Localized swelling of Fe-Cr-Ni alloy rollers in high-temperature applications

Localized swelling has been observed in 24Cr-24Ni-Nb steel transportation rollers used in the normalizing furnace of a plate mill after prolonged service at high temperature. Due to high localized thermal and mechanical stresses, the chromia layer formed on the roller surface ruptures, exposing the roller substrate to furnace oxygen. Oxidation of second-phase carbides results in the formation of carbon monoxide at very high partial pressure. This leads to formation of voids, leading in turn to localized swelling of the roller material.     

Updating a 1950s-generation aluminum smelter

Hindalco’s aluminum electrolysis cells were initially installed in 1962, and the technology was based on 1950s-generation pots. Although Hindalco expanded its aluminums melting capacity from 20,000 tonnes per year to 175,000 tonnes per year, the basic design of the pots remained unchanged. In view of energy price increases, and to keep pace with the latest developments in aluminum smelting technology, Hindalco undertook efforts to modernize its facilities. In spite of numerous constraints, the Hindalco smelter has been able to achieve performance nearly equivalent to that of 1980s-generation pots by retrofitting new technologies. This has resulted in considerable savings in electrical energy consumption and raw materials usage.     

Locally linear discriminant embedding: An efficient method for face recognition

In this paper an efficient feature extraction method named as locally linear discriminant embedding (LLDE) is proposed for face recognition. It is well known that a point can be linearly reconstructed by its neighbors and the reconstruction weights are under the sum-to-one constraint in the classical locally linear embedding (LLE). So the constrained weights obey an important symmetry: for any particular data point, they are invariant to rotations, rescalings and translations. The latter two are introduced to the proposed method to strengthen the classification ability of the original LLE. The data with different class labels are translated by the corresponding vectors and those belonging to the same class are translated by the same vector. In order to cluster the data with the same label closer, they are also rescaled to some extent. So after translation and rescaling, the discriminability of the data will be improved significantly. The proposed method is compared with some related feature extraction methods such as maximum margin criterion (MMC), as well as other supervised manifold learning-based approaches, for example ensemble unified LLE and linear discriminant analysis (En-ULLELDA), locally linear discriminant analysis (LLDA). Experimental results on Yale and CMU PIE face databases convince us that the proposed method provides a better representation of the class information and obtains much higher recognition accuracies.     

Web proxy cache replacement scheme based on back-propagation neural network

Web proxy caches are used to reduce the strain of contemporary web traffic on web servers and network bandwidth providers. In this research, a novel approach to web proxy cache replacement which utilizes neural networks for replacement decisions is developed and analyzed. Neural networks are trained to classify cacheable objects from real world data sets using information known to be important in web proxy caching, such as frequency and recency. Correct classification ratios between 0.85 and 0.88 are obtained both for data used for training and data not used for training. Our approach is compared with Least Recently Used (LRU), Least Frequently Used (LFU) and the optimal case which always rates an object with the number of future requests. Performance is evaluated in simulation for various neural network structures and cache conditions. The final neural networks achieve hit rates that are 86.60% of the optimal in the worst case and 100% of the optimal in the best case. Byte-hit rates are 93.36% of the optimal in the worst case and 99.92% of the optimal in the best case. We examine the input-to-output mappings of individual neural networks and analyze the resulting caching strategy with respect to specific cache conditions.     

Controller design for flexible structure vibration suppression with robustness to contacts

Model-based feedback control of vibration in flexible structures can be complicated by the possibility that interaction with an external body occurs. If not accounted for, instability or poor performance may result. In this paper, a method is proposed for achieving robust vibration control of flexible structures under contact. The method uses robust linear state feedback, coupled with a state estimation scheme utilizing contact force measurement. Uncertain contact characteristics are modelled by a sector-bounded non-linear function, such that state feedback gains can be synthesized using a matrix inequality formulation of the Popov stability criterion. A separation theorem is used to establish a robust H₂ cost bound for the closed loop system. Experimental results from a multi-mode flexible structure testbed confirm that vibration attenuation and stability can be maintained over a broad range of contact characteristics, in terms of compliance and clearance.     

Optimal experimental design and some related control problems

This paper traces the strong relations between experimental design and control, such as the use of optimal inputs to obtain precise parameter estimation in dynamical systems and the introduction of suitably designed perturbations in adaptive control. The mathematical background of optimal experimental design is briefly presented, and the role of experimental design in the asymptotic properties of estimators is emphasized. Although most of the paper concerns parametric models, some results are also presented for statistical learning and prediction with nonparametric models.     

Supervisory control of modular systems with global specification languages

The paper presents sufficient conditions for modular (supervisory) control synthesis to equal global control synthesis. In modular control synthesis a supervisory control is synthesized for each module separately and the supervisory control consists of the parallel composition of the modular supervisory controls. The general case of the specification that is indecomposable and not necessarily contained in the plant language, which is often the case in practice, is considered. The usual assumption that all shared events are controllable is relaxed by introducing two new structural conditions relying on the global mutual controllability condition. The novel concept used as a sufficient structural condition is strong global mutual controllability. The main result uses a weaker condition called global mutual controllability together with local consistency of the specification. An example illustrates the approach.     

Control of frictional dynamics of a one-dimensional particle array

Control of frictional forces is required in many applications of tribology. While the problem is approached by chemical means traditionally, a recent approach was proposed to control the system mechanically to tune frictional responses. We design feedback control laws for a one-dimensional particle array sliding on a surface subject to friction. The Frenkel-Kontorova model describing the dynamics is a nonlinear interconnected system and the accessible control elements are average quantities only. We prove local stability of equilibrium points of the un-controlled system in the presence of linear and nonlinear particle interactions, respectively. We then formulate a tracking control problem, whose control objective is for the average system to reach a designated targeted velocity using accessible elements. Sufficient stabilization conditions are explicitly derived for the closed-loop error systems using the Lyapunov theory based methods. Simulation results show satisfactory performances. The results can be applied to other physical systems whose dynamics is described by the Frenkel-Kontorova model.     

Adaptive robust posture control of a parallel manipulator driven by pneumatic muscles

Rather severe parametric uncertainties and uncertain nonlinearities exist in the dynamic modeling of a parallel manipulator driven by pneumatic muscles. Those uncertainties not only come from the time-varying friction forces and the static force modeling errors of pneumatic muscles but also from the inherent complex nonlinearities and unknown disturbances of the parallel manipulator. In this paper, a discontinuous projection-based adaptive robust control strategy is adopted to compensate for both the parametric uncertainties and uncertain nonlinearities of a three-pneumatic-muscles-driven parallel manipulator to achieve precise posture trajectory tracking control. The resulting controller effectively handles the effects of various parameter variations and the hard-to-model nonlinearities such as the friction forces of the pneumatic muscles. Simulation and experimental results are obtained to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed adaptive robust controller.     

A Comparative Investigation of Optical and Structural Properties of Cu-Doped CdO-Derived Nanostructures

In this report, we studied various structural and optical properties of pure and copper-doped cadmium oxide (CdO) thin films. Nanostructured Cu-doped CdO films were deposited using sol–gel spin-coating technique. The structural and morphological changes have been observed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), and atomic force microscopy (AFM) studies. The optical and electrical properties of the pure and Cu-doped CdO thin films were studied by UV–vis spectroscopy and four-point probe method, respectively. The XRD peaks show the formation of nanocrystalline CdO with cubic face-centered crystal structure. The band gaps of the as deposited films were found in the range of 2.32–2.73 eV, while after doping, it decreases due to structural deformation. The electrical resitivity was found to decrease approximately ～10 in Cu-doped CdO thin films.