Technical foundations of TANDEM-STRAIGHT,a speech analysis,modification and synthesis framework

This article presents comprehensive technical information about STRAIGHT and TANDEM-STRAIGHT, a widely used speech modification tool and its successor. They share the same concept: the periodic excitation found in voiced sounds is an efficient mechanism for transmitting underlying smooth time–frequency representation. The tools are also based on the perceptual equivalence of two sets of independent Gaussian random signals. This equivalence makes it possible to discard input phase information intentionally and enables flexible manipulation of parameters.     

MANAGEMENT OF GROUND TEMPERATURE BY BANG-BANG CONTROL BASED ON FINITE ELEMENT APPLICATION

The calculation and physical experiment related to control of the ground temperature by bang-bang control theory are discussed in this paper. Comparing the computed results with the results obtained by the experiments and measurements, it is shown that the bang-bang control theory is adaptable for practical use. The basic equation of the ground temperature is discretized by the finite element method in space and the Crank–Nicolson method in time. To obtain the optimal control temperature, the performance function is minimized by the Sakawa–Shindo method.     

COMPARISON OF SENSITIVITY EQUATION AND ADJOINT EQUATION METHODS FOR PARAMETER IDENTIFICATION PROBLEMS

This paper deals with the inverse analysis of a thermal conduction problem, in which the thermal conductivity is identified as an unknown parameter, which is determined so as to minimize the cost function represented by the square of the difference between the computed and observed temperatures at pre-assigned observation points. To minimize the cost function, both sensitivity equation and adjoint equation methods can be adopted. The sensitivity equation can be introduced by differentiating the governing equation directly. The sensitivity coefficient is obtained by the sensitivity equation. The adjoint equation is introduced via a variational approach using a Lagrange multiplier. The Lagrange multiplier is solution to an adjoint equation. Both sensitivity coefficient and Lagrange multiplier are used to calculate the gradient of the cost function. The purpose of this paper is to compare the sensitivity equation and adjoint equation methods from the convergence and computational efficiency points of view. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

PREDICTIVE BANG-BANG CONTROL FOR MANAGEMENT OF GROUND TEMPERATURE BASED ON FINITE ELEMENT METHOD

Recently, applications of the control of ground temperature have been widely used for the maintenance of lawns and underground storage tanks, road surface temperature control, etc. This paper presents a predictive bang-bang control to perform a real-time and practical control method. A time series of the future exterior boundary condition, used for the predictive control, is predicted by the Kalman filter technique. The basic equation of the ground temperature is discretized by the finite element method in space and the Crank–Nicolson method in time. To obtain the predictive control temperature, the performance function is minimized at every time step by the Sakawa–Shindo method. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effect of Electric Field Imposition on Metal Anodizing Behavior

Anodic oxidation processes for metal surface have been utilized many materials,for example,porous alumina,nano-silicon crystal,and so on.In these materials,anodizing surface treatment for titanium or zirconium is useful for biocompatible material,like artificial bones and joints.In anodizing behavior,successive dielectric breakdown makes the surface microscopic bumpy morphology,which is important for the biocompatibility.Electric field can promote the oxidation behavior at the anodizing surface.As the result of the anodizing experiments using titanium or zirconium plate(10mm×10mm),it is found that the anodized film becomes thicker and the microscopic honeycomb structure becomes finer and uniform by the imposition of electric field up to 200 kV/m.     

A PROPOSAL FOR TREATMENT OF TURBULENT MIXING IN A TWO-PHASE SUBCHANNEL FLOW

We propose a practical method for the treatment of turbulent mixing rate in a two-phase subchannel flow in a hydrodynamic non-equilibrium state. Based on the assumption that the fundamental modes of the inter-subchannel fluid transfer in such a state are turbulent mixing, void drift, and diversion cross flow, the turbulent mixing rate is considered to be equal to that in the hydrodynamic equilibrium state that the flow will attain. The applicability of the method is examined by experiments concerning the axial variation in tracer concentration in a non-equilibrium flow without diversion cross flow. A good agreement is seen between the calculations and the measurements.