Severe water erosion is notorious for its harmful effects on land-water resources as well as local societies. The scale effects of water erosion, however, greatly exacerbate the difficulties of accurate erosion evalua...Severe water erosion is notorious for its harmful effects on land-water resources as well as local societies. The scale effects of water erosion, however, greatly exacerbate the difficulties of accurate erosion evaluation and hazard control in the real world. Analyzing the related scale issues is thus urgent for a better understanding of erosion variations as well as reducing such erosion. In this review article, water erosion dynamics across three spatial scales including plot, watershed, and regional scales were selected and discussed. For the study purposes and objectives, the advantages and disadvantages of these scales all demonstrate clear spatial-scale dependence. Plot scale studies are primarily focused on abundant data collection and mechanism discrimination of erosion generation, while watershed scale studies provide valuable information for watershed management and hazard control as well as the development of quantitatively distributed models. Regional studies concentrate more on large-scale erosion assessment, and serve policymakers and stakeholders in achieving the basis for regulatory policy for comprehensive land uses. The results of this study show that the driving forces and mechanisms of water erosion variations among the scales are quite different. As a result, several major aspects contributing to variations in water erosion across the scales are stressed: differences in the methodologies across various scales, different sink-source roles on water erosion processes, and diverse climatic zones and morphological regions. This variability becomes more complex in the context of accelerated global change. The changing climatic factors and earth surface features are considered the fourth key reason responsible for the increased variability of water erosion across spatial scales.展开更多
Land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) activities can allow Annex I parties in the Kyoto Protocol to decrease their carbon emission reduction pressure, and comparably expanding more emission space for their...Land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) activities can allow Annex I parties in the Kyoto Protocol to decrease their carbon emission reduction pressure, and comparably expanding more emission space for their domestic industries and energy production. The loopholes resulted from LULUCF activity types and specific accounting methods are always argued among the different parties, particularly including harvested wood products, influences of force majeure, threshold values of the reference level, and gross-net or net-net accounting methods. For estimating uncertainties in accounting loopholes, and to avoid that developed countries take advantage of the account{ng loopholes of LULUCF to decrease their emission reduction pressure, the LULUCF data submitted from the main developed countries in Annex I, including EU 27, Canada, Japan, and Russia, were collected. According to the analysis of these data, the loopholes influence the accounting results of LULUCF. The results show that the uncertainty of harvested wood products is excessive. The carbon sink produced by LULUCF activities will increase averagely by at least 30% without force majeure. The threshold values of the reference level of carbon sink should be set to a higher level. The net-net accounting method might be more suitable for LULUCF after 2012.展开更多
A route optimization methodology in the frame of an onboard decision support/guidance system for the ship's master has been developed and is presented in this paper. The method aims at the minimization of the fuel vo...A route optimization methodology in the frame of an onboard decision support/guidance system for the ship's master has been developed and is presented in this paper. The method aims at the minimization of the fuel voyage cost and the risks related to the ship's seakeeping performance expected to be within acceptable limits of voyage duration. Parts of this methodology were implemented by interfacing alternative probability assessment methods, such as Monte Carlo, first order reliability method (FORM) and second order reliability method (SORM), and a 3-D seakeeping code, including a software tool for the calculation of the added resistance in waves of NTUA-SDL. The entire system was integrated within the probabilistic analysis software PROBAN. Two of the main modules for the calculation of added resistance and the probabilistic assessment for the considered seakeeping hazards with respect to exceedance levels of predefined threshold values are herein elaborated and validation studies proved their efficiency in view of their implementation into an on-board optimization system.展开更多
