Composite bending-dominated hollow nanolattices: A stiff,cyclable mechanical metamaterial

Manufacturing ultralight and mechanical reliable materials has been a long-time challenge. Ceramic-based mechanical metamaterials provide significant opportunities to reverse their brittle nature and unstable mechanical properties and have great potential as strong, ultralight, and ultrastiff materials. However, the failure of ceramics nanolattice and degradation of strength/modulus with decreasing density are caused by buckling of the struts and failure of the nodes within the nanolattices, especially during cyclic loading. Here, we explore a new class of 3D ceramic-based metamaterials with a high strength–density ratio, stiffness, recoverability, cyclability, and optimal scaling factor. Deformation mode of the fabricated nanolattices has been engineered through the unique material design and architecture tailoring. Bending-dominated hollow nanolattice (B-H-Lattice) structure is employed to take advantages of its flexibility, while a few nanometers of carbonized mussel-inspired bio-polymer (C-PDA) is coherently deposited on ceramics’ nanolayer to enable non-buckling struts and bendable nodes during deformation, resulting in reliable mechanical properties and outperforming the current bending-dominated lattices (B-Lattices) and carbon-based cellulose materials. Meanwhile, the structure has comparable stiffness to stretching-dominated lattices (S-Lattices) while with better cyclability and reliability. The B-H-Lattices exhibit high specific stiffness (>10⁶?Pa·kg^?1·m^?3), low-density (～30?kg/m³), buckling-free recovery at 55% strain, and stable cyclic loading behavior under up to 15% strain. As one of the B-Lattices, the modulus scaling factor reaches 1.27, which is lowest among current B-Lattices. This study suggests that non-buckling behavior and reliable nodes are the key factors that contribute to the outstanding mechanical performance of nanolattice materials. A new concept of engineering the internal deformation behavior of mechanical metamaterial is provided to optimize their mechanical properties in real service conditions.     

Probabilistic calibration of discrete element simulations using the sequential quasi-Monte Carlo filter

The calibration of discrete element method (DEM) simulations is typically accomplished in a trial-and-error manner. It generally lacks objectivity and is filled with uncertainties. To deal with these issues, the sequential quasi-Monte Carlo (SQMC) filter is employed as a novel approach to calibrating the DEM models of granular materials. Within the sequential Bayesian framework, the posterior probability density functions (PDFs) of micromechanical parameters, conditioned to the experimentally obtained stress–strain behavior of granular soils, are approximated by independent model trajectories. In this work, two different contact laws are employed in DEM simulations and a granular soil specimen is modeled as polydisperse packing using various numbers of spherical grains. Knowing the evolution of physical states of the material, the proposed probabilistic calibration method can recursively update the posterior PDFs in a five-dimensional parameter space based on the Bayes’ rule. Both the identified parameters and posterior PDFs are analyzed to understand the effect of grain configuration and loading conditions. Numerical predictions using parameter sets with the highest posterior probabilities agree well with the experimental results. The advantage of the SQMC filter lies in the estimation of posterior PDFs, from which the robustness of the selected contact laws, the uncertainties of the micromechanical parameters and their interactions are all analyzed. The micro–macro correlations, which are byproducts of the probabilistic calibration, are extracted to provide insights into the multiscale mechanics of dense granular materials.     

A facile synthesis of supported amorphous iron oxide with high performance for Cr(Ⅵ) removal from aqueous solution under visible light irradiation

A series of supported iron oxide nanoparticles were prepared by impregnation with Fe(NO_3)_3 supported on TiO_2,followed by low-temperature calcination. Scanning electron microscopy(SEM), X-ray diffraction(XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy(XPS), UV–vis diffuse reflectance spectra and BET have been used to characterize the samples. These iron oxide-impregnated TiO_2 were examined for photocatalytic reduction of Cr(Ⅵ). The experiments demonstrated that Cr(Ⅵ) in aqueous solution was more efficiently reduced using Fe_2O_3/TiO_2 heterogeneous photocatalysts than either pure Fe_2O_3 or TiO_2 under visible light irradiation. All TiO_2 supported samples were somewhat active for visible light photoreduction. With an optimal mole ratio of 0.05-Fe/Ti, the highest rate of Cr(Ⅵ) reduction was achieved under the experimental conditions. We also compared the photoreactivity of TiO_2 supported iron oxide samples with that supported on Al_2O_3 and ZrO_2. It can be noted that iron oxide nanoparticles deposited on high surface area supports to increase the solid-liquid contact area renders it considerably more active. Noticeably,iron oxide cluster size and dispersion are important parameters in synthesizing active, supported Iron oxide nanoparticles. In addition, the interaction between iron oxide and TiO_2 was proposed as the source of photoactivity for Cr(Ⅵ) reduction.     

Entrapping multifunctional dendritic nanoparticles into a hydrogel for local therapeutic delivery and synergetic immunochemotherapy

Nano Research - Developing multifunctional nanoparticles to support new therapy models is a promising and challenging task to address the current dilemma on antitumor treatment. Herein, we...     

Scheduling a single batch-processing machine with non-identical job sizes in fuzzy environment using an improved ant colony optimization

In this paper, we introduce the fuzzy model of the makespan on a single batch-processing machine with non-identical job sizes. The uncertainty of the jobs and the machine in the processing is denoted using fuzzy logic. Then an improved ant colony optimization (ACO) method is proposed and the Metropolis criterion is used to select the paths of ants to overcome the immature convergence of the algorithm. In the experiment, we adopt the random instances and the results of the fuzzy makespan demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms GA and SA in all instances.     

Stabilization of all-pole unstable delay processes by simple controllers

The stabilization of a class of all-pole unstable delay processes of arbitrary order with single unstable pole by means of simple controllers is investigated in details. Complete stabilizability conditions are established and the computational methods for determining stabilizing controller parameters presented. They provide theoretical understanding of such a stabilization problem and can also serve as practical guidelines for actual controller design.     

Globally Exponential Stability for Delayed Neural Networks Under Impulsive Control

In this paper, the dynamic behaviors of a class of neural networks with time-varying delays are investigated. Some less weak sufficient conditions based on p-norm and ∞-norm are obtained to guarantee the existence, uniqueness of the equilibrium point for the addressed neural networks without impulsive control by applying homeomorphism theory. And then, by utilizing inequality technique, Lyapunov functional method and the analysis method, some new and useful criteria of the globally exponential stability with respect to the equilibrium point under impulsive control we assumed are derived based on p-norm and ∞-norm, respectively. Finally, an example with simulation is given to show the effectiveness of the obtained results.     

Multi-agent and driving behavior based rear-end collision alarm modeling and simulating

Distance-between-vehicle-measurement is the only factor in traditional car rear-end alarm system. To address the above problem, this paper proposes an alarming model based on multi-agent systems (MAS) and driving behavior. It consists of four different types of agents that can either work alone or collaborate through a communications protocol on the basis of the extended KQML. The rear-end alarming algorithm applies the Bayes decision theory to calculate the probability of collision and prevent its occurrence real-time. The learning algorithm of driving behavior based on ensemble artificial neural network (ANN) and the decision procedure based on Bayes’ theory are also described in this paper. Both autonomy and reliability are enhanced in the proposed system. The effectiveness and robustness of the model have been confirmed by the simulated experiments.