An integrated approach to system design, reliability, and diagnosis

The requirement for ultradependability of computer systems in future avionics and space applications necessitates a top-down, integrated systems engineering approach for design, implementation, testing, and operation. The functional analyses of hardware and software systems must be combined by models that are flexible enough to represent their interactions and behavior. The information contained in these models must be accessible throughout all phases of the system life cycle in order to maintain consistency and accuracy in design and operational decisions. One approach being taken by researchers at Ames Research Center is the creation of an object-oriented environment that integrates information about system components required in the reliability evaluation with behavioral information useful for diagnostic algorithms. Procedures have been developed at Ames that perform reliability evaluations during design and failure diagnoses during system operation. These procedures utilize information from a central source, structured as object-oriented fault trees. Fault trees were selected because they are a flexible model widely used in aerospace applications and because they give a concise, structured representation of system behavior. The utility of this integrated environment for aerospace applications in light of our experiences during its development and use is described. The techniques for reliability evaluation and failure diagnosis are discussed, and current extensions of the environment and areas requiring further development are summarized

A diagnosis system using object-oriented fault tree models

Spaceborne computing systems must provide reliable, continuous operation for extended periods. Due to weight, power, and volume constraints, these systems must manage resources very effectively. A fault diagnosis algorithm is described which enables fast and flexible diagnoses in the dynamic distributed computing environments planned for future space missions. The algorithm uses a knowledge base that is easily changed and updated to reflect current system status. Augmented fault trees represented in an object-oriented form provide deep system knowledge that is easy to access and revise as a system changes. Given such a fault tree, a set of failure events that have occurred, and a set of failure events that have not occurred, this diagnosis system uses forward and backward chaining to propagate causal and temporal information about other failure events in the system being diagnosed. Once the system has established temporal and causal constraints, it reasons backward from heuristically selected failure events to find a set of basic failure events which are a likely cause of the occurrence of the top failure event in the fault tree. The diagnosis system has been implemented in common LISP using Flavors

Rotor response for transient unbalance changes in a nonlinear simulation

Transient unbalance shifts were determined not to excite a rotor instability in the high pressure turbomachinery of the Space Shuttle Main Engine using the current rotor dynamic models. Sudden unbalance changes of relatively small magnitudes during fast-speed ramps showed stable nonsynchronous motion depending on the resultant unbalance distribution at subsequent high speed dwells. Transient moment unbalance may initiate a limit cycle subsynchronous response that shortly decays, but a persistent subsynchronous with large amplitudes was never achieved. These limit cycle subsynchronous amplitudes appear to be minimized with lower unbalance magnitudes, which indicates improved rotor balancing would sustain synchronous motion only. The transient unbalance phenomenon was determined to be an explanation for synchronous response shifts often observed during engine tests

MODELLING ELASTICITY OF INJECTION MOULDED SHORT FIBRE REINFORCED POLYMERS: COMPARISON BETWEEN EXPERIMENTAL AND ANALYTICAL APPROACHES

In this work we analysed a sample of short fibre reinforced polyamide extracted from an injection moulded plate. We derived local values of the elastic constants by two different numerical methods, one based on simulation and one based on the reconstruction of the sample's microstructure by micro - CT. Results were compared in terms of moduli of elasticity, assuming an orthotropic material model. Fibre orientation was first simulated by process simulation and results were checked against experimental data obtained by the optical section method. Then, fibre orientation data were used for micro-mechanical modelling of the elastic behaviour by means of mean field homogenisation tools. The experimentally based approach was based on micro computed tomography reconstructions of the inner structure of samples extracted from the injection moulded plate. Using numerical models based on the Cell Method, the elastic behaviour of the reconstructed volume was simulated and results were compared with analytical models based on process simulations and homogenization

Orientation of the genetic variance-covariance matrix and the fitness surface for multiple male sexually selected traits

