Fourier methods are not generally an appropriate approach in the investigation of faults signals with transient components. This work presents the application of a new signal processing technique, the Hilbert-Huang transform and its marginal spectrum, in analysis of vibration signals and faults diagnosis of gear. The Empirical mode decomposition (EMD), Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT) and marginal spectrum are introduced. Firstly, the vibration signals are separated into several intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) using EMD. Then the marginal spectrum of each IMF can be obtained. According to the marginal spectrum, the wear fault of the gear can be detected and faults patterns can be identified. The results show that the proposed method may provide not only an increase in the spectral resolution but also reliability for the faults diagnosis of the gear.

Dynamic behavior of flexural-torsional coupled vibration of rotating beams using the Rayleigh-Ritz method with orthogonal polynomials as basis functions is studied. Performance of various orthogonal polynomials is compared to each other in terms of their efficiency and accuracy in determining the required natural frequencies. Orthogonal polynomials and functions studied in the present work are: Legendre, Chebyshev, integrated Legendre, modified Duncan polynomials, the special trigonometric functions used in conjunction with Hermite cubics, and beam characteristic orthogonal polynomials. A total of 5 cases of beam boundary conditions and rotation are studied for their natural frequencies. The obtained natural frequencies and mode shapes are compared to those available in various references and the results for coupled flexural-torsional vibrations are especially compared to both previously available references and with those obtained using NASTRAN finite element package. Among all the examined orthogonal functions, Legendre orthogonal polynomials are the most efficient in overall CPU time, mainly because of ease in performing the integration required for determining the stiffness and mass matrices.

In this paper, a 4-wheel vehicle model including the effects of tire slip was considered, along with variable parameter sliding control, pushrod force as the end control parameter, and an antilock sliding control, in order to improve the performance of the vehicle longitudinal response. The variable sliding parameter is made to be proportional to the square root of the pressure derivative at the wheel, in order to compensate for large pressure changes in the brake cylinder. A typical tire force-relative slip curve for dry road conditions was used to generate an analytical tire force-relative slip function, and an antilock sliding control process based on the analytical tire force-relative slip function was used. A retrofitted brake system, with the pushrod force as the end control parameter, was employed, and an average decay function was used to suppress the simulation oscillations. Simulation results indicate that the velocity and spacing errors were slightly larger than the results that without considering wheel slip effect, the spacing errors of the lead and follower were insensitive to the adhesion coefficient up to the critical wheel slip value, and the limit for the antilock control on non-constant adhesion road condition was determined by the minimum of the equivalent adhesion coefficient.

The dynamic analysis of a plate with non-linearity due to large deformation was investigated in this study. There have been many theoretical and numerical analyses of the non-linear dynamic behavior of plates examining theoretically or numerically. The problem is how correctly an analytical model can represent the dynamic characteristics of the actual system. To address the issue, the continuous-time system identification technique was used to generate non-linear models, for stiffness and damping terms, and to explain the observed behaviors with single mode assumption after comparing experimental results with the numerical results of a linear plate model.

An immune algorithm is a kind of evolutional computation strategies, which is developed in the basis of a real immune mechanism in the human body. Recently, scientific or engineering applications using this scheme are remarkably increased due to its significant ability in terms of adaptation and robustness for external disturbances. Particularly, this algorithm is efficient to search optimal parameters against complicated dynamic systems with uncertainty and perturbation. In this paper, we investigate an immune algorithm embedded Proportional Integral Derivate (called I-PID) control, in which an optimal parameter vector of the controller is determined offline by using a cell-mediated immune response of the immunized mechanism. For evaluation, we apply the proposed control to mitigation of vibrations for nonlinear structural systems, cased by external environment load such as winds and earthquakes. Comparing to traditional controls under same simulation scenarios, we demonstrate the innovation control is superior especially in robustness aspect.

A robust minimum-time control (RMTC) strategy is addressed and it is extended to the dual-stage servo design. Rather than conventional switching type sub-optimal controls, it is a reference following control approach where the predetermined minimum-time trajectory (MTT) is tracked by the perturbation compensator based feedback controller. First, the minimum-time trajectory for a mass-damper system is derived. Then, the perturbation compensator to achieve robust tracking performance in spite of model uncertainty and external disturbance is suggested. The RMTC is also applied to the dual-stage positioner which consists of coarse actuator and fine one. To best utilize the actuation redundancy of the dual-stage mechanism, a null-motion controller to actively regulate the relative motion between the two stages is formulated. The performance of RMTC is validated through simulation and experiment.

