• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.17 no.3_4
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• pp.493-526
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• 2004

Semiactive control systems have received considerable attention for protecting structures against natural hazards such as strong earthquakes and high winds, because they not only offer the reliability of passive control systems but also maintain the versatility and adaptability of fully active control systems. Among the many semiactive control devices, magnetorheological (MR) fluid dampers comprise one particularly promising class. In the field of civil engineering, much research and development on MR fluid damper-based control systems has been conducted since this unique semiactive device was first introduced to civil engineering applications in mid 1990s. In 2001, MR fluid dampers were applied to the full-scale in-service civil engineering structures for the first time. This state-of-the-art paper includes a detailed literature review of dynamic models of MR fluid dampers for describing their complex dynamic behavior and control algorithms considering the characteristics of MR fluid dampers. This extensive review provides references to semiactive control systems using MR fluid dampers. The MR fluid damper-based semiactive control systems are shown to have the potential for mitigating the responses of full-scale civil engineering structures under natural hazards.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.499-506
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• 2013

The accurate estimation of a fault location is desired in distance protection schemes for transmission lines in order to selectively deactivate a faulted line. However, a typical method to estimate a fault location by calculating impedances with voltages and currents at relaying points may have errors due to various factors such as the mutual impedances of lines, fault impedances, or effects of parallel circuits. The proposed algorithm in this paper begins by extracting the fundamental phasor of the positive sequence currents from the three phase currents. The second-order difference of the phasor is then calculated based on the fundamental phasor of positive sequence currents. The traveling times of the waves generated by a fault are derived from the second-order difference of the phasor. Finally, the distance from the relaying point to the fault is estimated using the traveling times. To analyze the performance of the algorithm, a power system with EHV(Extra High Voltage) untransposed double-circuit transmission lines is modeled and simulated under various fault conditions, such as several fault types, fault locations, and fault inception angles. The results of the simulations show that the proposed algorithm has the capability to estimate the fault locations with high speed and accuracy.

• Current Research on Agriculture and Life Sciences
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.199-202
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• 2014

The bioconversion of cellulosic biomass hydrolyzates consisting mainly of glucose and xylose requires the use of engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae expressing a heterologous xylose pathway. However, there is concern that a fungal xylose pathway consisting of NADPH-specific xylose reductase (XR) and $NAD^+$-specific xylitol dehydrogenase (XDH) may result in a cellular redox imbalance. However, the glycerol biosynthesis and glycerol degradation pathways of S. cerevisiae, termed here as the glycerol cycle, has the potential to balance the cofactor requirements for xylose metabolism, as it produces NADPH by consuming NADH at the expense of one mole of ATP. Therefore, this study tested if the glycerol cycle could improve the xylose metabolism of engineered S. cerevisiae by cofactor balancing, as predicted by an in-silico analysis using elementary flux mode (EFM). When the GPD1 gene, the first step of the glycerol cycle, was overexpressed in the XR/XDH-expressing S. cerevisiae, the glycerol production significantly increased, while the xylitol and ethanol yields became negligible. The reduced xylitol yield suggests that enough $NAD^+$ was supplied for XDH by the glycerol cycle. However, the GPD1 overexpression completely shifted the carbon flux from ethanol to glycerol. Thus, moderate expression of GPD1 may be necessary to achieve improved ethanol production through the cofactor balancing.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2013.01a
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• pp.602-607
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• 2013

Financial risks associated with capital investments are often measured with different feasibility indicators such as the net present value (NPV), the internal rate of return (IRR), the payback period (PBP), and the benefit-cost ratio (BCR). This paper aims at demonstrating practical applications of probabilistic feasibility analysis techniques for an integrated feasibility evaluation of the IRR and PBP. The IRR and PBP are concurrently analyzed in order to measure the profitability and liquidity, respectively, of a cash flow. The cash flow data of a real wind turbine project is used in the study. The presented approach consists of two phases. First, two newly reported analysis techniques are used to carry out a series of what-if analyses for the IRR and PBP. Second, the relationship between the IRR and PBP is identified using Monte Carlo simulation. The results demonstrate that the integrated feasibility evaluation of stochastic cash flows becomes a more viable option with the aide of newly developed probabilistic analysis techniques. It is also shown that the relationship between the IRR and PBP for the wind turbine project can be used as a predictive model for the actual IRR at the end of the service life based on the actual PBP of the project early in the service life.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.63 no.2
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• pp.237-249
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• 2017

