Decentralized damage detection of seismically-excited buildings using multiple banks of Kalman estimators

Natural hazards result in ill-conditioned structures with unfavorable damage. To early recognize damage existence, structures can be screened by damage detection methods after a critical hazard event. These damage detection methods are often developed based on a centralized acquiring and computing system that challenges the feasibility of deployment in a large-scale structure. Decentralized damage detection methods alter a single system to multiple subsystems that allow spatially distributing in a structure and yield comparable performance with the centralized approach. In this study, a decentralized damage detection method based on modal prediction errors via multiple banks of Kalman estimators is proposed. First, a sensor network is comprised of multiple subsystems over a structure of which the subsystems have overlapped sensing nodes. These subsystems are individually identified by an input–output frequency-domain system identification method under ambient vibrations. The identified models are then converted into several banks of Kalman estimators, and the estimators generate the estimation of structural modal responses. The prediction errors are calculated from the differentiation between measured and estimated modal responses, and the accumulated standard deviations of modal prediction errors serve as the damage indices for recognizing the damage occurrence, locations, and levels. A numerical example is introduced to demonstrate the proposed method as well as to evaluate the detection effectiveness. Moreover, the proposed method is also experimentally verified by a scaled twin-tower building using shake table testing. The experimental results indicate that the proposed method is quite effective to inform damage of structures in terms of damage occurrence, locations, and levels.     

Networked control systems for multi-input plants based on polar logarithmic quantization

This paper investigates the use of polar logarithmic quantization (PLQ) for multi-input systems, and the corresponding design issues for the underlying networked control system (NCS). It is shown that the PLQ induces sector bounded nonlinear uncertainties in multiplicative and relative forms for vector-valued analog signals, similar to those in the scalar case. For the two-input NCS, optimal quantization is obtained through minimization of the quantization error that is quantified explicitly. The results are extended to more than two-input NCSs with an upper bound derived for the quantization error. Feedback stabilization and control of the NCS are also investigated under the PLQ at the plant input under state feedback. The coarsest quantization density (CQD) is studied and obtained. Results in this paper are illustrated by a numerical example.     

Online multi-step prediction for wind speeds and solar irradiation: Evaluation of prediction errors

We propose a general method for predicting multiple steps ahead of our target system and estimating simultaneously the prediction errors in a real time. The requirement of the proposed method is that we have a time series of the target system. We demonstrate the method by artificial data, real wind speed data, and real solar irradiation data.     

Accuracy improvement of a 3D passive laser tracker for the calibration of industrial robots

The laser tracker has been used as the mainstream instrument for the position accuracy calibration of industrial robots for quite a long time. However, due to the complexity of the built-in dual-axis active servo tracking system, its cost is high and the target reflector has to adjust its pose frequently, so it cannot be popularized in the production and application sites of industrial robots. Based on this drawback, a 3D passive laser tracker (3DPLT) with high precision, simple structure, easy operation and low cost is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the overall structure of the system is designed, and its position error model based on the principle of spherical coordinate measurement and vector transfer method is established. Then, the error parameters are identified by experiments to formulate the error compensation model. Finally, the multi-pose and large-range spatial error compensation verification experiments of the system are carried out on a commercial coordinate measuring machine. The results show that the spatial volumetric errors of the 3DPLT can achieve within 40 μm after compensation with a good repeatability of ±4 μm. A comparison contouring test with a commercial ballbar is also carried out to validate its applicability of robot calibration.     

On monitoring the process mean of autocorrelated observations with measurement errors using the w-of-w runs-rules scheme

Runs-rules have been widely used since the 1950s in industrial and nonindustrial process monitoring applications to improve the performance of basic and other traditional monitoring schemes. However, none of the studies on runs-rules have accounted for a process with a combined effect of measurement errors and autocorrelation. Hence, in this paper, the use of the w-of-w runs-rules to improve the performance of the Shewhart $\overline{X}$ scheme using an additive model with a constant variance and a first-order autoregressive model is proposed. To reduce the combined negative effect of measurement errors and autocorrelation, we implement a sampling strategy based on rational subgroups in which (a) multiple measurements per item are taken (instead of a standard single measurement) and (b) non-neighboring observations are gathered. Moreover, the latter sampling strategy is incorporated into the values of probability elements of a Markov chain matrix which is used to derive some closed-form expressions for the zero- and steady-state run-length distribution. The main finding of this study is that, with respect to some overall performance measures, the proposed scheme outperforms the existing Shewhart $\overline{X}$ scheme by a significant margin. A real-life example is used to illustrate the practical implementation of the proposed scheme.     

FPGA-based architecture to estimate the input glucose in a dark fermenter using a super-twisting observer

This article presents a digital architecture design for a Super-Twisting Observer (STO) implemented in a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The STO is robust in the presence of uncertainties, which makes it suitable to estimate unknown inputs present in biological systems and applications based on sensorless control accurately. The proposed STO is used to estimate the glucose concentration in the inflow of a hydrogen production bioreactor (e.g., dark fermenter). The dark fermenter is not generally recognized as a swift process. Therefore, the observer digital architecture design criteria aim to optimize hardware resources and reduce power consumption through an iterative approach to perform internal arithmetic operations efficiently. Besides, an analysis of the errors produced by internal operations, observer discretization, and fixed-point data representation is presented and discussed. Numerical results showed that embedding the super-twisting observer into the FPGA is a reliable, low-power consumption, and efficient alternative to estimate the input glucose in a dark fermenter.     

Reactions,accuracy and response complexity of numerical typing on touch screens

Touch screens are popular nowadays as seen on public kiosks, industrial control panels and personal mobile devices. Numerical typing is one frequent task performed on touch screens, but this task on touch screen is subject to human errors and slow responses. This study aims to find innate differences of touch screens from standard physical keypads in the context of numerical typing by eliminating confounding issues. Effects of precise visual feedback and urgency of numerical typing were also investigated. The results showed that touch screens were as accurate as physical keyboards, but reactions were indeed executed slowly on touch screens as signified by both pre-motor reaction time and reaction time. Provision of precise visual feedback caused more errors, and the interaction between devices and urgency was not found on reaction time. To improve usability of touch screens, designers should focus more on reducing response complexity and be cautious about the use of visual feedback.

Practitioner Summary: The study revealed that slower responses on touch screens involved more complex human cognition to formulate motor responses. Attention should be given to designing precise visual feedback appropriately so that distractions or visual resource competitions can be avoided to improve human performance on touch screens.     

浮筒液位计误差分析及处理

本文简单介绍了浮筒液位计的分类、测量原理及安装规范,对其各种测量误差的来源作出了详细的分析,并针对各种测量误差的特性,指出了它们的作用方式、影响范围及程度,在此基础上提出相应的抑制及消除方法。     

Testing for serial independence of panel errors

A test for the serial independence of errors in panel data models is proposed. The test is based on the difference between the joint empirical characteristic function of residuals at different lags and the product of their marginal empirical characteristic functions. The test is nuisance-parameter-free and powerful against any type of pairwise dependence at all lags. A simple random permutation procedure is used to approximate the limit distribution of the test. A Monte Carlo experiment illustrates the finite sample performance of the test, and supports that the test statistic based on the estimated residuals has the same asymptotic distribution as the corresponding statistic based on the unobservable true errors.     

涂料中可溶性Pb、Cr含量测定结果误差原因分析

研究并详细讨论了涂料样品制备与样品前处理过程中,各个因素对可溶性Pb、Cr含量测定结果的影响。结果表明:漆膜的厚度、粒径、提取液的酸度、温度等因素对结果的测定有较大的影响,应当对这些因素予以控制以提高实验室间结果一致性。