As a basic study on the fluid-structure interaction of the shell structure, a theoretical formulation has been suggested on the free vibration of a thin-walled conical frustum shell filled with an ideal fluid, where the shell is assumed to be fixed at both ends. The motion of fluid coupled with the shell is determined by means of the velocity potential flow theory. In order to calculate the normalized natural frequencies that represent the fluid effect on a fluid-coupled system, finite element analyses for a fluid-filled conical frustum shell are carried out. Also, the effect of apex angle on the frequencies is investigated.

In FMS (Flexible Manufacturing System) and CIM (Computer Integrated Manufacturing), machine-tools have been the target of integration in the last three decades. The conventional concept of integration is being changed into the autonomous manufacturing device based on the knowledge evolution by applying advanced information technology in which an open architecture controller, high-speed network and internet technology are included. In the advanced environment, the machine-tools is not the target of integration anymore, but has been the key subject of cooperation. In the near future, machine-tools will be more improved in the form of a knowledge-evolutionary intelligent device. The final goal of this study is to develop an intelligent machine having knowledge-evolution capability and a management system based on internet operability. The knowledge-evolutionary intelligent machine-tools is expected to gather knowledge autonomically, by producing knowledge, understanding knowledge, reasoning knowledge, making a new decision, dialoguing with other machines, etc. The concept of the knowledge-evolutionary intelligent machine is originated from the machine control being operated by human experts' sense, dialogue and decision. The structure of knowledge evolution in M2M (Machine to Machine) and the scheme for a dialogue agent among agent-based modules such as a sensory agent, a dialogue agent and an expert system (decision support agent) are presented in this paper, with intent to develop the knowledge-evolutionary machine-tools. The dialogue agent functions as an interface for inter-machine cooperation. To design the dialogue agent module in an M2M environment, FIPA (Foundation of Intelligent Physical Agent) standard platform and the ping agent based on FIPA are analyzed in this study. In addition, the dialogue agent is designed and applied to recommend cutting conditions and thermal error compensation in a tapping machine. The knowledge-evolutionary machine-tools are expected easily implemented on the basis of this study and shows a good assistance to sensory and decision support agents.

The results of this study suggest the use of a Back Propagation Network (BPN) algorithm for the detection of esophageal erosions or abnormalities - which are the important signs of esophagitis - in the analysis of the color and textural aspects of clinical images obtained by endoscopy. The authors have investigated the optimization of the learning condition by the number of neurons in the hidden layer within the structure of the neural network. By optimizing learning parameters, we learned and have validated esophageal erosion images and/or ulcers functioning as the critical diagnostic criteria for esophagitis and associated abnormalities. Validation was established by using twenty clinical images. The success rates for detection of esophagitis during calibration and during validation were 97.91% and 96.83%, respectively.

In this paper, a Petrov-Galerkin natural element method (PG-NEM) based upon the natural neighbor concept is presented for the free vibration and dynamic response analyses of two-dimensional linear elastic structures. A problem domain is discretized with a finite number of nodes and the trial basis functions are defined with the help of the Voronoi diagram. Meanwhile, the test basis functions are supported by Delaunay triangles for the accurate and easy numerical integration with the conventional Gauss quadrature rule. The numerical accuracy and stability of the proposed method are verified through illustrative numerical tests.

In this study, a new model to predict the effective elastic constants of composites with spherical fillers is proposed. The original Eshelby model is extended to a finite filler volume fraction without using Mori-Tanaka's mean field approach. When single filler is embedded in the matrix, the effective elastic constants of the composite are computed. The composite is in turn considered as a new matrix, where new single filler is again embedded in the matrix. The predicted results by the present model with a series of embedding procedures are compared with those by Mori-Tanaka, self-consistent, and generalized self-consistent models. It is revealed through parametric studies such as stiffness ratio of the filler to the matrix and filler volume fraction that the present model gives more accurate predictions than Mori-Tanaka model without using the complicated numerical scheme used in self-consistent and generalized self-consistent models.

