This study relates the gait asymmetry, residual limb comfort, and energy cost during walking and identifies a compensating pattern for the trans-tibial amputees when the prostheses are misaligned. One male subject with a trans-tibial amputation volunteered for the study. The knee joint moments at the prosthetic side, the phase symmetry index, and the interface pressures were discussed under three sagittal alignment settings. The results show that the subject changes the knee joint moment, gait s...

Fatigue and cracks have occurred in many large hydraulic turbines after they were put into production. The cracks are thought to be due to dynamic stresses in the runner caused by hydraulic forces. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations that included the spiral case, stay vane, guide vane, runner vane, and draft tube were run at various operating points to analyze the pressure distribution on the runner surface and the stress characteristics in the runner due to the fluid-structure inter...

This paper presents a Kalman filter to effectively and economically determine the Euler angles for micro aerial vehicles (MAVs), whose size and payload are severely limited. The filter uses data from a series of micro-electro mechanical system sensors to determine the selected 3 variables of the direction cosine matrix and the bias of the rate gyro sensors as state elements in a dynamic model, with the gravitational acceleration to build a measurement model. For high speed maneuvers, rigid motio...

A two-dimensional finite element model was used to analyze the thermal and mechanical behavior during solidification of the strand in a continuous bloom casting mold. The coupled heat transfer and deformation were analyzed to simulate the formation of the air gap between the mold and the strand. The model was used to investigate the influence of mold taper on the temperature and stress distributions in the strand. The results show that the air gap mainly forms around the strand corner, causing a...

This paper introduces a meshless method based on Daubechies (DB) wavelets for 2-D elastic problems. The scaling and wavelet functions of the DB wavelet are used as basis functions to approximate the unknown field functions, so there is no need to construct costly shape functions as in the finite element method (FEM) and other meshless methods. In addition, the properties of the DB wavelets facilitate implementation of the method. The new method is used to analyze the elastic problem of a plain p...

A series of thermodynamics experiments were used to optimize the hot forging process of 20SiMn low-carbon alloy steel. A dynamic recrystallization and grain growth model was developed for the 20SiMn steel for common production conditions of heavy forgings by doing a nonlinear curve fit of the experiment data. Optimized forging parameters were developed based on the control of the dynamic recrystallization and the MnS secondary phase. The data shows that the initial grain size and the MnS seconda...

Small unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) can be used for various kinds of surveillance and data collection missions. The UAV flight control system is the key to a successful mission. This paper describes a low-cost micro-electro mechanical system-based flight control system for small UAVs. The integrated hardware flight control system weighs only 24 g. The system includes a highly-integrated wireless transmission link, which is lighter than traditional links. The flight control provides altitude hold ...

This study focuses on the influence of the monitoring method and control complexity on the operator performance in manually controlled spacecraft rendezvous and docking (RVD). Two one-factor experiments were designed on a simulated RVD system. One examined the video guidance and periscope monitoring methods, and the other examined three control complexity levels using one-axis RVD control, two-axis RVD control, and three-axis RVD control. Eighteen male volunteers aged 22–35 participated in...

A genetic algorithm (GA) and a hybrid genetic algorithm (HGA) were used for optimal scheduling of public vehicles based on their actual operational environments. The performance for three kinds of vehicular levels were compared using one-point and two-point crossover operations. The vehicle scheduling times are improved by the intelligent characteristics of the GA. The HGA, which integrates the genetic algorithm with a tabu search, further improves the convergence performance and the optimizatio...

Traditional trip generation forecasting methods use unified average trip generation rates to determine trip generation volumes in various traffic zones without considering the individual characteristics of each traffic zone. Therefore, the results can have significant errors. To reduce the forecasting error produced by uniform trip generation rates for different traffic zones, the behavior of each traveler was studied instead of the characteristics of the traffic zone. This paper gives a method ...

This paper presents a model matching control (MMC) method based on the sliding mode control (SMC) method for longitudinal acceleration tracking control in a vehicular stop-and-go cruise control system. The nonlinearity of the vehicle acceleration response at low speeds was analyzed to develop a transfer function model of the vehicle longitudinal dynamics using the least-mean-square system identification technique. This transfer function was then used to design the MMC controller, including an SM...

Road maintenance work brings costs to the government and delays to users. The setting up of work zones often leads to severe congestion during peak hours, especially in busy urban areas. A road maintenance delay model is presented here that includes consideration of excessive traffic flow and non-motorists. A trial-and-error method is used to find the optimal work zone length and the best work starting time to minimize the total cost of maintenance and delays. A numerical example with a sensitiv...

