Interval and Fuzzy Computing in Neural Network for System Identification Problems

Increase of population and growing of societal and commercial activities with limited land available in a modern city leads to construction up of tall/high-rise buildings. As such, it is important to investigate about the health of the structure after the occurrence of manmade or natural disasters such as earthquakes etc. A direct mathematical expression for parametric study or system identification of these structures is not always possible. Actually System Identification (SI) problems are inverse vibration problems consisting of coupled linear or non-linear differential equations that depend upon the physics of the system. It is also not always possible to get the solutions for these problems by classical methods. Few researchers have used different methods to solve the above mentioned problems. But difficulties are faced very often while finding solution to these problems because inverse problem generally gives non-unique parameter estimates. To overcome these difficulties alternate soft computing techniques such as Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are being used by various researchers to handle the above SI problems. It is worth mentioning that traditional neural network methods have inherent advantage because it can model the experimental data (input and output) where good mathematical model is not available. Moreover, inverse problems have been solved by other researchers for deterministic cases only. But while performing experiments it is always not possible to get the data exactly in crisp form. There may be some errors that are due to involvement of human or experiment. Accordingly, those data may actually be in uncertain form and corresponding methodologies need to be developed. It is an important issue about dealing with variables, parameters or data with uncertain value. There are three classes of uncertain models, which are probabilistic, fuzzy and interval. Recently, fuzzy theory and interval analysis are becoming powerful tools for many applications in recent decades. It is known that interval and fuzzy computations are themselves very complex to handle. Having these in mind one has to develop efficient computational models and algorithms very carefully to handle these uncertain problems. As said above, in general we may not obtain the corresponding input and output values (experimental) exactly or in crisp form but we may have only uncertain information of the data. Hence, investigations are needed to handle the SI problems where data is available in uncertain form. Identification methods with crisp (exact) data are known and traditional neural network methods have already been used by various researchers. But when the data are in uncertain form then traditional ANN may not be applied. Accordingly, new ANN models need to be developed which may solve the targeted uncertain SI problems. Hence present investigation targets to develop powerful methods of neural network based on interval and fuzzy theory for the analysis and simulation with respect to the uncertain system identification problems. In this thesis, these uncertain data are assumed as interval and fuzzy numbers. Accordingly, identification methodologies are developed for multistorey shear buildings by proposing new models of Interval Neural Network (INN) and Fuzzy Neural Network (FNN) models which can handle interval and fuzzified data respectively. It may however be noted that the developed methodology not only be important for the mentioned problems but those may very well be used in other application problems too. Few SI problems have been solved in the present thesis using INN and FNN model which are briefly described below. From initial design parameters (namely stiffness and mass in terms of interval and fuzzy) corresponding design frequencies may be obtained for a given structural problem viz. for a multistorey shear structure. The uncertain (interval/fuzzy) frequencies may then be used to estimate the present structural parameter values by the proposed INN and FNN. Next, the identification has been done using vibration response of the structure subject to ambient vibration with interval/fuzzy initial conditions. Forced vibration with horizontal displacement in interval/fuzzified form has also been used to investigate the identification problem. Moreover this study involves SI problems of structures (viz. shear buildings) with respect to earthquake data in order to know the health of a structure. It is well known that earthquake data are both positive and negative. The Interval Neural Network and Fuzzy Neural Network model may not handle the data with negative sign due to the complexity in interval and fuzzy computation. As regards, a novel transformation method have been developed to compute response of a structural system by training the model for Indian earthquakes at Chamoli and Uttarkashi using uncertain (interval/fuzzified) ground motion data. The simulation may give an idea about the safety of the structural system in case of future earthquakes. Further a single layer interval and fuzzy neural network based strategy has been proposed for simultaneous identification of the mass, stiffness and damping of uncertain multi-storey shear buildings using series/cluster of neural networks. It is known that training in MNN and also in INN and FNN are time consuming because these models depend upon the number of nodes in the hidden layer and convergence of the weights during training. As such, single layer Functional Link Neural Network (FLNN) with multi-input and multi-output model has also been proposed to solve the system identification problems for the first time. It is worth mentioning that, single input single output FLNN had been proposed by previous authors. In FLNN, the hidden layer is replaced by a functional expansion block for enhancement of the input patterns using orthogonal polynomials such as Chebyshev, Legendre and Hermite, etc. The computations become more efficient than the traditional or classical multi-layer neural network due to the absence of hidden layer. FLNN has also been used for structural response prediction of multistorey shear buildings subject to earthquake ground motion. It is seen that FLNN can very well predict the structural response of different floors of multi-storey shear building subject to earthquake data. Comparison of results among Multi layer Neural Network (MNN), Chebyshev Neural Network (ChNN), Legendre Neural Network (LeNN), Hermite Neural Network (HNN) and desired are considered and it is found that Functional Link Neural Network models are more effective and takes less computation time than MNN. In order to show the reliability, efficacy and powerfulness of INN, FNN and FLNN models variety of problems have been solved here. Finally FLNN is also extended to interval based FLNN which is again proposed for the first time to the best of our knowledge. This model is implemented to estimate the uncertain stiffness parameters of a multi-storey shear building. The parameters are identified here using uncertain response of the structure subject to ambient and forced vibration with interval initial condition and horizontal displacement also in interval form