This paper deals with the design of a yaw rate controller based on gain-scheduled H$\infty$ optimal control, which is intended to maintain the lateral stability of a vehicle. Uncertain factors such as vehicle mass and cornering stiffness in the vehicle yaw rate dynamics naturally call for the robustness of the feedback controller and thus H$\infty$ optimization technique is applied to synthesize a controller with guaranteed robust stability and performance against the model uncertainty. In the implementation stage, the feed-forward yaw moment by driver's steer input is estimated by the disturbance observer in order to determine the accurate compensatory moment. Finally, HILS results indicate that the proposed yaw rate controller can satisfactorily improve the lateral stability of an automobile.

Recently, the microrobots powered by biological muscle actuators were proposed. Among the biological muscle actuators, frog muscle is well known as a good muscle actuator and has a large displacement, actuation forces and piezoelectric properties. Therefore, for the application of the biomimetic microrobot, this paper reports the electromechanical properties of frog muscle. First of all, the experimental setup has been established for measuring generative force of the frog muscle. Through the various electrical stimulating inputs to the frog muscle, we measured the contractile force of the frog muscle. From the measuring results, we found that the actuating contractile force responses of the frog muscle are determined by the amplitude, frequency, duty ratio, and wave form of the stimulation signal. This study will be beneficial for the development of the microrobot actuated by frog muscle.

Piezoelectric materials produce an electric field by deformation, and deform when subjected to an electric field. The coupling nature of piezoelectric materials has acquired wide applications in electric-mechanical and electric devices, including electric-mechanical actuators, sensors and structures. In this paper, a hollow sphere composed of a radially polarized spherically anisotropic piezoelectric material, e.g., PZT_5 or (Pb) (CoW) $TiO_3$ under internal or external uniform pressure and a constant potential difference between its inner and outer surfaces or combination of these loadings has been studied. Electrodes attached to the inner and outer surfaces of the sphere induce the potential difference. The governing equilibrium equations in radially polarized form are shown to reduce to a coupled system of second-order ordinary differential equations for the radial displacement and electric potential field. These differential equations are solved analytically for seven different sets of boundary conditions. The stress and the electric potential distributions in the sphere are discussed in detail for two piezoceramics, namely PZT _5 and (Pb) (CoW) $TiO_3$. It is shown that the hoop stresses in hollow sphere composed of these materials can be made virtually uniform across the thickness of the sphere by applying an appropriate set of boundary conditions.

As the operating time of heat exchangers progresses, fouling caused by water-borne deposits and the number of plugged tubes increase and thermal performance decreases. Both fouling and tube plugging are known to interfere with normal flow characteristics and to reduce thermal efficiencies of heat exchangers. The heat exchangers of Korean nuclear power plants have been analyzed in terms of heat transfer rate and overall heat transfer coefficient as a means of heat exchanger management. Except for fouling resulting from the operation of heat exchangers, all the tubes of heat exchangers have been replaced when the number of plugged tubes exceeded the plugging criteria based on design performance sheet. This paper describes a plugging margin evaluation method taking into account the fouling of shell-and-tube heat exchangers. The method can evaluate thermal performance, estimate future fouling variation, and consider current fouling level in the calculation of plugging margin. To identify the effectiveness of the developed method, fouling and plugging margin evaluations were performed at a component cooling heat exchanger in a Korean nuclear power plant.

Typically, condensate forms as droplets on the fin surfaces and may bridge the space between the fin surfaces. This is due to the dry characteristics inherent to the fin surface. The droplets increase the air-side pressure drop. In the case of high air velocities, these droplets may be blown off the fins and entrained in the air stream. To minimize the formation of condensate droplet, the wet ability of the fins must be improved. The carry-over velocity is affected by fin surface characteristics. To avoid carry-over in the air conditioner having the highest air velocity of 1.5 m/sec, the dynamic contact angle (DCA) should be at least lowly under $60^{\circ}$.

Based on Banach fixed point theorem, a method to calculate nonlinear superposition for three interacting Stokes' waves is proposed in this paper. A mathematical formulation for the nonlinear superposition in deep water and some numerical solutions were investigated. The authors carried out the numerical study with three progressive linear potentials of different wave numbers and succeeded in solving the nonlinear wave profiles of their three wave-interaction, that is, using only linear wave potentials, it was possible to realize the corresponding nonlinear interacting wave profiles through iteration of the method. The stability of the method for the three interacting Stokes' waves was analyzed. The calculation results, together with Fourier transform, revealed that the iteration made it possible to predict higher-order nonlinear frequencies for three Stokes' waves' interaction. The proposed method has a very fast convergence rate.

