Construction of a control system for disturbance rejection using a dual observer

A well‐known control system which can reduce the adverse effects of disturbances is a disturbance observer. However, in many cases of mechanical systems, system disturbances which do not satisfy the matching condition may be imposed. Therefore, it may be difficult to reduce the adverse effects of the disturbances by the traditional disturbance observer. In this paper, a method of control system synthesis for disturbance rejection using a dual observer is proposed. This method is based on the zeroing induced by the disturbance localization problem. This problem may be solved by dividing the state space into observable subspace and unobservable subspace. As compared with an H_∞ controller based on perfect observation, the usefulness of the proposed control system for disturbance rejection is demonstrated by numerical simulations for a two‐mass spring system. © 2002 Scripta Technica, Electr Eng Jpn, 138(4): 50–60, 2002; DOI 10.1002/eej.1138     

Digestion of crosslinked poly(vinylpyridinium halide) by activated sludge,and application to make poly(methyl methacrylate) biodegradable by incorporation of a pyridinium group into the main chain

Crosslinked poly(N-benzyl-4-vinyipyridinium bromide) has been found to be digested by activated sludge obtained from sewage works. As an extension of this work, the authors attempted to make poly(methyl methacrylate) biodegradable by incorporation of a pyridinium group. Poly(methyl methacrylate) containing a small amount of N-benzyl-4-vinylpyridinium chloride in the main chain showed remarkable reduction in molecular weight and gravimetric weight when placed in an aeration tank of a sewage works. Molecular weight reduction by activated sludge was more conspicuous when content of the pyridinium group was larger and the original molecular weight before the biological treatment was lower. Since insoluble pyridinium-type polymer captures microbial cells alive, this biodegradation appears to be facilitated by enhancement of affinity of the synthetic hydrophobic polymer with cells of microogranisms. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

An improved prediction result of entropic‐FV model for vapor–liquid equilibria of solvent–polymer systems

In this work, entropic expressions of UNIFAC‐FV and Entropic‐FV models were evaluated by using an extensive database of infinite dilution vapor–liquid equilibrium (VLE) data of athermal systems containing polypropylene, polyethylene, and polyisobutylene. For the infinite dilution athermal systems, performance of the Entropic‐FV model was better than that of the UNIFAC‐FV model. Then, finite concentration VLE data of non‐athermal systems that consisted of 16 polymers and 36 solvents containing a large variety of solvent–polymer systems ranging from nonpolar to polar substances were considered to optimized 46 pairs of group interaction parameters of the Entropic‐FV model. For systems containing polar solvents of three types of solvents studied, revised group interaction parameters gave significant improvements from 17.9 to 13.0% average absolute deviation (AAD) of solvent activities. For overall results, improvements were achieved from 15.1 to 12.4% AAD. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 97: 1145–1153, 2005     

Two conditions concerning common quadratic Lyapunov functions forlinear systems

Concerning a pair of linear systems, some triangle conditions for the existence of a common quadratic Lyapunov function are presented in this paper. These conditions are derived from a criterion for judging the semipositiveness of a linear map defined on symmetric matrices     

Single-particle-diagnosis approach: An efficient strategy for discovering new nitride phosphors

Discovery of novel phosphors is extremely important to target the ever change of the solid state lighting technology. In this paper, we present a high-speed way to discover new phosphors, namely single-particle-diagnosis approach. This approach is based on investigating the crystal structure and luminescence of a tiny single crystal, without the necessity of the growth of large-size single crystals or the preparation of single phase powder samples. The concept of the approach and some new nitride phosphors explored by this approach are shown in this paper.     

