Suppression of ringing oscillations from high speed rubber compression curves through a detailed modal characterization of servo-hydraulic machines

System ringing is one of the most important factors affecting the quality of data obtained in high speed dynamic material tests using servo-hydraulic machines. This phenomenon is characterized by vibrations originated by the excitation of predominant modes of the machine during tests, producing distinctive waves in material curves that severely distort the required results. In the specialized literature, the quantitative study of these vibrations has mainly been carried out considering the testing machine as a single degree of freedom system, which has led to a general understanding of the variables involved in the process. However, discrepancies between analytical predictions and experimental observations have been detected using the single degree of freedom approach, so the need for further detailed study of machine dynamic characteristics has been reported. The work presented in this paper addresses this requirement by means of a detailed characterization of the dynamic behavior of a MTS 819.10 high rate testing system. Natural frequencies, mode shapes and damping factors have been obtained from an experimental modal analysis performed on the machine and a mathematical model of the process has been developed from these modal parameters. This model has been used to detect the modes that have the greatest influence in system ringing when testing rubber at high strain rates, and to predict quantitatively the amplitudes of vibrations produced in the process. Material curves have been corrected by subtracting the predicted undulations from the original measurements, obtaining smooth curves that adequately reflect the real material behavior at high strain rates and, thus, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed procedure. Although the research conducted in this work has been focused on rubber, the procedure can be extended equally to characterize other materials, thus constituting a valuable tool to correct experimental measurements contaminated by ringing.     

The effect of impurities on the viscoelastic response of polycarbonate reinforced with short glass fibers

Observations are reported in oscillatory torsion tests at room temperature on unfilled and fiber-reinforced polycarbonates melt-blended with impurities (acronitrile–butadiene–styrene, high-impact polystyrene, low-density polyethylene, poly(ethylene terephthalate) and Nylon 6,6). Constitutive equations are derived for the viscoelastic behavior of glassy polymers. With reference to the theory of cooperative relaxation, a polymer is treated as an ensemble of meso-regions with arbitrary shapes and sizes. The time-dependent response of the ensemble is attributed to rearrangement of meso-domains. The rearrangement events occur at random times, when meso-regions are excited by thermal fluctuations. Stress–strain relations are derived by using the laws of thermodynamics. The governing equations are determined by four adjustable parameters that are found by fitting the experimental data. Fair agreement is demonstrated between the observations and the results of numerical simulation. The study focuses on the effects of the concentration of impurities and glass fibers on material parameters.     

Objective and subjective evaluations of the multi-channel auralization technique as applied to solo instruments

Auralizations are commonly used today by architectural acousticians as a tool to model acoustically sensitive spaces. This paper presents investigations employing an auralization methodology known as multi-channel auralizations, to determine the benefits of using an increasing number of channels in such auralizations. First an objective evaluation was conducted to examine how acoustic parameters, such as reverberation time, vary when using “quadrant” (one fourth of a spherical source) or “thirteenth” sources to create the binaural room impulse responses. Large differences in the values were found between the different sections of the sphere, on the order of several just noticeable differences. Two subjective studies were then pursued, first to determine if auralizations made with an increasing number of channels sound more realistic and have an increased perceived source size, using solo musical instruments of varying directivity indices as the sources. Overall, subjects perceived the auralizations made with an increasing number of channels as more realistic, whereas results for perceived source size are less clear. The second subjective study assessed the ease with which subjects could identify the source orientation from the auralizations as a function of number of channels. Results indicate that more channels made it easier for subjects to differentiate between source orientations.     

Explicit estimates of sums related to the Nyman–Beurling criterion for the Riemann Hypothesis

We give an estimate for sums appearing in the Nyman–Beurling criterion for the Riemann Hypothesis. These sums contain the Möbius function and are related to the imaginary part of the Estermann zeta function. The estimate is remarkably sharp in comparison to other sums containing the Möbius function. The bound is smaller than the trivial bound – essentially the number of terms – by a fixed power of that number. The exponent is made explicit. The methods intensively use tools from the theory of continued fractions and from the theory of Fourier series.     

Importance Sampling for p-value Computations in Multivariate Tests

Abstract

An importance sampling procedure is developed to approximate the distribution of an arbitrary function of the eigenvalues for a matrix beta random matrix or a Wishart random matrix. The procedure is easily implemented and provides confidence intervals for the p-values of many of the commonly used test statistics in multivariate analysis. An adaptive procedure allows for the control of either absolute error or relative error in this p-value estimation through the choice of importance sample size.     

The Design and Analysis of Benchmark Experiments

The assessment of the performance of learners by means of benchmark experiments is an established exercise. In practice, benchmark studies are a tool to compare the performance of several competing algorithms for a certain learning problem. Cross-validation or resampling techniques are commonly used to derive point estimates of the performances which are compared to identify algorithms with good properties. For several benchmarking problems, test procedures taking the variability of those point estimates into account have been suggested. Most of the recently proposed inference procedures are based on special variance estimators for the cross-validated performance. We introduce a theoretical framework for inference problems in benchmark experiments and show that standard statistical test procedures can be used to test for differences in the performances. The theory is based on well-defined distributions of performance measures which can be compared with established tests. To demonstrate the usefulness in practice, the theoretical results are applied to regression and classification benchmark studies based on artificial and real world data.     

Bootstrap tests for unit roots in seasonal autoregressive models

This paper proposes bootstrap tests for the presence of unit roots in a seasonal autoregressive model. The asymptotic validity of the proposed bootstrap scheme is established, and Monte Carlo experiments are used to investigate the small-sample performance of the tests.     

Environmental Effects on the Mechanical Properties of Glass-FRP and Aramid-FRP Rebars

In the paper, the experimental results on the effect of temperature and moisture on the mechanical properties of FRP (Fiber-Reinforced Polymer) reinforcements are presented. FRP rebars made from glass and aramid fibers were subjected to cyclic thermal actions at temperatures ranging between 20 and 70°C, typical of natural hot-climate environments. Tensile tests were also carried out on FRP rebars. The effect of moisture was investigated by cyclic wetting and drying the FRP rebars under laboratory conditions before their testing in tension. Finally, the elastic modulus and tensile strength of the FRP rebars exposed to these cyclic actions were compared with those obtained for unexposed ones, in order to evaluate the mechanical damage caused by environmental conditions.     

PSP对癌症病人化/放疗毒性反应的数据统计分析

按WHO抗癌药急性及亚急性毒性分级标准 ,对 650例化、放疗肿瘤患者分别作了治疗前后毒性反应的总分值统计。结果加服PSP组 ( 557例 )的疗后总分值为837,低于疗前的 962 ;而 93例阳性对照组 (加服鲨肝醇 )疗前总分为 157,疗后为 2 4 1,疗后总分高于疗前。用Wilcoxon两样本秩和统计法检验 ,PSP组和对照组间具有极显著差异 ,表明PSP对比、放疗药物引起的毒副反应有明显降低效应。     

Hypotheses Testing for Error-in-Variables Models

In this paper, hypotheses testing based on a corrected score function are considered. Five different testing statistics are proposed and their asymptotic distributions are investigated. It is shown that the statistics are asymptotically distributed according to the chisquare distribution or can be written as a linear combination of chisquare random variables with one degree of freedom. A small scale numerical Monte Carlo study is presented in order to compare the empirical size and power of the proposed tests. A comparative calibration example is used to illustrate the results obtained.