The Self-Organization Feature Map as an unsupervised network is very widely used these days in engineering science. The applied network in this paper is the Self Organization Feature Map with constant weights which includes Kohonen Network. In this research, Reinforced Concrete Shear Wall buildings with different stories and heights are analyzed and a database consisting of measured fundamental periods and characteristics of 78 RC SW buildings is created. The input parameters of these buildings include number of stories, height, length, width, whereas the output parameter is the fundamental period. In addition, using Genetic Algorithm, the structure of the Self-Organization Feature Map algorithm is optimized with respect to the numbers of layers, numbers of nodes in hidden layers, type of transfer function and learning. Evaluation of the SOFM model was performed by comparing the obtained values to the measured values and values calculated by expressions given in building codes. Results show that the Self-Organization Feature Map, which is optimized by using Genetic Algorithm, has a higher capacity, flexibility and accuracy in predicting the fundamental period.

• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.147-175
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• 2018

Under authoritarian regimes, citizen-led NGOs such as environmental NGOs (ENGOs) often operate under close scrutiny of the government. While this presents a challenge to a single ENGO, we propose here - in line with existing research on network effects - that there are opportunities for multiple ENGOs to coordinate and thus work in ways that supersede government controls, affect public opinion, and contribute to policy revision and/or creation. In this paper, we specifically examine the possibility that the gamut of citizen-based ENGOs in China are coordinating. Based on network analysis of ENGOs web pages as well as interviews with more than a dozen ENGO leaders between 2014 and 2016, we find that ENGOs have few direct and public connections to each other, but social media sites and personal connections offline provide a crucial function in creating bridges. A closer examination of these bridges reveals, however, that they can be substantive to the environmental discussion or functional to the dissemination of web page information but typically not both. In short, ENGOs in China are not directly connected but rather are connected in a way that responds to the available social media and the government's censorship practices.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2015.10a
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• pp.523-526
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• 2015

In recent years, building commissioning has often been part of a standard delivery practice in construction, particularly in the high-performance green building market, to ensure the building is designed and constructed per owner's requirements. Commissioning, therefore, intends to provide quality assurance that buildings perform as intended by the design and often helps achieve energy savings. Commissioning, however, is not as widely adopted as its potential benefits are perceived. Owners are still skeptical of the cost-effectiveness claims by energy management and commissioning professionals. One of the issues in the current commissioning practice is that not every project is guaranteed to benefit from the commissioning services. This, coupled with its added cost, the commissioning service is not acquired with great acceptance and confidence by building owners. To overcome this issue, this paper presents a unique methodology to enhance owner's predicting capability of the degree of success of commissioning service using the Bayesian theorem. The paper analyzes a situation where a future building owner wants to use a pre-commissioning in an attempt to refine the success rate of the future commissioned building performance. The author proposes the Bayesian theorem based framework to improve the current commissioning practice where building owners are not given accurate information how much successful their projects are going to be in terms of energy savings from the commissioning service. What should be provided to the building owners who consider their buildings to be commissioned is that they need some indicators how likely their projects benefit from the commissioning process. Based on this, the owners can make better informed decisions whether or not they acquire a commissioning service.