The cost and safety of geotechnical engineering are highly depending on the accuracy of soil shear strength parameters.There are three methods often used to estimate soil shear strength parameters,i.e.,moment method,3...The cost and safety of geotechnical engineering are highly depending on the accuracy of soil shear strength parameters.There are three methods often used to estimate soil shear strength parameters,i.e.,moment method,3-sigma rule and linear regression method.In this study,the accuracy of these three methods is compared.Traditional linear regression method(LRM)can only offer the mean of shear strength parameters.Some engineers misuse the standard error of shear strength indexes as the standard deviations.Such misuse may highly underestimate the uncertainty and induce high risk to the geotechnical design.A modified LRM is proposed to determine both the mean and variance of shear strength parameters.The moment method,three-sigma rule and LRM are used to analyze the tri-axial test data in Xiaolangdi Hydraulic Project and three numerical shear strength tests.The results demonstrate that:1)The modified LRM can offer the most accurate estimation to shear strength parameters;2)A dimensionless formula is much preferred in LRM rather than a dimensional formula.The stress ratio formula is much better than stress relation in the shear strength parameter analysis.The proposed method is applicable to shear strength parameter analysis for tri-axial test data,direct shear test and the un-drained shear strength test of stratified clay.展开更多
Remotely sensed spectral data and images are acquired under significant additional effects accompanying their major formation process, which greatly determine measurement accuracy. In order to be used in subsequent qu...Remotely sensed spectral data and images are acquired under significant additional effects accompanying their major formation process, which greatly determine measurement accuracy. In order to be used in subsequent quantitative analysis and assessment, this data should be subject to preliminary processing aiming to improve its accuracy and credibility. The paper considers some major problems related with preliminary processing of remotely sensed spectral data and images. The major factors are analyzed, which affect the occurrence of data noise or uncertainties and the methods for reduction or removal thereof. Assessment is made of the extent to which available equipment and technologies may help reduce measurement errors.展开更多
This paper deals with the problem of robust reliable H∞ control for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems with time-varying delays and actuator failures. The uncertainties in the system are norm-bounded and time-var...This paper deals with the problem of robust reliable H∞ control for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems with time-varying delays and actuator failures. The uncertainties in the system are norm-bounded and time-varying. Based on Lyapunov methods, a sufficient condition on quadratic stabilization independent of delay is obtained. With the help of LMIs (linear matrix inequalities) approaches, a linear state feedback controller is designed to quadratically stabilize the given systems with a H∞ performance constraint of disturbance attenuation for all admissible uncertainties and all actuator failures occurred within the prespecified subset. A numerical example is given to demonstrate the effect of the proposed design approach.展开更多
There are a lot of uncertainties in the mining engineering, and they make a notable impact on the engineering. The uncertainties of the physical and mechanical properties of geotectonic mass, the surrounding rock stab...There are a lot of uncertainties in the mining engineering, and they make a notable impact on the engineering. The uncertainties of the physical and mechanical properties of geotectonic mass, the surrounding rock stability, the nature condition, the equipment operation, the personnel and the external environment are proposed and described. The stochastic analysis should be widely used for considering the impacts of the uncertainty on the mining engineering. The economical risk analysis and the stochastic index system should also be set up in the mining engineering.展开更多
As the society matures, customer requirements have become more varied. Services have been attracting increasing attention from industry and academic field as an effective mean to satisfy such varied customer requireme...As the society matures, customer requirements have become more varied. Services have been attracting increasing attention from industry and academic field as an effective mean to satisfy such varied customer requirements. In order to make a profit, it is important for companies to build and maintain long-term relationships with customers. Therefore, service providers should maintain their service quality and always satisfy their customers. To realize highly reliable product or services, in general, it is an effective approach to prevent failures from occurring in the use phase. Therefore, it is necessary that analysts identify the factors that could cause service failure and take appropriate measures against the target failure factor in advance. However, service failure factors are varied compared to physical products because service failures occur due to uncertainty elements such as human factors. In this study, we aim to enable service analysts to identify the critical failure factor from a number of failure factors. To achieve this, we identify complex failure factors and relationships among them from the viewpoint of the field where the service provided. This paper proposes a method for structuring the causal sequence between service failure factors by using a method of system modeling.展开更多
