Stress and free vibration analysis of functionally graded beams using static Green's functions

In this paper static Green's functions for functionally graded Euler-Bernoulli and Timoshenko beams are presented. All material properties are arbitrary functions along the beam thickness direction. The closed-form solutions of static Green's functions are derived from a fourth-order partial differential equation presented in [2]. In combination with Betti's reciprocal theorem the Green's functions are applied to calculate internal forces and stress analysis of functionally graded beams (FGBs) under static loadings. For symmetrical material properties along the beam thickness direction and symmetric cross-sections, the resulting stress distributions are also symmetric. For unsymmetrical material properties the neutral axis and the center of gravity axis are located at different positions. Free vibrations of functionally graded Timoshenko beams are also analyzed [3]. Analytical solutions of eigenfunctions and eigenfrequencies in closed-forms are obtained based on reference [2]. Alternatively it is also possible to use static Green's functions and Fredholm's integral equations to obtain approximate eigenfunctions and eigenfrequencies by an iterative procedure as shown in [1]. Applying the Sensitivity Analysis with Green's Functions (SAGF) [1] to derive closed-form analytical solutions of functionally graded beams, it is possible to modify the derived static Green's functions and include terms taking cracks into account, which are modeled by translational or rotational springs. Furthermore the SAGF approach in combination with the superposition principle can be used to take stiffness jumps into account and to extend static Green's functions of simple beams to that of discontinuous beams by adding new supports. (© 2011 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

A Geometric Approach to Maximum Likelihood Estimation of the Functional Principal Components From Sparse Longitudinal Data

In this article, we consider the problem of estimating the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the covariance kernel (i.e., the functional principal components) from sparse and irregularly observed longitudinal data. We exploit the smoothness of the eigenfunctions to reduce dimensionality by restricting them to a lower dimensional space of smooth functions. We then approach this problem through a restricted maximum likelihood method. The estimation scheme is based on a Newton–Raphson procedure on the Stiefel manifold using the fact that the basis coefficient matrix for representing the eigenfunctions has orthonormal columns. We also address the selection of the number of basis functions, as well as that of the dimension of the covariance kernel by a second-order approximation to the leave-one-curve-out cross-validation score that is computationally very efficient. The effectiveness of our procedure is demonstrated by simulation studies and an application to a CD4+ counts dataset. In the simulation studies, our method performs well on both estimation and model selection. It also outperforms two existing approaches: one based on a local polynomial smoothing, and another using an EM algorithm. Supplementary materials including technical details, the R package fpca, and data analyzed by this article are available online.     

A constructive hypothesis test for the single-index models with two groups

Comparison of two-sample heteroscedastic single-index models, where both the scale and location functions are modeled as single-index models, is studied in this paper. We propose a test for checking the equality of single-index parameters when dimensions of covariates of the two samples are equal. Further, we propose two test statistics based on Kolmogorov–Smirnov and Cramér–von Mises type functionals. These statistics evaluate the difference of the empirical residual processes to test the equality of mean functions of two single-index models. Asymptotic distributions of estimators and test statistics are derived. The Kolmogorov–Smirnov and Cramér–von Mises test statistics can detect local alternatives that converge to the null hypothesis at a parametric convergence rate. To calculate the critical values of Kolmogorov–Smirnov and Cramér–von Mises test statistics, a bootstrap procedure is proposed. Simulation studies and an empirical study demonstrate the performance of the proposed procedures.     

Robust factor analysis

Our aim is to construct a factor analysis method that can resist the effect of outliers. For this we start with a highly robust initial covariance estimator, after which the factors can be obtained from maximum likelihood or from principal factor analysis (PFA). We find that PFA based on the minimum covariance determinant scatter matrix works well. We also derive the influence function of the PFA method based on either the classical scatter matrix or a robust matrix. These results are applied to the construction of a new type of empirical influence function (EIF), which is very effective for detecting influential data. To facilitate the interpretation, we compute a cutoff value for this EIF. Our findings are illustrated with several real data examples.     