Stabilizing selection has been predicted to change genetic variances and covariances so that the orientation of the genetic variance-covariance matrix (G) becomes aligned with the orientation of the fitness surface, but it is less clear how directional selection may change G. Here we develop statistical approaches to the comparison of G with vectors of linear and nonlinear selection. We apply these approaches to a set of male sexually selected cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) of Drosophila serrata. Even though male CHCs displayed substantial additive genetic variance, more than 99% of the genetic variance was orientated 74.9degrees away from the vector of linear sexual selection, suggesting that open-ended female preferences may greatly reduce genetic variation in male display traits. Although the orientation of G and the fitness surface were found to differ significantly, the similarity present in eigenstructure was a consequence of traits under weak linear selection and strong nonlinear ( convex) selection. Associating the eigenstructure of G with vectors of linear and nonlinear selection may provide a way of determining what long-term changes in G may be generated by the processes of natural and sexual selection

Many-body position operator in lattice fermionic systems with periodic boundary conditions

A total position operator $X$ in the position representation is derived for lattice fermionic systems with periodic boundary conditions. The operator is shown to be Hermitian, the generator of translations in momentum space, and its time derivative is shown to correspond to the total current operator in a periodic system. The operator is such that its moments can be calculated up to any order. To demonstrate its utility finite size scaling is applied to the Brinkman-Rice transition as well as metallic and insulating Gutzwiller wavefunctions.Comment: to appear in Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and General (reference will be added later

Asteroid 1986 DA: Radar evidence for a metallic composition

Radar observations of the near-Earth asteroid 1986 DA were carried out at the Arecibo Observatory in April 1986, two months after its discovery. Radar results are consistent with the hypothesis that 1986 HA is a piece of NiFe metal derived from the interior of a much larger object that melted, differentiated, cooled and subsequently was disrupted in a catastrophic collision. This 2-km asteroid might be (or have been part of) the parent body of some iron meteorites. Or 1986 DA might share the parentage and/or part of the dynamical history of some meteorites without ever having contributed any of its own ejecta to our meteorite sample. Analysis of the samples returned from 1986 DA might ultimately involve economic considerations. Meteoritic metal is mostly iron with about 8 percent nickel, but also contains substantial concentrations of precious and strategic metals, including approx. 1 ppm of gold and approx. 10 ppm of platinum group elements. If these abundances apply to 1986 DA, it contains some 10(exp 16) g of iron, 10 (exp 15) g of nickel, 10(exp 11) g of platinum group metals, and 10(exp 10) g of gold

Fault management for data systems

Issues related to automating the process of fault management (fault diagnosis and response) for data management systems are considered. Substantial benefits are to be gained by successful automation of this process, particularly for large, complex systems. The use of graph-based models to develop a computer assisted fault management system is advocated. The general problem is described and the motivation behind choosing graph-based models over other approaches for developing fault diagnosis computer programs is outlined. Some existing work in the area of graph-based fault diagnosis is reviewed, and a new fault management method which was developed from existing methods is offered. Our method is applied to an automatic telescope system intended as a prototype for future lunar telescope programs. Finally, an application of our method to general data management systems is described

Linguistic DNA: Investigating Conceptual Change in Early Modern English Discourse

This article describes the background and premises of the AHRC-funded project, ‘The Linguistic DNA of Modern Western Thought’. We offer an empirical, encyclopaedic approach to historical semantics regarding ‘conceptual history’, i.e. the history of concepts that shape thought, culture and society in a particular period. We relate the project to traditional work in conceptual and semantic history and define our object of study as the discursive concept, a category of meaning encoded linguistically as a cluster of expressions that co-occur in discourse. We describe our principal data source, EEBO-TCP, and introduce our key research interests, namely, the contexts of conceptual change, the semantic structure of lexical fields and the nature of lexicalisation pressure. We outline our computational processes, which build upon the theoretical definition of discursive concepts, to discover the linguistically encoded forms underpinning the discursive concepts we seek to identify in EEBO-TCP. Finally, we share preliminary results via a worked example, exploring the discursive contexts in which paradigmatic terms of key cultural concepts emerge. We consider the extent to which particular genres, discourses and users in the early modern period make paradigms, and examine the extent to which these contexts determine the characteristics of key concepts