Solar energy is the most available, clean and inexpensive source of energy among the other renewable sources of energy. This work deals with experimental steady to determent the performance of solar tower steam produc...Solar energy is the most available, clean and inexpensive source of energy among the other renewable sources of energy. This work deals with experimental steady to determent the performance of solar tower steam production for power generation. Designed and fabricated of a solar tower, consist of a central receiver tank (0.4 m × 0.6 m × 1.0 m) and 150 heliostat mirrors arranged around it. The central tank was made of galvanized steel. Each heliostat consisted of two (0.5 m × 0.5 m) mirrors. The results of this work produce steam at temperature 110 ℃. Large steam quantity could be obtained when using large scale experimental. The results of the work give good indication for application of solar energy to produce power in Iraq.展开更多
The aim of this research is to analyze the emergence of the concepts of sustainable development (SD) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in companies in time and space. A spatio-temporal reading will indicat...The aim of this research is to analyze the emergence of the concepts of sustainable development (SD) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in companies in time and space. A spatio-temporal reading will indicate the most important socio-political and environmental events that have emerged with these two concepts. In order to complete the odyssey, a spatio-temporal analysis has retraced the epistemological evolution of these latter, whilst at the same time remarking the appropriation that has been made by the different institutional and organizational actors. The historical and epistemological reviews tell us that these two concepts, which came into existence almost 80 years, have indefinite outlines; one can be substituted for the other. However, thanks to this odyssey, we have reduced the boundaries even further between sustainable development and social responsibility and shown their theoretic and historical association. The perspective adopted shows that the concept of corporate social responsibility is closely connected to that of sustainable development. This connection means that researchers in management science are faced with more new problem issues reaching further than the simple lack of conceptual consensuses.展开更多
This paper proposes a new criterion called the ratio of safety margin(RSM)for use in the areas of the global factor of safety,reliability and limit states analyses with reference to their respective allowable criteria...This paper proposes a new criterion called the ratio of safety margin(RSM)for use in the areas of the global factor of safety,reliability and limit states analyses with reference to their respective allowable criteria.An equation for calculating RSM based on the reliability index is formulated.Efforts for proving the applicability of this criterion include a theoretical demonstration in a simple one-variable case;an investigation on a test problem involving two random variables,followed by a slope stability study on a 156 m high embankment dam and an illustrative example presented in a EuroCode 7 guidebook.Calculation of the ratios of safety margin in the three areas provides a quantitative way to accommodate the analytical results within the same theoretical framework and makes the outcomes mutually comparable and supportive,which is much more enlightening than that would be the case by considering only one of them.Calculating RSMs for reliability and limit states methods has also helped solve the key issue concerning the uniqueness of the partial factors calibrated from a particular‘target case’.展开更多
基金Under the auspices of National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 40925003, 40930528, 40801041)
文摘Severe water erosion is notorious for its harmful effects on land-water resources as well as local societies. The scale effects of water erosion, however, greatly exacerbate the difficulties of accurate erosion evaluation and hazard control in the real world. Analyzing the related scale issues is thus urgent for a better understanding of erosion variations as well as reducing such erosion. In this review article, water erosion dynamics across three spatial scales including plot, watershed, and regional scales were selected and discussed. For the study purposes and objectives, the advantages and disadvantages of these scales all demonstrate clear spatial-scale dependence. Plot scale studies are primarily focused on abundant data collection and mechanism discrimination of erosion generation, while watershed scale studies provide valuable information for watershed management and hazard control as well as the development of quantitatively distributed models. Regional studies concentrate more on large-scale erosion assessment, and serve policymakers and stakeholders in achieving the basis for regulatory policy for comprehensive land uses. The results of this study show that the driving forces and mechanisms of water erosion variations among the scales are quite different. As a result, several major aspects contributing to variations in water erosion across the scales are stressed: differences in the methodologies across various scales, different sink-source roles on water erosion processes, and diverse climatic zones and morphological regions. This variability becomes more complex in the context of accelerated global change. The changing climatic factors and earth surface features are considered the fourth key reason responsible for the increased variability of water erosion across spatial scales.
