Structural health monitoring system based on multi-agent coordination and fusion for large structure

In practical applications of structural health monitoring technology, a large number of distributed sensors are usually adopted to monitor the big dimension structures and different kinds of damage. The monitored structures are usually divided into different sub-structures and monitored by different sensor sets. Under this situation, how to manage the distributed sensor set and fuse different methods to obtain a fast and accurate evaluation result is an important problem to be addressed deeply. In the paper, a multi-agent fusion and coordination system is presented to deal with the damage identification for the strain distribution and joint failure in the large structure. Firstly, the monitoring system is adopted to distributedly monitor two kinds of damages, and it self-judges whether the static load happens in the monitored sub-region, and focuses on the static load on the sub-region boundary to obtain the sensor network information with blackboard model. Then, the improved contract net protocol is used to dynamically distribute the damage evaluation module for monitoring two kinds of damage uninterruptedly. Lastly, a reliable assessment for the whole structure is given by combing various heterogeneous classifiers strengths with voting-based fusion. The proposed multi-agent system is illustrated through a large aerospace aluminum plate structure experiment. The result shows that the method can significantly improve the monitoring performance for the large-scale structure.     

Laser induced fast ignition made realistic by relativistic velocities-dream or reality?

Due to the recent developments in high power lasers it is suggested to accelerate a micro-foil by the laser pressure to relativistic velocities. The time dependent velocity of this micro-foil is calculated analytically for pulsed constant laser intensity. The accelerated foil collides with a target creating a shock wave on impact. The shock wave parameters are calculated within the context of relativistic fluid dynamics.It is suggested to use the energy of the relativistic micro-foil to ignite a pre-compressed target with a density relevant for fusion ignition. The equations are written and solved for the collision between the micro-foil and the very dense target. The criteria for shock wave ignition and heat wave ignition are used to show that one needs significantly less laser energy for heat wave ignition.The present scheme shows that nuclear fast ignition by micro-foil impact could be attained in the near future with lasers that are currently under construction.     

Fatigue crack propagation of multiple coplanar cracks with the coupled extended finite element/fast marching method

A numerical technique for modeling fatigue crack propagation of multiple coplanar cracks is presented. The proposed method couples the extended finite element method (X-FEM) [Int. J. Numer. Meth. Engng. 48 (11) (2000) 1549] to the fast marching method (FMM) [Level Set Methods & Fast Marching Methods: Evolving Interfaces in Computational Geometry, Fluid Mechanics, Computer Vision, and Materials Science, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1999]. The entire crack geometry, including one or more cracks, is represented by a single signed distance (level set) function. Merging of distinct cracks is handled naturally by the FMM with no collision detection or mesh reconstruction required. The FMM in conjunction with the Paris crack growth law is used to advance the crack front. In the X-FEM, a discontinuous function and the two-dimensional asymptotic crack-tip displacement fields are added to the finite element approximation to account for the crack using the notion of partition of unity [Comput. Meth. Appl. Mech. Engng. 139 (1996) 289]. This enables the domain to be modeled by a single fixed finite element mesh with no explicit meshing of the crack surfaces. In an earlier study [Engng. Fract. Mech. 70 (1) (2003) 29], the methodology, algorithm, and implementation for three-dimensional crack propagation of single cracks was introduced. In this paper, simulations for multiple planar cracks are presented, with crack merging and fatigue growth carried out without any user-intervention or remeshing.     

基于小波变换的不同融合规则的图像融合研究

图像融合是一种重要的增强图像信息的方法。提出了一种基于多尺度分解的像素图像融合方法。利用小波变换按照不同融合规则及融合算子构造融合图像对应的小波系数。通过对可见光图像与红外图像进行融合的实验比较表明，以像素的局部能量为准则的融合效果更好，既可避免传统融合规则的信息损失，又提高了融合图像的空间分辨率和清晰度，融合图像更符合人的视觉特性，也有利于机器视觉。     

Level set and geodesic active contours based measurement of material removal between serial sections

The measurement of the thickness of material removed between serial sections is a crucial step of three-dimension reconstruction. Geodesic active contours is an efficient method for contour detection of objects on an image. The indents on the SiC/Al composite micrographs are segmented by using level set and geodesic active contours. After getting the contours of the indents, we calculate the distance from the uppermost pixel to the lowermost pixel to get the vertical diagonal length, and calculate the distance from the leftmost pixel to the rightmost pixel to get the horizontal diagonal length of each contour. Then the final length of each diagonal is acquired by averaging the vertical diagonal length and the horizontal diagonal length, respectively. The Vickers’ indenter is made by a square pyramidal-shaped diamond with opposite faces at an angle of 136°, so the thickness of material removed between two serial sections and the length difference of the diagonals on the two serial sections has a definite geometrical relation. Thus the thickness of material removed between two serial sections is acquired using the geometrical relation.     

双波段成象及融合技术研究

概括地分析了双波段成象技术的发展概况，分析了成象技术的基本原理，提出了红外双波段基本方案和涉及的关键技术，分析和计算了系统的基本性能。最后，讨论了双波段及融合技术，认为在双波段实现融合应以自主式结构为主。     

奥钢联板坯连铸计算机系统升级研究

某钢厂板坯连铸过程控制系统采用的奥钢联(VAI)技术,运行数年来,由于模型不透明,维护和调整困难,迫切需要升级改造。改造后的计算机系统充分考虑现有资源和需求,能够达到升级改造的目的。     

The Year 2015 Fusion Power Conversations

Assuming significant technical success in the ITER project by the year 2015, it is likely that governments will want to develop a more comprehensive plan for DT tokamak fusion power commercialization. To provide a glimpse into many of the related issues, we construct conversations between the director of the U.S. fusion program and three specialists key to commercial fusion success: an environment and safety regulator, an environmentalist, and an electric generation investor. The insights from these imagined conversations will hopefully be of value as tokamak fusion power proponents plan beyond ITER.     

Bayesian and Dempster-Shafer fusion

The Kalman Filter is traditionally viewed as a prediction-correction filtering algorithm. In this work we show that it can be viewed as a Bayesian fusion algorithm and derive it using Bayesian arguments. We begin with an outline of Bayes theory, using it to discuss well-known quantities such as priors, likelihood and posteriors, and we provide the basic Bayesian fusion equation. We derive the Kalman Filter from this equation using a novel method to evaluate the Chapman-Kolmogorov prediction integral. We then use the theory to fuse data from multiple sensors. Vying with this approach is the Dempster-Shafer theory, which deals with measures of “belief”, and is based on the nonclassical idea of “mass” as opposed to probability. Although these two measures look very similar, there are some differences. We point them out through outlining the ideas of the Dempster-Shafer theory and presenting the basic Dempster-Shafer fusion equation. Finally we compare the two methods, and discuss the relative merits and demerits using an illustrative example.