Assessing Local Influence in Canonical Correlation Analysis

The first order local influence approach is adopted in this paper to assess the local influence of observations to canonical correlation coefficients, canonical vectors and several relevant test statistics in canonical correlation analysis. This approach can detect different aspects of influence due to different perturbation schemes. In this paper, we consider two different kinds, namely, the additive perturbation scheme and the case-weights perturbation scheme. It is found that, under the additive perturbation scheme, the influence analysis of any canonical correlation coefficient can be simplified to just observing two predicted residuals. To do the influence analysis for canonical vectors, a scale invariant norm is proposed. Furthermore, by choosing proper perturbation scales on different variables, we can compare the different influential effects of perturbations on different variables under the additive perturbation scheme. An example is presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the first order local influence approach.     

Goodness-of-fit test for switching diffusion

We consider two Cramér–von Mises goodness-of-fit tests for hypotheses that the observed diffusion process has sign-type trend coefficient based on empirical distribution function and empirical density function. It is shown that the limit distributions of the proposed tests statistics are defined by the integral type functionals of continuous Gaussian processes. We study the behavior of these statistics under the alternative hypothesis and we prove that the tests are consistent. We provide the Karhunen-Loève expansion on \mathbbR{\mathbb{R}} of the corresponding limiting processes and we show that the eigenfunctions in these expansions have expressions in term of Bessel functions.     

Regularized Principal Component Analysis

Given a set of signals, a classical construction of an optimal truncatable basis for optimally representing the signals, is the principal component analysis (PCA for short) approach. When the information about the signals one would like to represent is a more general property, like smoothness, a different basis should be considered. One example is the Fourier basis which is optimal for representation smooth functions sampled on regular grid. It is derived as the eigenfunctions of the circulant Laplacian operator. In this paper, based on the optimality of the eigenfunctions of the Laplace-Beltrami operator (LBO for short), the construction of PCA for geometric structures is regularized. By assuming smoothness of a given data, one could exploit the intrinsic geometric structure to regularize the construction of a basis by which the observed data is represented. The LBO can be decomposed to provide a representation space optimized for both internal structure and external observations. The proposed model takes the best from both the intrinsic and the extrinsic structures of the data and provides an optimal smooth representation of shapes and forms.     

Some theoretical properties of Silverman's method for Smoothed functional principal component analysis

Principal component analysis (PCA) is one of the key techniques in functional data analysis. One important feature of functional PCA is that there is a need for smoothing or regularizing of the estimated principal component curves. Silverman’s method for smoothed functional principal component analysis is an important approach in a situation where the sample curves are fully observed due to its theoretical and practical advantages. However, lack of knowledge about the theoretical properties of this method makes it difficult to generalize it to the situation where the sample curves are only observed at discrete time points. In this paper, we first establish the existence of the solutions of the successive optimization problems in this method. We then provide upper bounds for the bias parts of the estimation errors for both eigenvalues and eigenfunctions. We also prove functional central limit theorems for the variation parts of the estimation errors. As a corollary, we give the convergence rates of the estimations for eigenvalues and eigenfunctions, where these rates depend on both the sample size and the smoothing parameters. Under some conditions on the convergence rates of the smoothing parameters, we can prove the asymptotic normalities of the estimations.     

Measures of influence for the functional linear model with scalar response

This paper studies how to identify influential observations in the functional linear model in which the predictor is functional and the response is scalar. Measurement of the effects of a single observation on estimation and prediction when the model is estimated by the principal components method is undertaken. For that, three statistics are introduced for measuring the influence of each observation on estimation and prediction of the functional linear model with scalar response that are generalizations of the measures proposed for the standard regression model by [D.R. Cook, Detection of influential observations in linear regression, Technometrics 19 (1977) 15-18; D. Peña, A new statistic for influence in linear regression, Technometrics 47 (2005) 1-12] respectively. A smoothed bootstrap method is proposed to estimate the quantiles of the influence measures, which allows us to point out which observations have the larger influence on estimation and prediction. The behavior of the three statistics and the quantile estimation bootstrap based method is analyzed via a simulation study. Finally, the practical use of the proposed statistics is illustrated by the analysis of a real data example, which show that the proposed measures are useful for detecting heterogeneity in the functional linear model with scalar response.     

On the eigenproblem for convolution integral equations

Summary This paper concerns the eigenproblem for convolution integral equations whose kernels can be expressed as finite or infinite Fourier transforms of integrable functions. A procedure which closely parallels previous work on displacement integral equations is derived and the problem of existence is treated. Approximations are obtained for both the eigenvalues and the eigenfunctions.The results of this paper are taken from the author's doctoral dissertation at the University of New Mexico. The research was supported by the United States Atomic Energy Commission.