Individual and ensemble functional link neural networks for data classification

This study investigated the Functional Link Neural Network (FLNN) for solving data classification problems. FLNN based models were developed using evolutionary methods as well as ensemble methods. The outcomes of the experiments covering benchmark classification problems, positively demonstrated the efficacy of the proposed models for undertaking data classification problems

Microarray image processing: A novel neural network framework

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Due to the vast success of bioengineering techniques, a series of large-scale analysis tools has been developed to discover the functional organization of cells. Among them, cDNA microarray has emerged as a powerful technology that enables biologists to cDNA microarray technology has enabled biologists to study thousands of genes simultaneously within an entire organism, and thus obtain a better understanding of the gene interaction and regulation mechanisms involved. Although microarray technology has been developed so as to offer high tolerances, there exists high signal irregularity through the surface of the microarray image. The imperfection in the microarray image generation process causes noises of many types, which contaminate the resulting image. These errors and noises will propagate down through, and can significantly affect, all subsequent processing and analysis. Therefore, to realize the potential of such technology it is crucial to obtain high quality image data that would indeed reflect the underlying biology in the samples. One of the key steps in extracting information from a microarray image is segmentation: identifying which pixels within an image represent which gene. This area of spotted microarray image analysis has received relatively little attention relative to the advances in proceeding analysis stages. But, the lack of advanced image analysis, including the segmentation, results in sub-optimal data being used in all downstream analysis methods. Although there is recently much research on microarray image analysis with many methods have been proposed, some methods produce better results than others. In general, the most effective approaches require considerable run time (processing) power to process an entire image. Furthermore, there has been little progress on developing sufficiently fast yet efficient and effective algorithms the segmentation of the microarray image by using a highly sophisticated framework such as Cellular Neural Networks (CNNs). It is, therefore, the aim of this thesis to investigate and develop novel methods processing microarray images. The goal is to produce results that outperform the currently available approaches in terms of PSNR, k-means and ICC measurements.Aleppo University, Syri

Applied Mathematics and Computational Physics

As faster and more efficient numerical algorithms become available, the understanding of the physics and the mathematical foundation behind these new methods will play an increasingly important role. This Special Issue provides a platform for researchers from both academia and industry to present their novel computational methods that have engineering and physics applications

A radial basis function method for solving optimal control problems.

This work presents two direct methods based on the radial basis function (RBF) interpolation and arbitrary discretization for solving continuous-time optimal control problems: RBF Collocation Method and RBF-Galerkin Method. Both methods take advantage of choosing any global RBF as the interpolant function and any arbitrary points (meshless or on a mesh) as the discretization points. The first approach is called the RBF collocation method, in which states and controls are parameterized using a global RBF, and constraints are satisfied at arbitrary discrete nodes (collocation points) to convert the continuous-time optimal control problem to a nonlinear programming (NLP) problem. The resulted NLP is quite sparse and can be efficiently solved by well-developed sparse solvers. The second proposed method is a hybrid approach combining RBF interpolation with Galerkin error projection for solving optimal control problems. The proposed solution, called the RBF-Galerkin method, applies a Galerkin projection to the residuals of the optimal control problem that make them orthogonal to every member of the RBF basis functions. Also, RBF-Galerkin costate mapping theorem will be developed describing an exact equivalency between the Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) conditions of the NLP problem resulted from the RBF-Galerkin method and discretized form of the first-order necessary conditions of the optimal control problem, if a set of conditions holds. Several examples are provided to verify the feasibility and viability of the RBF method and the RBF-Galerkin approach as means of finding accurate solutions to general optimal control problems. Then, the RBF-Galerkin method is applied to a very important drug dosing application: anemia management in chronic kidney disease. A multiple receding horizon control (MRHC) approach based on the RBF-Galerkin method is developed for individualized dosing of an anemia drug for hemodialysis patients. Simulation results are compared with a population-oriented clinical protocol as well as an individual-based control method for anemia management to investigate the efficacy of the proposed method

