Synthesis and properties of elastic polyurethane‐imide

A new synthesis route for elastic polyurethane‐imides (EPUIs) has been established by a method involving the use of urea. Various EPUIs were synthesized from polyurethane‐urea, which was prepared from 4,4′‐diphenylmethane diisocyanate (MDI), polyoxytetramethylene glycol (PTMG) and 4,4′‐diphenylmethanediamine (MDA), and pyromellitic dianhydride in N‐methyl‐2‐pyrrolidone (NMP). Flexible films were cast from these solutions that had different inherent viscosities. Imidization of the EPUI films was completed at 200°C for 4 h in vacuo. The EPUIs were determined by FTIR, ¹H NMR, and ¹³C NMR spectra. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2010     

Super‐resolution image reconstruction using state information of a motorized head

This paper presents an integrated system designed to obtain a high‐resolution image via super‐resolution image reconstruction by using an observer of a motorized head under control. An advantage of this integration is that the constructed system can algebraically and systematically calculate the registration and motion blur identification, which is quite different from the way in which the conventional methods preprocess captured images. To illustrate the effectiveness of the presented system, some experimental results are provided. © 2013 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Reliability-based topology optimization under shape uncertainty modeled in Eulerian description

Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization - This paper presents a reliability-based topology optimization method under geometrical uncertainties. First, we briefly introduce the concept of...     

Genetic algorithms with local improvement for composite laminate design

This paper describes the application of a genetic algorithm to the stacking sequence optimization of a laminated composite plate for buckling load maximization. Two approaches for reducing the number of analyses required by the genetic algorithm are described. First, a binary tree is used to store designs, affording an efficient way to retrieve them and thereby avoid repeated analyses of designs that appeared in previous generations. Second, a local improvement scheme based on approximations in terms of lamination parameters is introduced. Two lamination parameters are sufficient to define the flexural stiffness and hence the buckling load of a balanced, symmetrically laminated plate. Results were obtained for rectangular graphite-epoxy plates under biaxial in-plane loading. The proposed improvements are shown to reduce significantly the number of analyses required for the genetic optimization.Presented at the ASME Winter Annual Meeting Structures and Controls Optimization, pp. 13–28. Printed with permission from ASME.     

Reference governor for constrained systems with time-varying references

This paper proposes constructing a reference governor for constrained linear systems with time-varying references. The main feature of the constructed reference governor is to simultaneously consider fulfillment of state and control constraints, as well as tracking performance by appropriately managing the reference to be inputted. To achieve constraint fulfillment and to evaluate tracking performance, the reference management is reduced into a convex quadratic programming problem using the concept of a maximal output admissible set. The reference governor is finally obtained in the form of a piecewise affine function of state and reference variables by means of a multi-parametric programming technique. In addition, the effectiveness of the reference governor is demonstrated by numerical and experimental examples of a practical DC position servomechanism with the control constraint.