基金supported by China "973" projects of Special Negotiating Problems for LULUCF Response to Climate Change(No2010CB955702)Space-time Pattern of Carbon and Nitrogen and Water Flux of Chinese Terrestrial Ecosystem and its Regional Response(No 2010CB833504)
文摘Land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) activities can allow Annex I parties in the Kyoto Protocol to decrease their carbon emission reduction pressure, and comparably expanding more emission space for their domestic industries and energy production. The loopholes resulted from LULUCF activity types and specific accounting methods are always argued among the different parties, particularly including harvested wood products, influences of force majeure, threshold values of the reference level, and gross-net or net-net accounting methods. For estimating uncertainties in accounting loopholes, and to avoid that developed countries take advantage of the account{ng loopholes of LULUCF to decrease their emission reduction pressure, the LULUCF data submitted from the main developed countries in Annex I, including EU 27, Canada, Japan, and Russia, were collected. According to the analysis of these data, the loopholes influence the accounting results of LULUCF. The results show that the uncertainty of harvested wood products is excessive. The carbon sink produced by LULUCF activities will increase averagely by at least 30% without force majeure. The threshold values of the reference level of carbon sink should be set to a higher level. The net-net accounting method might be more suitable for LULUCF after 2012.
基金supported by DNV in the framework of the GIFT strategic R&D collaboration agreement between DNV and the School of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering of NTUA-Ship Design Laboratory
文摘A route optimization methodology in the frame of an onboard decision support/guidance system for the ship's master has been developed and is presented in this paper. The method aims at the minimization of the fuel voyage cost and the risks related to the ship's seakeeping performance expected to be within acceptable limits of voyage duration. Parts of this methodology were implemented by interfacing alternative probability assessment methods, such as Monte Carlo, first order reliability method (FORM) and second order reliability method (SORM), and a 3-D seakeeping code, including a software tool for the calculation of the added resistance in waves of NTUA-SDL. The entire system was integrated within the probabilistic analysis software PROBAN. Two of the main modules for the calculation of added resistance and the probabilistic assessment for the considered seakeeping hazards with respect to exceedance levels of predefined threshold values are herein elaborated and validation studies proved their efficiency in view of their implementation into an on-board optimization system.
基金Project(2017YFC0404803) supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of ChinaProject(51678040) supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of ChinaProject(8192034) supported by the Beijing Municipal Natural Science Foundation,China
文摘The cost and safety of geotechnical engineering are highly depending on the accuracy of soil shear strength parameters.There are three methods often used to estimate soil shear strength parameters,i.e.,moment method,3-sigma rule and linear regression method.In this study,the accuracy of these three methods is compared.Traditional linear regression method(LRM)can only offer the mean of shear strength parameters.Some engineers misuse the standard error of shear strength indexes as the standard deviations.Such misuse may highly underestimate the uncertainty and induce high risk to the geotechnical design.A modified LRM is proposed to determine both the mean and variance of shear strength parameters.The moment method,three-sigma rule and LRM are used to analyze the tri-axial test data in Xiaolangdi Hydraulic Project and three numerical shear strength tests.The results demonstrate that:1)The modified LRM can offer the most accurate estimation to shear strength parameters;2)A dimensionless formula is much preferred in LRM rather than a dimensional formula.The stress ratio formula is much better than stress relation in the shear strength parameter analysis.The proposed method is applicable to shear strength parameter analysis for tri-axial test data,direct shear test and the un-drained shear strength test of stratified clay.
文摘Remotely sensed spectral data and images are acquired under significant additional effects accompanying their major formation process, which greatly determine measurement accuracy. In order to be used in subsequent quantitative analysis and assessment, this data should be subject to preliminary processing aiming to improve its accuracy and credibility. The paper considers some major problems related with preliminary processing of remotely sensed spectral data and images. The major factors are analyzed, which affect the occurrence of data noise or uncertainties and the methods for reduction or removal thereof. Assessment is made of the extent to which available equipment and technologies may help reduce measurement errors.