Microarray image processing : a novel neural network framework

Due to the vast success of bioengineering techniques, a series of large-scale analysis tools has been developed to discover the functional organization of cells. Among them, cDNA microarray has emerged as a powerful technology that enables biologists to cDNA microarray technology has enabled biologists to study thousands of genes simultaneously within an entire organism, and thus obtain a better understanding of the gene interaction and regulation mechanisms involved. Although microarray technology has been developed so as to offer high tolerances, there exists high signal irregularity through the surface of the microarray image. The imperfection in the microarray image generation process causes noises of many types, which contaminate the resulting image. These errors and noises will propagate down through, and can significantly affect, all subsequent processing and analysis. Therefore, to realize the potential of such technology it is crucial to obtain high quality image data that would indeed reflect the underlying biology in the samples. One of the key steps in extracting information from a microarray image is segmentation: identifying which pixels within an image represent which gene. This area of spotted microarray image analysis has received relatively little attention relative to the advances in proceeding analysis stages. But, the lack of advanced image analysis, including the segmentation, results in sub-optimal data being used in all downstream analysis methods. Although there is recently much research on microarray image analysis with many methods have been proposed, some methods produce better results than others. In general, the most effective approaches require considerable run time (processing) power to process an entire image. Furthermore, there has been little progress on developing sufficiently fast yet efficient and effective algorithms the segmentation of the microarray image by using a highly sophisticated framework such as Cellular Neural Networks (CNNs). It is, therefore, the aim of this thesis to investigate and develop novel methods processing microarray images. The goal is to produce results that outperform the currently available approaches in terms of PSNR, k-means and ICC measurements.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceAleppo University, SyriaGBUnited Kingdo

Design and implementation of machine learning techniques for modeling and managing battery energy storage systems

The fast technological evolution and industrialization that have interested the humankind since the fifties has caused a progressive and exponential increase of CO2 emissions and Earth temperature. Therefore, the research community and the political authorities have recognized the need of a deep technological revolution in both the transportation and the energy distribution systems to hinder climate changes. Thus, pure and hybrid electric powertrains, smart grids, and microgrids are key technologies for achieving the expected goals. Nevertheless, the development of the above mentioned technologies require very effective and performing Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESSs), and even more effective Battery Management Systems (BMSs). Considering the above background, this Ph.D. thesis has focused on the development of an innovative and advanced BMS that involves the use of machine learning techniques for improving the BESS effectiveness and efficiency. Great attention has been paid to the State of Charge (SoC) estimation problem, aiming at investigating solutions for achieving more accurate and reliable estimations. To this aim, the main contribution has concerned the development of accurate and flexible models of electrochemical cells. Three main modeling requirements have been pursued for ensuring accurate SoC estimations: insight on the cell physics, nonlinear approximation capability, and flexible system identification procedures. Thus, the research activity has aimed at fulfilling these requirements by developing and investigating three different modeling approaches, namely black, white, and gray box techniques. Extreme Learning Machines, Radial Basis Function Neural Networks, and Wavelet Neural Networks were considered among the black box models, but none of them were able to achieve satisfactory SoC estimation performances. The white box Equivalent Circuit Models (ECMs) have achieved better results, proving the benefit that the insight on the cell physics provides to the SoC estimation task. Nevertheless, it has appeared clear that the linearity of ECMs has reduced their effectiveness in the SoC task. Thus, the gray box Neural Networks Ensemble (NNE) and the white box Equivalent Neural Networks Circuit (ENNC) models have been developed aiming at exploiting the neural networks theory in order to achieve accurate models, ensuring at the same time very flexible system identification procedures together with nonlinear approximation capabilities. The performances of NNE and ENNC have been compelling. In particular, the white box ENNC has reached the most effective performances, achieving accurate SoC estimations, together with a simple architecture and a flexible system identification procedure. The outcome of this thesis makes it possible the development of an interesting scenario in which a suitable cloud framework provides remote assistance to several BMSs in order to adapt the managing algorithms to the aging of BESSs, even considering different and distinct applications