The Existing Structural Problems in World Economy

Since the seventies,world economy has been engaged in adjustment princi-pally in the following three fields.First,the shift of economic developmentmode from that of aggregate quantitative growth to that of quality-effective-ness.Second,the reform of economic system with more and more countries realiz-ing market economy.Third,the economy getting more opened as economic global-ization further avdances.

An 8-Node Plane Hybrid Element for StructuralMechanics Problems Based on the Hellinger-Reissner Variational Principle

The finite element method (FEM) plays a valuable role in computer modeling and is beneficial to the mechanicaldesign of various structural parts. However, the elements produced by conventional FEM are easily inaccurate andunstable when applied. Therefore, developing new elements within the framework of the generalized variationalprinciple is of great significance. In this paper, an 8-node plane hybrid finite element with 15 parameters (PHQ8-15β) is developed for structural mechanics problems based on the Hellinger-Reissner variational principle.According to the design principle of Pian, 15 unknown parameters are adopted in the selection of stress modes toavoid the zero energy modes.Meanwhile, the stress functions within each element satisfy both the equilibrium andthe compatibility relations of plane stress problems. Subsequently, numerical examples are presented to illustrate theeffectiveness and robustness of the proposed finite element. Numerical results show that various common lockingbehaviors of plane elements can be overcome. The PH-Q8-15β element has excellent performance in all benchmarkproblems, especially for structures with varying cross sections. Furthermore, in bending problems, the reasonablemesh shape of the new element for curved edge structures is analyzed in detail, which can be a useful means toimprove numerical accuracy.

Three Perspectives of Granular Computing

As an emerging field of study, granular computing has received much attention. Many models, frameworks, methods and techniques have been proposed and studied. It is perhaps the time to seek for a general and unified view so that fundamental issues can be examined and clarified.This paper examines granular computing from three perspectives.By viewing granular computing as a way of structured thinking,we focus on its philosophical foundations in modeling human perception of the reality.By viewing granular computing as a method of structured problem solving,we examine its theoretical and methodological foundations in solving a wide range of real-world problems.By viewing granular computing as a paradigm of information processing,we turn our attention to its more concrete techniques. The three perspectives together offer a holistic view of granular computing.

Static response analysis of structures with interval parameters using the second-order Taylor series expansion and the DCA for QB

In this paper, based on the second-order Taylor series expansion and the difference of convex functions algo- rithm for quadratic problems with box constraints （the DCA for QB）, a new method is proposed to solve the static response problem of structures with fairly large uncertainties in interval parameters. Although current methods are effective for solving the static response problem of structures with interval parameters with small uncertainties, these methods may fail to estimate the region of the static response of uncertain structures if the uncertainties in the parameters are fairly large. To resolve this problem, first, the general expression of the static response of structures in terms of structural parameters is derived based on the second-order Taylor series expansion. Then the problem of determining the bounds of the static response of uncertain structures is transformed into a series of quadratic problems with box constraints. These quadratic problems with box constraints can be solved using the DCA approach effectively. The numerical examples are given to illustrate the accuracy and the efficiency of the proposed method when comparing with other existing methods.

Asynchronous Nested Optimization Algorithms and Their Parallel Implementation

Large scale optimization problems can only be solved in an efficient way, if their special structure is taken as the basis of algorithm design. In this paper we consider a very broad class of large-scale problems with special structure, namely tree structured problems. We show how the exploitation of the structure leads to efficient decomposition algorithms and how it may be implemented in a parallel environment.

Extending Structures for Gel'fand-Dorfman Bialgebras

Gel'fand-Dorfman bialgebra,which is both a Lie algebra and a Novikov algebra with some compatibility condition,appeared in the study of Hamiltonian pairs in completely integrable systems.They also emerged in the description of a class special Lie conformal algebras called quadratic Lie conformal algebras.In this paper,we investigate the extending structures problem for Gel'fand-Dorfman bialgebras,which is equivalent to some extending structures problem of quadratic Lie conformal algebras.Explicitly,given a Gel'fand-Dorfman bialgebra(A,o,[.,.]),this problem is how to describe and classify all Gel'fand-Dorfman bialgebra structures on a vector space E(A⊂E)such that(A,o,[.,.])is a subalgebra of E up to an isomorphism whose restriction on A is the identity map.Motivated by the theories of extending structures for Lie algebras and Novikov algebras,we construct an object gH2(V,A)to answer the extending structures problem by introducing the notion of a unified product for Gel'fand-Dorfman bialgebras,where V is a complement of A in E.In particular,we investigate the special case when dim(V)=1 in detail.