The paper analyzes the equity of road resources distribution in urban areas by modeling the competitive relationship among different road users. A logistic model is used to describe the development of different traffic modes in the transportation network. The system is similar to the species competition model, so a two-species model is used to analyze the relationship between users based on the stability of the equilibrium points. The Lotka-Volterra model is then used to describe the multi-speci...

Currently applied prediction methods of regional freight traffic and freight ton-kilometer forecasting were analyzed using typical Chinese regional goods transportation characteristics. The review of prediction methods showes that practical planning experts tend to apply the traditional methods which are easier to implement. The comparison also demonstrates that a combination of traditional methods is more effective than the simple models for practical planning. Research using the statistical da...

This paper presents an experimental study of the possibility of transition from multiple macro-cracking to multiple micro-cracking in cementitious composites. Conventional polyvinyl alcohol fiber reinforced cementitious composites normally exhibit macroscopic strain-hardening and multiple cracking after the first cracks appear. However, the individual crack width at the saturated stage is normally 60 to 80 μm. In the current study, the effect of fine aggregate size on the cracking performance, e...

A virtual reality system was developed to simulate emergency evacuations during fires. The spreading of the flame and smoke in the virtual fire was modeled based on numerical fire simulations, so that the conditions are similar to real life. A multi-grid, multi-base-state database model was used to overcome the disadvantages of traditional smoke spreading simulations. Textured images and particle systems provide visualization of the flame and smoke. The system immerses the user in a virtual envi...

This paper presents a simplified beam design method for semi-rigid composite frames with vertical loading at the serviceability limit state. Equations were developed to determine the deflections of the composite beam allowing for both joint flexibility and beam sectional properties, along with a formula for the connection secant stiffness. The equations for the connection stiffness are more accurate than previous equations used because it considers the beam-to-column stiffness ratio and the beam...

Housing liquidity measures the ability to convert housing to cash as an important characteristic of housing stock. A simple model of buyer offers' distributions was used to theoretically explore the determinants of housing liquidity in a search process. An empirical ordinary least squares model of the time-on-market was developed using data collected in four Chinese cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen). The results show that in these four Chinese cities, market maturity dominates ...

The influential depth of moisture transport in a concrete surface subject to drying-wetting cycles was analyzed numerically. The moisture transport was described by a diffusion model with different diffusivities for drying and wetting. A finite difference scheme was developed to solve the partial differential equations. The influential depth was then investigated numerically for initially saturated and unsaturated concretes exposed to drying-wetting actions in marine environments using an equili...

The feasibility study of a public-private partnership (PPP) project is regarded as one of the critical factors for successful implementation, but unfortunately the common financial evaluation methods currently used only represent the benefits of the private sector. There is, therefore, an urgent need to develop an equitable financial evaluation method for PPP projects. This paper presents a comprehensive literature review that examines international practices. An equitable financial evaluation m...

A comprehensive description of the key factors affecting evacuations at fire scenes is necessary for accurate simulations. An agent-based simulation model which incorporates the fire scene and the building geometry is developed using a fire dynamics simulator (FDS) based on the computational fluid dynamics and geographic information system (GIS) data to model the occupant response. The building entities are generated for FDS simulation while the spatial analysis on GIS data represents the occupa...

This paper presents a study of the middle route of the South-North Water Diversion Project. The middle route runs through the Northern China plain, where the water shortages are the most severe. There is not only a shortage of water for human usage, but also a shortage of ecological water. Although the current plan for the middle route is strictly focused on supplying water for residential and industrial use, the water can also potentially be used for ecological purposes. This paper evaluates th...

Measured field data was used to analyze the factors which influence the transparency of the Nei River and to develop a multi-factor correlation for the transparency. A 2-D unsteady model which coupled analyses of the water flow, water quality, suspended sediments, and Chl-a was developed to simulate the changes in the transparency for various conditions. The model was then used to forecast the transparency of the Nei River. The suspended sediment concentration (SSC) was found to be the most impo...

Chemical complexation, in which certain metal ions (especially Ag⁺ and Cu⁺) reversibly and selectively complex olefin isomers, was used to separate 1-hexene from a mixture of internal hexenes as an attractive alternative to traditional distillation. Several potential reactive extractants were investigated for their selectivity of both 1-hexene to 2-hexene and 1-hexene to 3-hexene. With 3 mol/L AgNO₃-N-methyl-pyrrolidone (NMP) solution as extractant, the selectivi...

Old towns like Lijiang have enormous historic, artistic, and architectural value. The buildings in such old towns are usually made of highly combustible materials, such as wood and grass. If a fire breaks out, it will spread to multiple buildings, so fire spreading and controlling in old towns need to be studied. This paper presents a fire spread model for old towns based on cellular automaton. The cellular automaton rules were set according to historical fire data in empirical formulas. The mod...