5,938 research outputs found
Sensitivity study of crack driving force predictions in heterogeneous welds using Vickers hardness maps
Weld flaws often require an engineering critical assessment (ECA) to judge on the necessity for weld repair. ECA is a fracture mechanics based prediction of the integrity of welds under operating conditions. Adding to the complexity of an ECA is the occurrence of local constitutive property variations in the weldment (‘weld heterogeneity’). Their quantification is important to allow for an accurate assessment. Hereto, hardness measurements are widely adopted given their theoretical relation with ultimate tensile strength. However, various standards and procedures report a wide variety of different hardness transfer functions and additionally recognize substantial scatter in predictions of strength. Within this context, this paper investigates the suitability of hardness mapping to perform an accurate weld ECA. A finite element analysis has been conducted on welds originating from steel pipelines to simulate their crack driving force response using single-edge notched tension (SE(T)) specimens. Vickers hardness maps and hardness transfer functions are combined to assign element-specific constitutive properties to the model. The resulting crack driving force curves are probed against experimental results. The variable agreement between simulations and experiments highlights the need for further research into the characterization of local constitutive properties of heterogeneous welds. A hardness transfer procedure based on all weld metal tensile testing appears to be particularly promising
Idealized model for changes in equilibrium temperature, mixed layer depth, and boundary layer cloud over land in a doubled CO2 climate
An idealized equilibrium model for the undisturbed partly cloudy boundary layer (BL) is used as a framework to explore the coupling of the energy, water, and carbon cycles over land in midlatitudes and show the sensitivity to the clear‐sky shortwave flux, the midtropospheric temperature, moisture, CO2, and subsidence. The changes in the surface fluxes, the BL equilibrium, and cloud cover are shown for a warmer, doubled CO2 climate. Reduced stomatal conductance in a simple vegetation model amplifies the background 2 K ocean temperature rise to an (unrealistically large) 6 K increase in near‐surface temperature over land, with a corresponding drop of near‐surface relative humidity of about 19%, and a rise of cloud base of about 70 hPa. Cloud changes depend strongly on changes of mean subsidence; but evaporative fraction (EF) decreases. EF is almost uniquely related to mixed layer (ML) depth, independent of background forcing climate. This suggests that it might be possible to infer EF for heterogeneous landscapes from ML depth. The asymmetry of increased evaporation over the oceans and reduced transpiration over land increases in a warmer doubled CO2 climate
Automatic Filters for the Detection of Coherent Structure in Spatiotemporal Systems
Most current methods for identifying coherent structures in
spatially-extended systems rely on prior information about the form which those
structures take. Here we present two new approaches to automatically filter the
changing configurations of spatial dynamical systems and extract coherent
structures. One, local sensitivity filtering, is a modification of the local
Lyapunov exponent approach suitable to cellular automata and other discrete
spatial systems. The other, local statistical complexity filtering, calculates
the amount of information needed for optimal prediction of the system's
behavior in the vicinity of a given point. By examining the changing
spatiotemporal distributions of these quantities, we can find the coherent
structures in a variety of pattern-forming cellular automata, without needing
to guess or postulate the form of that structure. We apply both filters to
elementary and cyclical cellular automata (ECA and CCA) and find that they
readily identify particles, domains and other more complicated structures. We
compare the results from ECA with earlier ones based upon the theory of formal
languages, and the results from CCA with a more traditional approach based on
an order parameter and free energy. While sensitivity and statistical
complexity are equally adept at uncovering structure, they are based on
different system properties (dynamical and probabilistic, respectively), and
provide complementary information.Comment: 16 pages, 21 figures. Figures considerably compressed to fit arxiv
requirements; write first author for higher-resolution version
Compressive Imaging Using RIP-Compliant CMOS Imager Architecture and Landweber Reconstruction
In this paper, we present a new image sensor architecture for fast and accurate compressive sensing (CS) of natural images. Measurement matrices usually employed in CS CMOS image sensors are recursive pseudo-random binary matrices. We have proved that the restricted isometry property of these matrices is limited by a low sparsity constant. The quality of these matrices is also affected by the non-idealities of pseudo-random number generators (PRNG). To overcome these limitations, we propose a hardware-friendly pseudo-random ternary measurement matrix generated on-chip by means of class III elementary cellular automata (ECA). These ECA present a chaotic behavior that emulates random CS measurement matrices better than other PRNG. We have combined this new architecture with a block-based CS smoothed-projected Landweber reconstruction algorithm. By means of single value decomposition, we have adapted this algorithm to perform fast and precise reconstruction while operating with binary and ternary matrices. Simulations are provided to qualify the approach.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2015-66878-C3-1-RJunta de Andalucía TIC 2338-2013Office of Naval Research (USA) N000141410355European Union H2020 76586
Formal Definitions of Unbounded Evolution and Innovation Reveal Universal Mechanisms for Open-Ended Evolution in Dynamical Systems
Open-ended evolution (OEE) is relevant to a variety of biological, artificial
and technological systems, but has been challenging to reproduce in silico.