Analytical and Experimental Evaluation of Dispersive Mixing Performance of Special Rotor Segments in a Corotating Twin-Screw Extruder

An intermeshing corotating twin-screw extruder is often used for producing polymer composites. In this study, we discussed mixing performance of special rotor segments in molten zone. These rotor segments have several tip clearances for achievement of self-cleaning and effective mixing, and these are named various clearance mixing technology. We studied about dispersive mixing performance of configuration, which consists of various clearance mixing technologys (various clearance mixing technology configuration) using numerical analyses and experiments. For the analytical evaluation of mixing performance, we have adopted a particle tracking method. As evaluation indices of dispersive mixing performance, we focused on following three values (1) maximum value in a history of first principal stress of each particle, (2) time-integrated shear rate of each particle, and (3) time-integrated first principal stress of each particle. And we made the probability distributions of the indices. We adopted weighted probability as approximation of volume probability in each region. The results were compared with those of kneading disk segments configuration (kneading disk configuration). Furthermore, we validated the accuracy of the analytical evaluation by performing experiments under same conditions as those of numerical analyses. For the experimental evaluation of mixing performance, we used twin-screw extruder. Polypropylene was selected as suspending media. And CaCO₃ was selected as filler. To compare just the mixing performance of various clearance mixing technology configuration with that of kneading disk configuration, side feeding and screw configuration which had third mixing segments zone were adopted. From the experimental result, it is found that various clearance mixing technology configuration dispersed better than kneading disk configuration. And from the comparison between the experimental evaluation and the analytical evaluation, it is found that the first principal stress is more appropriate for evaluation index of dispersive mixing. Finally, it can be mentioned that various clearance mixing technology configuration has better mixing performance than kneading disk configuration, and large stress is important for dispersive mixing.     

Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy on Overdoped Bi2Sr2?xLaxCuO6+δ

We have performed low-temperature scanning tunneling spectroscopy on overdoped Bi₂Sr_2−x La _x CuO_6+δ (x=0.1 and 0.2) at 4.2 K. The tunneling spectra in both samples obviously exhibit two energy gaps: one has clear gap structure with sharp gap edge peaks, and another is observed as kinks inside the larger gap. Both the energy gaps inhomogeneously vary on the surface at nanometer scale, and their values positively correlate each other. The distributions of both gaps normalized to the mean values are identical independent of the doping level. These results suggest that the two gaps are commonly affected by the source of the electronic disorder.     

Thin-film transistors based on liquid-crystalline tetrafluorophenylter thiophene derivatives: thin-film structure and carrier transport

The authors fabricated thin films by solution processes using liquid-crystalline (LC) semiconductors, 5-alkyl-5’’-(4-hexyltetrafluorophenyl)-2,2’:5’,2’’-terthiophene (2–5). Films of 5-propyl-5’’-(4-hexyltetrafluorophenyl)-2,2’:5’,2’’-terthiophene (2) show similar molecular packing as their non-fluorinated counterparts. However, the degree of molecular packing ordering from X-ray diffraction measurement is higher, and the films exhibit a more crystal-like structure. Moreover, fluorination has a remarkable effect on their mesomorphic behaviors. Films of 2 consist of large size LC domains (in the range of 100 μm) at room temperature. Thin-film transistors (TFTs) of 2 show p-type operation with good hole mobility up to 0.027 cm²/Vs as well as improved operation stability under ambient conditions and high on/off ratio. Tetrafluorophenyl substitution leads to lowering of HOMO energy by 0.15 eV for 2 and 0.35 eV for 5, resulting in operation stability. Variable-temperature current-voltage measurements indicate intrinsic carrier transport in films of 2.     

Estimation of discrete-time systems using pseudorandom sequences

The pseudorandom binary sequence is applied to the parameter estimation of discrete-time systems. The proposed method, based on correlation analysis and system theory, requires a smaller number of correlators than the other methods. The estimates of the parameters are shown to be asymptotically unbiased.     

Estimation of weighting-sequence matrices by correlation method

The pseudorandom binary sequence transformed by the Hadamard matrix is applied to the estimation of weighting-sequence matrices of multi-input and multioutput discrete-time systems. The method is based on the correlation analysis and matrix algebra. The weighting-sequence matrix is obtained directly from the measured-correlation matrix.