Economic Dispatch of Electrical Power System Based on the Multi-objective Co-evolutionary Algorithm

It is important to distribute the load efficiently to minimize the cost of the economic dispatch of electrical power system. The uncertainty and volatility of wind energy make the economic dispatch much more complex when the general power systems are combined with wind farms. The short term wind power prediction method was discussed in this paper. The method was based on the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD). Furthermore,the effect of wind farms on the traditional economic dispatch of electrical power system was analyzed. The mathematical model of the economic dispatch was established considering the environmental factors and extra spinning reserve cost. The multi-objective co-evolutionary algorithm was used to figure out the model. And the results were compared with the NSGA-Ⅱ(non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-Ⅱ) to verify its feasibility.

Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning with Constraint-Reduced DCOP

Cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning（ MARL） is an important topic in the field of artificial intelligence,in which distributed constraint optimization（ DCOP） algorithms have been widely used to coordinate the actions of multiple agents. However,dense communication among agents affects the practicability of DCOP algorithms. In this paper,we propose a novel DCOP algorithm dealing with the previous DCOP algorithms＇ communication problem by reducing constraints.The contributions of this paper are primarily threefold：（1） It is proved that removing constraints can effectively reduce the communication burden of DCOP algorithms.（2） An criterion is provided to identify insignificant constraints whose elimination doesn＇t have a great impact on the performance of the whole system.（3） A constraint-reduced DCOP algorithm is proposed by adopting a variant of spectral clustering algorithm to detect and eliminate the insignificant constraints. Our algorithm reduces the communication burdern of the benchmark DCOP algorithm while keeping its overall performance unaffected. The performance of constraint-reduced DCOP algorithm is evaluated on four configurations of cooperative sensor networks. The effectiveness of communication reduction is also verified by comparisons between the constraint-reduced DCOP and the benchmark DCOP.

Fuzzy Constraint-Based Agent Negotiation

Conflicts between two or more parties arise for various reasons andperspectives. Thus, resolution of con-flicts frequently relies on some form of negotiation. Thispaper presents a general problem-solving framework for modeling multi-issue multilateral negotiationusing fuzzy constraints. Agent negotiation is formulated as a distributed fuzzy constraintsatisfaction problem (DFCSP). Fuzzy constrains are thus used to naturally represent each agent''sdesires involving imprecision and human conceptualization, particularly when lexical imprecision andsubjective matters are concerned. On the other hand, based on fuzzy constraint-basedproblem-solving, our approach enables an agent not only to systematically relax fuzzy constraints togenerate a proposal, but also to employ fuzzy similarity to select the alternative that is subjectto its acceptability by the opponents. This task of problem-solving is to reach an agreement thatbenefits all agents with a high satisfaction degree of fuzzy constraints, and move towards the dealmore quickly since their search focuses only on the feasible solution space. An application tomultilateral negotiation of a travel planning is provided to demonstrate the usefulness andeffectiveness of our framework.

Efficient Algorithms for Generating Truncated Multivariate Normal Distributions

Sampling from a truncated multivariate normal distribution （TMVND） constitutes the core computational module in fitting many statistical and econometric models. We propose two efficient methods, an iterative data augmentation （DA） algorithm and a non-iterative inverse Bayes formulae （IBF） sampler, to simulate TMVND and generalize them to multivariate normal distributions with linear inequality constraints. By creating a Bayesian incomplete-data structure, the posterior step of the DA Mgorithm directly generates random vector draws as opposed to single element draws, resulting obvious computational advantage and easy coding with common statistical software packages such as S-PLUS, MATLAB and GAUSS. Furthermore, the DA provides a ready structure for implementing a fast EM algorithm to identify the mode of TMVND, which has many potential applications in statistical inference of constrained parameter problems. In addition, utilizing this mode as an intermediate result, the IBF sampling provides a novel alternative to Gibbs sampling and elimi- nares problems with convergence and possible slow convergence due to the high correlation between components of a TMVND. The DA algorithm is applied to a linear regression model with constrained parameters and is illustrated with a published data set. Numerical comparisons show that the proposed DA algorithm and IBF sampler are more efficient than the Gibbs sampler and the accept-reject algorithm.

ELASTIC CALCULATION OF STRESSES IN RINGS USING AIRY STRESS FUNCTION

Stress calculation formulae for a ring have been obtained by using Airy stress function of the plane strain field with the decomposition of the solutions for normal stresses of Airy biharmonic equation into two parts when it is loaded under two opposite inside forces along a diameter. One part should fulfill a constraint condition about normal stress distribution along the circumference at an energy valley to do the minimum work. Other part is a stress residue constant. In order to verify these formulae and the computed results, the computed contour lines of equi-maximal shear stresses were plotted and quite compared with that of photo-elasticity test results. This constraint condition about normal stress distribution along circumference is confirmed by using Greens’ theorem. An additional compression exists along the circumference of the loaded ring, explaining the divorcement and displacement of singularity points at inner and outer boundaries.