• Interaction and multiscale mechanics
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.123-142
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• 2008

Current methodologies used for the inference of thin film stresses through curvature measurements are strictly restricted to stress and curvature states which are assumed to remain uniform over the entire film/substrate system. These methodologies have recently been extended to non-uniform stress and curvature states for the thin film subject to non-uniform, isotropic misfit strains. In this paper we study the same thin film/substrate system but subject to non-uniform, anisotropic misfit strains. The film stresses and system curvatures are both obtained in terms of the non-uniform, anisotropic misfit strains. For arbitrarily non-uniform, anisotropic misfit strains, it is shown that a direct relation between film stresses and system curvatures cannot be established. However, such a relation exists for uniform or linear anisotropic misfit strains, or for the average film stresses and average system curvatures when the anisotropic misfit strains are arbitrarily non-uniform.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.13 no.7
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• pp.974-979
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• 2000

A total of 80 weaned piglets (Landrace $\times$ Yorkshire $\times$ Large White) were used in a 28-day growth assay to detennine the optimal inclusion level of sodium sulfite ($Na_{2}SO_{3}$) as an extrusion enhancer of soybean meal for nursery piglets. piglets (21 d of age, 6.04 kg of BW) were grouped into 4 treatments in a completely randomized block design. Treatments were: 1) Extruded SBM (Control), 2) Extruded SBM with 0.5% $Na_{2}SO_{3}$ (0.5 ESBM), 3) Extruded SBM with 1.0% $Na_{2}SO_{3}$ (1.0 ESBM) and 4) Extruded SBM with 1.5% $Na_{2}SO_{3}$ (1.5 ESBM). Each treatment has 4 replicates of 5 heads per pen. In phase I (d 0 to 14), diets supplied 3,400 kcal ME/kg, 23% crude protein, 1.65% lysine, 0.50% methionine, 0.9% Ca and 0.8% P. Phase II (d 14 to 28) diets contained 3,300 kcal ME/kg, 21% crude protein, 1.45% lysine, 0.45% methionine, 0.9% Ca and 0.8% P. For d 0 to 14, piglets fed 1.5 ESBM had greater ADG, ADFI and FCR compared to piglets fed control and 0.5 ESBM diet. ADG was significantly higher in piglets fed 1.5 ESBM diet than other groups (p<0.05) except 1.0 ESBM. In phase II (d 14 to 28), there was no significant differences in production traits among treatments. For overall period (d 0 to 28), piglets fed diets with high sodium sulfite grew faster than piglets fed control and 0.5 ESBM diets. The highest ADG and the best FeR were obtained in piglets fed diets with 1.5 ESBM during the entire period. Piglets fed 1.5 ESBM diet showed significantly higher crude protein digestibility than 0.5 ESBM (p<0.05) at d 14 post-weanling, but not at d 28 post-weanling. There were no significant differences in digestibilities of total amino acids. In conclusion, the addition level of 1~1.5% sodium sulfite for SBM extrusion could be favorable for rate and efficiency of growth in weaning pigs.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.179-190
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• 2023

Many recent attempts have sought accurate prediction of pile pullout resistance (P_ul) using classical machine learning models. This study offers an improved methodology for this objective. Adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS), as a popular predictor, is trained by a capable metaheuristic strategy, namely equilibrium optimizer (EO) to predict the P_ul. The used data is collected from laboratory investigations in previous literature. First, two optimal configurations of EO-ANFIS are selected after sensitivity analysis. They are next evaluated and compared with classical ANFIS and two neural-based models using well-accepted accuracy indicators. The results of all five models were in good agreement with laboratory P_uls (all correlations > 0.99). However, it was shown that both EO-ANFISs not only outperform neural benchmarks but also enjoy a higher accuracy compared to the classical version. Therefore, utilizing the EO is recommended for optimizing this predictive tool. Furthermore, a comparison between the selected EO-ANFISs, where one employs a larger population, revealed that the model with the population size of 75 is more efficient than 300. In this relation, root mean square error and the optimization time for the EO-ANFIS (75) were 19.6272 and 1715.8 seconds, respectively, while these values were 23.4038 and 9298.7 seconds for EO-ANFIS (300).