Fatigue criteria for integrity assessment of long-span steel bridge with health monitoring

A structural health assessment (SHA) methodology is developed using data acquired from structural health monitoring (SHM) system installed on long-span bridges. A set of fatigue criteria has been proposed for pre-determining the global state of the bridge structure failure due to fatigue. This involves finding the threshold of fatigue initiation, below which the rate of fatigue damage may be undetectable under current technology or it is economically unfeasible. The state-of-art for large structures corresponds to the initiation of macro-cracks caused by the accumulation of damage generated by actual service loads for the case of bridges. In what follows, consideration is given to developing fatigue crack growth criterion based on the concept of the continuum damage mechanics (CDM). Fatigue accumulative is included in the model where a fatigue limit for multi-axial stress state is considered. The proposed criterion advocates the evolution of micro-crack growth up to the stage of macro-crack formulation. Considered are the loading histories that correspond to normal traffic loading for highways and railways, incidental or accident loadings such as those caused by typhoons and effective environmental loadings. The potential sites of damage are determined are discussed. The proposed criterion is applied to analyze the fatigue damage of the Tsing Ma Bridge with online strain history data acquired by the SHM system that is permanently installed in the bridge.     

Resilient dissipative dynamic output feedback control for uncertain Markov jump Lur’e systems with time-varying delays

The resilient dissipative dynamic output feedback control problem for a class of uncertain Markov jump Lur’e systems with piecewise homogeneous transition probabilities and time-varying delays in the discrete-time domain are examined in this study. The designed controller can tolerate additive uncertainties in the controller gain matrix, which result from controller implementations. The time-varying delays are also supposed to be mode-dependent with lower and upper bounds known a priori. By constructing a Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional candidate, the sufficient conditions regarding the existence of desired resilient dissipative controllers are obtained in terms of linear matrix inequalities, thereby ensuring that the resulting closed-loop system is stochastically stable and strictly dissipative. Two numerical examples were established to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed theoretical results.     

Global dynamics of a Vector‐Borne disease model with two delays and nonlinear transmission rate

In this paper, we investigate a Vector‐Borne disease model with nonlinear incidence rate and 2 delays: One is the incubation period in the vectors and the other is the incubation period in the host. Under the biologically motivated assumptions, we show that the global dynamics are completely determined by the basic reproduction number R₀. The disease‐free equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable if R₀≤1; when R₀>1, the system is uniformly persistent, and there exists a unique endemic equilibrium that is globally asymptotically. Numerical simulations are conducted to illustrate the theoretical results.     

Field-based hypotheses on advancing standards for mathematical practice

The Common Core State Standards in Mathematics (CCSSM, 2010) are organized around two types of standards: the standards for mathematical content and standards for mathematical practice. The central goal of this paper is to present cognitive and instructional analyses of standards for mathematical practice through a discussion of field-based activities with inservice secondary mathematics teachers and students. A potential value of the study is that it provides researchers with specific field-based hypotheses on advancing standards for mathematical practice.     

Consumer memory and price fluctuations in commodity markets: An integrodifferential model

A model for the dynamics of price adjustment in a single commodity market is developed. Nonlinearities in both supply and demand functions are considered explicitly, as are delays due to production lags and storage policies, to yield a nonlinear integrodifferential equation. Conditions for the local stability of the equilibrium price are derived in terms of the elasticities of supply and demand, the supply and demand relaxation times, and the equilibrium production-storage delay. The destabilizing effect of consumer memory on the equilibrium price is analyzed, and the ensuing Hopf bifurcations are described.     

Delay-independent exponential stability of stochastic Cohen–Grossberg neural networks with time-varying delays and reaction–diffusion terms

Different from the approaches used in the earlier papers, in this paper, the Halanay inequality technique, in combination with the Lyapunov method, is exploited to establish a delay-independent sufficient condition for the exponential stability of stochastic Cohen–Grossberg neural networks with time-varying delays and reaction–diffusion terms. Moreover, for the deterministic delayed Cohen–Grossberg neural networks, with or without reaction–diffusion terms, sufficient criteria for their global exponential stability are also obtained. The proposed results improve and extend those in the earlier literature and are easier to verify. An example is also given to illustrate the correctness of our results.     

Variable-step variable-order 3-stage Hermite-Birkhoff-Obrechkoff DDE solver of order 4 to 14

This article presents a solver for delay differential equations (DDEs) called HBO414DDE based on a hybrid variable-step variable-order 3-stage Hermite-Birkhoff-Obrechkoff ODE solver of order 4 to 14. The current version of our method solves DDEs with state dependent, non-vanishing, small, vanishing and asymptotically vanishing delays, except neutral type and initial value DDEs. Delayed values are computed using Hermite interpolation, small delays are dealt with by extrapolation, and discontinuities are located by a bisection method. HBO414DDE was tested on several problems and results were compared with those of known solvers like SYSDEL and the recent Matlab DDE solver ddesd and statistics show that it gives, most of the time, a smaller relative error than the other solvers for the same number of function evaluations.     

A system-theoretic model for cooperation, interaction and allocation

A system-theoretic approach to cooperation, interaction and allocation is presented that simplifies, unifies and extends the results on classical cooperative games and their generalizations. In particular, a general Weber theory of linear values is obtained and a new theory for local cooperation and general interaction indices is established. The model is dynamic and based on the notion of states of cooperation that change under actions of agents. Careful distinction between “local” states of cooperation and general “system” states leads to a notion of entropy for arbitrary non-negative and efficient allocations and thus to a new information-theoretic criterion for fairness of allocation mechanisms. Shapley allocations, for instance, are exhibited as arising from random walks with maximal entropy. For a large class of cooperation systems, a characterization of game symmetries in terms of λ-values is given. A concept for cores and Weber sets is proposed and it is shown that a Weber set of a game with selection structure always contains the core.