On the explicit finite element formulation of the dynamic contact problem of hyperelastic membranes

Contact-impact problems involving finite deformation axisymmetric membranes are solved by the finite element method with explicit time integration. The formulation of the membrane element and the contact constraint conditions are discussed. The hyperelastic, compressible Blatz and Ko material is used to model the material properties of the membrane. Two example problems are presented

Assessing the effects of technological progress on energy efficiency in the construction industry: A case of China

Energy-saving technologies in buildings have received great attention from energy efficiency researchers in the construction sector. Traditional research tends to focus on the energy used during building operation and in construction materials production, but it usually neglects the energy consumed in the building construction process. Very few studies have explored the impacts of technological progress on energy efficiency in the construction industry. This paper presents a model of the building construction process based on Cobb-Douglas production function. The model estimates the effects of technological progress on energy efficiency with the objective to examine the role that technological progress plays in energy savings in China's construction industry. The modeling results indicated that technological progress improved energy efficiency by an average of 7.1% per year from 1997 to 2014. Furthermore, three main technological progress factors (the efficiency of machinery and equipment, the proportion change of the energy structure, and research and development investment) were selected to analyze their effects on energy efficiency improvement. These positive effects were verified, and results show the effects of first two factors are significant. Finally, recommendations for promoting energy efficiency in the construction industry are proposed

Advances and challenges in commercializing radiative cooling

Radiative cooling (RC) dissipates terrestrial heat to outer space through the atmospheric window, without external energy input and production of environmental pollutants. More and more efforts have been devoted to this clean promising cooling technology; thus diverse radiative coolers have emerged. However, the performance, cost, and effectiveness of various radiative coolers are not exactly the same. In addition, the large-scale application of RC technology is impeded by the low energy density, uncontrollable cooling power, and limited sky-facing area. Here, we critically review the recent progress of RC technology, evaluate the cooling performance of various radiative coolers, and discuss the challenges and feasible solutions to commercialize RC technology. Furthermore, valuable insights are provided to make new breakthroughs in this field

Asymmetric warming significantly affects net primary production, but not ecosystem carbon balances of forest and grassland ecosystems in northern China

We combine the process-based ecosystem model (Biome-BGC) with climate change-scenarios based on both RegCM3 model outputs and historic observed trends to quantify differential effects of symmetric and asymmetric warming on ecosystem net primary productivity (NPP), heterotrophic respiration (Rh) and net ecosystem productivity (NEP) of six ecosystem types representing different climatic zones of northern China. Analysis of covariance shows that NPP is significant greater at most ecosystems under the various environmental change scenarios once temperature asymmetries are taken into consideration. However, these differences do not lead to significant differences in NEP, which indicates that asymmetry in climate change does not result in significant alterations of the overall carbon balance in the dominating forest or grassland ecosystems. Overall, NPP, Rh and NEP are regulated by highly interrelated effects of increases in temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentrations and precipitation changes, while the magnitude of these effects strongly varies across the six sites. Further studies underpinned by suitable experiments are nonetheless required to further improve the performance of ecosystem models and confirm the validity of these model predictions. This is crucial for a sound understanding of the mechanisms controlling the variability in asymmetric warming effects on ecosystem structure and functioning

Asymmetric Dark Matter and Effective Operators

In order to annihilate in the early Universe to levels well below the measured dark matter density, asymmetric dark matter must possess large couplings to the Standard Model. In this paper, we consider effective operators which allow asymmetric dark matter to annihilate into quarks. In addition to a bound from requiring sufficient annihilation, the energy scale of such operators can be constrained by limits from direct detection and monojet searches at colliders. We show that the allowed parameter space for these operators is highly constrained, leading to non-trivial requirements that any model of asymmetric dark matter must satisfy.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure. V2 replacement: Citations added. Shading error in Fig. 1 (L_FV panel) corrected. Addition of direct detection bounds on m_chi <5 GeV added, minor alterations in text to reflect these change

SOS-convex Semi-algebraic Programs and its Applications to Robust Optimization: A Tractable Class of Nonsmooth Convex Optimization

In this paper, we introduce a new class of nonsmooth convex functions called SOS-convex semialgebraic functions extending the recently proposed notion of SOS-convex polynomials. This class of nonsmooth convex functions covers many common nonsmooth functions arising in the applications such as the Euclidean norm, the maximum eigenvalue function and the least squares functions with $\ell_1$-regularization or elastic net regularization used in statistics and compressed sensing. We show that, under commonly used strict feasibility conditions, the optimal value and an optimal solution of SOS-convex semi-algebraic programs can be found by solving a single semi-definite programming problem (SDP). We achieve the results by using tools from semi-algebraic geometry, convex-concave minimax theorem and a recently established Jensen inequality type result for SOS-convex polynomials. As an application, we outline how the derived results can be applied to show that robust SOS-convex optimization problems under restricted spectrahedron data uncertainty enjoy exact SDP relaxations. This extends the existing exact SDP relaxation result for restricted ellipsoidal data uncertainty and answers the open questions left in [Optimization Letters 9, 1-18(2015)] on how to recover a robust solution from the semi-definite programming relaxation in this broader setting