基金Sponsored by the Scientific Research Foundation of Harbin Institute of Technology (Grant No.HIT.2003.02)
文摘This paper deals with the problem of robust reliable H∞ control for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems with time-varying delays and actuator failures. The uncertainties in the system are norm-bounded and time-varying. Based on Lyapunov methods, a sufficient condition on quadratic stabilization independent of delay is obtained. With the help of LMIs (linear matrix inequalities) approaches, a linear state feedback controller is designed to quadratically stabilize the given systems with a H∞ performance constraint of disturbance attenuation for all admissible uncertainties and all actuator failures occurred within the prespecified subset. A numerical example is given to demonstrate the effect of the proposed design approach.
文摘There are a lot of uncertainties in the mining engineering, and they make a notable impact on the engineering. The uncertainties of the physical and mechanical properties of geotectonic mass, the surrounding rock stability, the nature condition, the equipment operation, the personnel and the external environment are proposed and described. The stochastic analysis should be widely used for considering the impacts of the uncertainty on the mining engineering. The economical risk analysis and the stochastic index system should also be set up in the mining engineering.
文摘As the society matures, customer requirements have become more varied. Services have been attracting increasing attention from industry and academic field as an effective mean to satisfy such varied customer requirements. In order to make a profit, it is important for companies to build and maintain long-term relationships with customers. Therefore, service providers should maintain their service quality and always satisfy their customers. To realize highly reliable product or services, in general, it is an effective approach to prevent failures from occurring in the use phase. Therefore, it is necessary that analysts identify the factors that could cause service failure and take appropriate measures against the target failure factor in advance. However, service failure factors are varied compared to physical products because service failures occur due to uncertainty elements such as human factors. In this study, we aim to enable service analysts to identify the critical failure factor from a number of failure factors. To achieve this, we identify complex failure factors and relationships among them from the viewpoint of the field where the service provided. This paper proposes a method for structuring the causal sequence between service failure factors by using a method of system modeling.
文摘Solar energy is the most available, clean and inexpensive source of energy among the other renewable sources of energy. This work deals with experimental steady to determent the performance of solar tower steam production for power generation. Designed and fabricated of a solar tower, consist of a central receiver tank (0.4 m × 0.6 m × 1.0 m) and 150 heliostat mirrors arranged around it. The central tank was made of galvanized steel. Each heliostat consisted of two (0.5 m × 0.5 m) mirrors. The results of this work produce steam at temperature 110 ℃. Large steam quantity could be obtained when using large scale experimental. The results of the work give good indication for application of solar energy to produce power in Iraq.
文摘The aim of this research is to analyze the emergence of the concepts of sustainable development (SD) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in companies in time and space. A spatio-temporal reading will indicate the most important socio-political and environmental events that have emerged with these two concepts. In order to complete the odyssey, a spatio-temporal analysis has retraced the epistemological evolution of these latter, whilst at the same time remarking the appropriation that has been made by the different institutional and organizational actors. The historical and epistemological reviews tell us that these two concepts, which came into existence almost 80 years, have indefinite outlines; one can be substituted for the other. However, thanks to this odyssey, we have reduced the boundaries even further between sustainable development and social responsibility and shown their theoretic and historical association. The perspective adopted shows that the concept of corporate social responsibility is closely connected to that of sustainable development. This connection means that researchers in management science are faced with more new problem issues reaching further than the simple lack of conceptual consensuses.
基金supported by the National Basic Research Program of China("973"Program)(Grant No.2013CB036400)
文摘This paper proposes a new criterion called the ratio of safety margin(RSM)for use in the areas of the global factor of safety,reliability and limit states analyses with reference to their respective allowable criteria.An equation for calculating RSM based on the reliability index is formulated.Efforts for proving the applicability of this criterion include a theoretical demonstration in a simple one-variable case;an investigation on a test problem involving two random variables,followed by a slope stability study on a 156 m high embankment dam and an illustrative example presented in a EuroCode 7 guidebook.Calculation of the ratios of safety margin in the three areas provides a quantitative way to accommodate the analytical results within the same theoretical framework and makes the outcomes mutually comparable and supportive,which is much more enlightening than that would be the case by considering only one of them.Calculating RSMs for reliability and limit states methods has also helped solve the key issue concerning the uniqueness of the partial factors calibrated from a particular‘target case’.