Light-weight wood-magnesium oxychloride cement composite building products made by extrusion

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Construction and Building Materials. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2011 Elsevier B.V.Magnesium oxychloride (MOC) cement is a type of non-hydraulic cement with yellowish color in nature and low alkalinity exhibiting many other properties superior to Portland Cement (PC). In this study, light-weight wood–MOC cement composite building products, with sawdust and/or perlite as aggregate, were made through extrusion. Physical, nailing and mechanical properties of these composites were investigated. It was found that the specific dry densities of the wood–MOC cement composites were close to 1.0 and they were nailable like hard natural wood. Their flexural strength decreased as temperature increased. By replacing 50% sawdust in weight by perlite, the composite exhibited less die swell and better performance in resisting high temperature.China Ministry of Science & Technology and the European Commission

Conditions for Nondistortion Interrogation of Quantum System

Under some physical considerations, we present a universal formulation to study the possibility of localizing a quantum object in a given region without disturbing its unknown internal state. When the interaction between the object and probe wave function takes place only once, we prove the necessary and sufficient condition that the object's presence can be detected in an initial state preserving way. Meanwhile, a conditioned optimal interrogation probability is obtained.Comment: 5 pages, Revtex, 1 figures, Presentation improved, corollary 1 added. To appear in Europhysics Letter

Robust H∞ filtering for networked systems with multiple state delays

This is the post print version of the article. The official published version can be obtained from the link below - Copyright 2007 Taylor & Francis Ltd.In this paper, a new robust H∞ filter design problem is studied for a class of networked systems with multiple state-delays. Two kinds of incomplete measurements, namely, measurements with random delays and measurements with stochastic missing phenomenon, are simultaneously considered. Such incomplete measurements are induced by the limited bandwidth of communication networks, and are modelled as a linear function of a certain set of indicator functions that depend on the same stochastic variable. Attention is focused on the analysis and design problems of a full-order robust H∞ filter such that, for all admissible parameter uncertainties and all possible incomplete measurements, the filtering error dynamics is exponentially mean-square stable and a prescribed H∞ attenuation level is guaranteed. Some recently reported methodologies, such as delay-dependent and parameter-dependent stability analysis approaches, are employed to obtain less conservative results. Sufficient conditions, which are dependent on the occurrence probability of both the random sensor delay and missing measurement, are established for the existence of the desired filters in terms of certain linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). When these LMIs are feasible, the explicit expression of the desired filter can also be characterized. Finally, numerical examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed design method.This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 60574084, the National 863 Project of China under Grant 2006AA04Z428, and the National 973 Program of China under Grant 2002CB312200

Robust H∞ filtering for time-delay systems with probabilistic sensor faults

Copyright [2009] IEEE. This material is posted here with permission of the IEEE. Such permission of the IEEE does not in any way imply IEEE endorsement of any of Brunel University's products or services. Internal or personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution must be obtained from the IEEE by writing to [email protected]. By choosing to view this document, you agree to all provisions of the copyright laws protecting it.In this paper, a new robust H∞ filtering problem is investigated for a class of time-varying nonlinear system with norm-bounded parameter uncertainties, bounded state delay, sector-bounded nonlinearity and probabilistic sensor gain faults. The probabilistic sensor reductions are modeled by using a random variable that obeys a specific distribution in a known interval [alpha,beta], which accounts for the following two phenomenon: 1) signal stochastic attenuation in unreliable analog channel and 2) random sensor gain reduction in severe environment. The main task is to design a robust H∞ filter such that, for all possible uncertain measurements, system parameter uncertainties, nonlinearity as well as time-varying delays, the filtering error dynamics is asymptotically mean-square stable with a prescribed H∞ performance level. A sufficient condition for the existence of such a filter is presented in terms of the feasibility of a certain linear matrix inequality (LMI). A numerical example is introduced to illustrate the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed methodology

A fracture mechanics-based method for prediction of cracking of circular and elliptical concrete rings under restrained shrinkage

A new experimental method, utilizing elliptical ring specimens, is developed for assessing the likelihood of cracking and cracking age of concrete subject to restrained shrinkage. To investigate the mechanism of this new ring test, a fracture mechanics-based numerical approach is proposed to predict crack initiation in restrained concrete rings by using the R-curve method. It has been found that numerical results accord well with experimental results in terms of cracking ages for both circular and elliptical concrete rings, indicating that the proposed fracture mechanics-based numerical approach is reliable for analyzing cracking in concrete ring specimens subject to restrained condition.UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council under the grant of EP/I031952/1, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China under the grant of NSFC 51121005/5110902