In the first stage, a multimodal fusion (MF) model is designed to deal with the heterogeneous feature modalities possessed by the user-shared data, which is advantageous in computation complexity. In the second stage, a dual graph regularized non-negative matrix factorization (DGNMF) model is proposed to learn compact feature representations. DGNMF incorporates Laplacian regularization terms for the data graph and base graph into the objective, keeping the geometry structures underlying the data samples and dictionary bases simultaneously. In the third stage, hybrid clustering algorithms are applied seamlessly to discover event clusters. Extensive experiments conducted on the real-world dataset reveal the MF-DGNMF-based approaches outperform the baselines.     

Integrated design technique for materials and structures of vehicle body under crash safety considerations

With the rapid development of the vehicle industry, crashworthiness has become a crucial aspect in vehicle body design. In fact, crashworthiness is a multivariable optimization design problem for a vehicle body, regardless of structure or material. However, when crashworthiness involves a large number of design variables, including both material and structure variables, it is more difficult to deal with. In this paper, an integrated design technique for materials and structures of vehicle body under crash safety consideration is suggested. First, a finite element model of the vehicle body is established according to relevant vehicle safety standards. Then, the material parameters of the vehicle body are set as analytical factors for factor screening. Next, significant factors are obtained using a three-level saturated design integrated with multi-index comprehensive balance analysis and the MaxUr ⁽³⁾ method, with an improved evaluation method. These screened material parameters along with the corresponding continuous variables of the structure, are considered as the design variables of the integrated design of the vehicle body. Both the weight and the crashworthiness properties are set as the design objectives. Optimal Latin hypercube sampling and radius basis functions are utilized to construct highly accurate surrogate models. Furthermore, the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II is implemented to seek the optimal solutions. Finally, two cases considering the roof module and the frontal module of a vehicle body are analyzed to verify the proposed method.     

Multi-objective and multi-case reliability-based design optimization for tailor rolled blank (TRB) structures

Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization - Light weight and crashworthiness signify two main challenges facing in vehicle industry, which often conflict with each other. In order to achieve...     

Optimization for limited angle tomography in medical image processing

This paper aims to reduce the problems of incomplete data in computed tomography, which happens frequently in medical image process and analysis, e.g., when the high-density region of objects can only be penetrated by X-rays at a limited angular range. As the projection data are available only in an angular range, the incomplete data problem can be attributed to the limited angle problem, which is an ill-posed inverse problem. Image reconstruction based on total variation (TV) reduces the problem and gives better performance on edge-preserving reconstruction; however, the artificial parameter can only be determined through considerable experimentation. In this paper, an effective TV objective function is proposed to reduce the inverse problem in the limited angle tomography. This novel objective function provides a robust and effective reconstruction without any artificial parameter in the iterative processes, using the TV as a multiplicative constraint. The results demonstrate that this reconstruction strategy outperforms some previous ones.     

设计管理系统信息需求的分析与实现

对信息需求的准确分析是建立设计管理系统的基础。传统的分析方法从过程与人,过程与信息的角度出发综合分析整个机构的信息需求,但是,这种方法没有示识产生和使用信息的范围。为此,;补充分析了信息的机构和项目属性,并通过建立三维组织机构模型;机械、人员和任务模型,有效控制基本的信息存取。