A soft recovery system (SRS) is a device that stops a high speed projectile without damaging the projectile. The SRS is necessary to verify the shock resistant requirements of microelectronics and electro-optic sensors in smart munitions, where the projectiles experience over 20,000 g acceleration inside the barrel. In this study, a computer code for the performance evaluation of a SRS based on ballistic compression decelerator concept has been developed. It consists of a time accurate compressible one-dimensional Euler code with use of deforming grid and a projectile motion analysis code. The Euler code employs Roe's approximate Riemann solver with a total variation diminishing (TVD) method. A fully implicit dual time stepping method is used to advance the solution in time. In addition, the geometric conservation law (GCL) is applied to predict the solutions accurately on the deforming mesh. The equation of motion for the projectile is solved with the four-stage Runge-Kutta time integration method. A small scale SRS to catch a 20 mm bullet fired at 500 m/s within 1,600 g-limit has been designed with the proposed method.

This study was conducted in order to generate model particles which were similar to particles in diesel emission. Spark discharge was used for carbon agglomerates and hydrocarbon condensation for particles that consist of carbon agglomerates and hydrocarbon. The size of the carbon agglomerates, whose mean size were 30 and 70 nm, ranged between 15 and 200 nm, and the total number concentration of the particles ranged from 3 to $5{\times}10^7#/cm^3$ as the controllable variables in spark discharge generator changed. The result of the hydrocarbon condensation experiment showed that the final sizes of the particles enlarged by condensation did not depend on the initial sizes, but the maximum condensational growth of carbon agglomerates by dodecane ($C_{12}H_{26}$) condensation was 112 times the initial size of 40 nm, while the size of the agglomerates by benzene ($C_6H_6$) was 3.25 times its initial size.

Nucleate pool boiling experiments were performed using pure R11 for various surface angles under constant heat flux conditions during saturated pool boiling. A 1-mm-diameter circular heater with an artificial cavity in the center that was fabricated using a MEMS technique and a high-speed controller were used to maintain the constant heat flux. Bubble growth images were taken at 5000 frames per second using a high-speed CCD camera. The bubble geometry was obtained from the captured bubble images. The effects of the surface angle on the bubble growth behavior were analyzed for the initial and thermal growth regions using dimensional scales. The parameters that affected the bubble growth behavior were the bubble radius, bubble growth rate, sliding velocity, bubble shape, and advancing and receding contact angles. These phenomena require further analysis for various surface angles and the obtained constant heat flux data provide a good foundation for such future work.

The piezoelectric bimorph film, which, as an actuator, can generate more effective displacement than the usual PVDF film, is used to control the turbulent boundary-layer flow. The change of wall pressures inside the turbulent boundary layer is observed by using the multi-channel microphone array flush-mounted on the surface when actuation at the non-dimensional frequency $f_b^+$:=0.008 and 0.028 is applied to the turbulent boundary layer. The wall pressure characteristics by the actuation to produce local displacement are more dominantly influenced by the size of the actuator module than the actuation frequency. The movement of large-scale turbulent structures to the upper layer is found to be the main mechanism of the reduction in the wall- pressure energy spectrum when the 700$700{\nu}/u_{\tau}$-long bimorph film is periodically actuated at the non- dimensional frequency $f_b^+$:=0.008 and 0.028. The biomorph actuator is triggered with the time delay for the active forcing at a single frequency when a 1/8' pressure-type, pin-holed microphone sensor detects the large-amplitude pressure event by the turbulent spot. The wall-pressure energy in the late-transitional boundary layer is partially reduced near the convection wavenumber by the open-loop control based on the large amplitude event.

This paper is primarily focused on the safe navigation between overtaking and overtaken vessels in restricted waterways under the external forces, such as wind and current. The maneuvering simulation between two ships was conducted to find an appropriate safe speed and distance, which is required to avoid collision. From the viewpoint of marine safety, a greater transverse distance between two ships is more needed for the smaller vessel. Regardless of external forces, the smaller vessel will get a greater effect of hydrodynamic forces than the bigger one. In the case of close navigation between ships under the forces of wind and current, the vessel moving at a lower speed is potentially hazardous because the rudder force of the lower speed vessel is not sufficient for steady-state course-keeping, compared to that of the higher speed vessel.