Most theoretical efforts focus on key aspects of open-ended evolution as it
appears in biology. We recast the problem as a more general one in dynamical
systems theory, providing simple criteria for open-ended evolution based on two
hallmark features: unbounded evolution and innovation. We define unbounded
evolution as patterns that are non-repeating within the expected Poincare
recurrence time of an equivalent isolated system, and innovation as
trajectories not observed in isolated systems. As a case study, we implement
novel variants of cellular automata (CA) in which the update rules are allowed
to vary with time in three alternative ways. Each is capable of generating
conditions for open-ended evolution, but vary in their ability to do so. We
find that state-dependent dynamics, widely regarded as a hallmark of life,
statistically out-performs other candidate mechanisms, and is the only
mechanism to produce open-ended evolution in a scalable manner, essential to
the notion of ongoing evolution. This analysis suggests a new framework for
unifying mechanisms for generating OEE with features distinctive to life and
its artifacts, with broad applicability to biological and artificial systems.Comment: Main document: 17 pages, Supplement: 21 pages Presented at OEE2: The
Second Workshop on Open-Ended Evolution, 15th International Conference on the
Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems (ALIFE XV), Canc\'un, Mexico, 4-8
July 2016 (http://www.tim-taylor.com/oee2/
On the correlation between Ca and Halpha solar emission and consequences for stellar activity observations
The correlation between Ca and Halpha chromospheric emission, known to be
positive in the solar case, has been found to vary between -1 and 1 for other
stars. Our objective is to understand the factors influencing this correlation
in the solar case, and then to extrapolate our interpretation to other stars.
We characterize the correlation between both types of emission in the solar
case for different time scales. Then we determine the filling factors due to
plages and filaments, and reconstruct the Ca and Halpha emission to test
different physical conditions in terms of plage and filament contrasts. We have
been able to precisely determine the correlation in the solar case as a
function of the cycle phase. We interpret the results as reflecting the balance
between the emission in plages and the absorption in filaments. We found that
correlations close to zero or slightly negative can be obtained when
considering the same spatio-temporal distribution of plages and filaments than
on the sun but with greater contrast. However, with that assumption,
correlations close to -1 cannot be obtained for example. Stars with a very low
Halpha contrast in plages and filaments well correlated with plages could
produce a correlation close to -1. This study opens new ways to study stellar
activity, and provides a new diagnosis that will ultimately help to understand
the magnetic configuration of stars other than the sun.Comment: 10 pages, 13 figures, accepted in Astronomy and Astrophysic
Complexity and Information: Measuring Emergence, Self-organization, and Homeostasis at Multiple Scales
Concepts used in the scientific study of complex systems have become so
widespread that their use and abuse has led to ambiguity and confusion in their
meaning. In this paper we use information theory to provide abstract and
concise measures of complexity, emergence, self-organization, and homeostasis.
The purpose is to clarify the meaning of these concepts with the aid of the
proposed formal measures. In a simplified version of the measures (focusing on
the information produced by a system), emergence becomes the opposite of
self-organization, while complexity represents their balance. Homeostasis can
be seen as a measure of the stability of the system. We use computational
experiments on random Boolean networks and elementary cellular automata to
illustrate our measures at multiple scales.Comment: 42 pages, 11 figures, 2 table
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