Reliability and scale effect in toughness of concrete structures

In the present work, the distribution of the random toughness characteristics (i.e. critical energy release rate, G_1c) has been evaluated on the basis of experimental observations. Fracture test results from three groups of geometrically similar concrete specimens of size (width×total depth×thickness), 420×420×50–1680×1680×200 mm³, made with different maximum aggregate size of 9.5, 19, 38, and 76 mm were analyzed using a recently proposed distribution of extremes. In applications of probability, it is important to use an appropriate distribution type and adequate techniques for estimating the parameters of distribution. In this study, a new type distribution of minima is employed for probability computations. It was noticed that the entropy of distribution increases with the crack length, i.e. the uncertainty of toughness, G_1c, value increases with crack length. A non-linear reduction of the maximum allowable splitting force with the defect size, a, was noticed. For large specimens, the maximum allowable splitting load is more sensitive to the required reliability level than that for small specimens. Reliability increases with aggregate size when all other conditions were constant.     

Efficient mixed Timoshenko–Mindlin shell elements

The precise representation of rigid body motions in the displacement patterns of curved Timoshenko–Mindlin (TM) shell elements is considered. This consideration requires the development of the strain–displacement relationships of the TM shell theory with regard to their consistency with the rigid body motions. For this purpose a refined TM theory of multilayered anisotropic shells is elaborated. The effects of transverse shear deformation and bending‐extension coupling are included. The fundamental unknowns consist of five displacements and eight strains of the face surfaces of the shell, and eight stress resultants. On the basis of this theory the simple and efficient mixed models are developed. The elemental arrays are derived using the Hu–Washizu mixed variational principle. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the high accuracy and effectiveness of the developed 4‐node shell elements and to compare their performance with other finite elements reported in the literature. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An innovative semianalytical technique for ceramic evaluation at microwave frequencies

We have developed an innovative semianalytical technique for various substrate material characterization. The developed technique is a measurement procedure and data-reduction formulation that takes into consideration the radiation loss in a resonant structure, allowing for a more effective means of dielectric- and conductor-loss determination for a microstrip ring resonator and its substrate material. We separate dielectric and conductor loss precisely, evaluate the contribution of each term in the overall loss performance, and analytically predict the error in their respective predicted value.     

LDPC-based space-time coded OFDM systems over correlated fadingchannels: Performance analysis and receiver design

We consider a space-time coded (STC) orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) system with multiple transmitter and receiver antennas over correlated frequency- and time-selective fading channels. It is shown that the product of the time-selectivity order and the frequency-selectivity order is a key parameter to characterize the outage capacity of the correlated fading channel. It is also observed that STCs with large effective lengths and ideal built-in interleavers are more effective in exploiting the natural diversity in multiple-antenna correlated fading channels. We then propose a low-density parity-check (LDPC)-code-based STC-OFDM system. Compared with the conventional space-time trellis code (STTC), the LDPC-based STC can significantly improve the system performance by exploiting both the spatial diversity and the selective-fading diversity in wireless channels. Compared with the previously proposed turbo-code-based STC scheme, LDPC-based STC exhibits lower receiver complexity and more flexible scalability. We also consider receiver design for LDPC-based STC-OFDM systems in unknown fast fading channels and propose a novel turbo receiver employing a maximum a posteriori expectation-maximization (MAP-EM) demodulator and a soft LDPC decoder, which can significantly reduce the error floor in fast fading channels with a modest computational complexity. With such a turbo receiver, the proposed LDPC-based STC-OFDM system is a promising solution to highly efficient data transmission over selective-fading mobile wireless channels     

Constant thrust programming for a multistage rocket flown in vacuum with a given initial/final thrust-to-weight ratio in an arbitrary stage

The burn time and burnout velocity of a multistage rocket flown vertically in vacuum with constant thrust tangential to the flight path and a prescribed initial/final thrust-to-weight ratio in an arbitrary stage have been determined. The present paper also deals with optimal staging under given conditions of flight.     

High-Frequency Variations in the Rotation of the Earth

We report here observational results demonstrating that a three-station network of properly distributed VLBI observatories can routinely determine UT1 with a formal standard error of ±0.05 ms of time, in an observing period of 24 h. We also report the results of a three-month series of daily observing sessions of only 1-h duration with a single interferometer, which produced estimates of UT1 with standard errors of ±0.1 ms. The UT1 values obtained from the 1-h observing sessions track smoothly between the points of the 24-h time series, and the combined time series shows that it is not unusual for UT1 to vary by 1-2 ms in periods of several days. Preliminary results of reprocessing the 24-h observing sessions in 2-h segments suggest that variations of 0.4 ms may occur on time scales of only 6-8 h.