Orientation effect on ground motion measurement for Mexican subduction earthquakes

The existence of the principal directions of the ground motion based on Arias intensity is well-known. These principal directions do not necessarily coincide with the orientations of recording sensors or with the orientations along which the ground motion parameters such as the peak ground acceleration and the pseudo-spectral acceleration （PSA） are maximum. This is evidenced by the fact that the maximum PSA at different natural vibration periods for horizontal excitations do not correspond to the same orientation. A recent analysis carried out for California earthquake records suggests that an orientation-dependent ground motion measurement for horizontal excitations can be developed. The main objective of this study is to investigate and provide seismic ground motion measurements in the horizontal plane, including bidirectional horizontal ground motions, for Mexican interplate and inslab earthquake records. Extensive statistical analyses of PSA are conducted for the assessment. The analysis results suggest that similar to the case of California records, the average behavior of the ratio of the PSA to the maximum resulting PSA can be approximated by a quarter of an ellipse in one quadrant; and that the ratio can be considered to be independent of the value of the maximum resulting PSA, earthquake magnitude, earthquake distance and the focal depth. Sets of response ratios and attenuation relationships that can be used to represent a bidirectional horizontal ground motion measurement for Mexican interplate and inslab earthquakes were also developed.

High Resolution Clinometers for Measurement of Roll Error Motion of a Precision Linear Slide

This paper proposes a new method for measurement of the roll error motion of a slide table in a precision linear slide. The proposed method utilizes a pair of clinometers in the production process of a precision linear slide, where the roll error motion measurement will be carried out repeatedly to confirm whether the surface form errors of slide guideways in the linear slide are su ciently corrected by hand scraping process. In the proposed method, one of the clinometers is mounted on the slide table, while the other is placed on a vibration isolation table, on which the precision linear slide is mounted, so that influences of external disturbances can be cancelled. An experimental setup is built on a vibration isolation table, and some experiments are carried out to verify the feasibility of the proposed method.

Quantification of Dance Movement by Simultaneous Measurement of Body Motion and Biophysical Information

The purpose of this research is a quantitative analysis of movement patterns of dance, which cannot be analyzed with a motion capture system alone, using simultaneous measurement of body motion and biophysical information. In this research, two kinds of same leg movement are captured by simultaneous measurement; one is a leg movement with given strength, the other is a leg movement without strength on condition of basic experiment using optical motion capture and electromyography （EMG） equipment in order to quantitatively analyze characteristics of leg movement. Also, we measured the motion of the traditional Japanese dance using the constructed system. We can visualize leg movement of Japanese dance by displaying a 3D CG character animation with motion data and EMG data. In addition, we expect that our research will help dancers and researchers on dance through giving new information on dance movement which cannot be analyzed with only motion capture.

MEASUREMENT OF ANGULAR VIBRATION AMPLITUDE BY ACTIVELY BLURRED IMAGES

A novel motion-blur-based method for measuring the angular amplitude of a high-frequency rotational vibration is schemed. The proposed approach combines the active vision concept and the mechanism of motion-from-blur, generates motion blur on the image plane actively by extending exposure time, and utilizes the motion blur information in polar images to estimate the angular amplitude of a high-frequency rotational vibration. This method obtains the analytical results of the angular vibration amplitude from the geometric moments of a motion blurred polar image and an unblurred image for reference. Experimental results are provided to validate the presented scheme.

Observations on the application of artificial neural network to predicting ground motion measures

Application of the artificial neural network （ANN） to predict pseudospectral acceleration or peak ground acceleration is explored in the study. The training of ANN model is carried out using feed-forward backpropagation method and about 600 records from 39 California earthquakes. The statistics of the residuals or modeling error for the trained ANN-based models are almost the same as those for the parametric ground motion prediction equations, derived through regression analysis; the residual or modeling error can be modeled as a normal variate. The similarity and differences between the predictions by these two approaches are shown. The trained ANN-based models, however, are not robust because the models with almost identical mean square errors do not always lead to the same predictions. This undesirable behaviour for predicting the ground motion measures has not been shown or discussed in the literature; the presented results, at least, serve to raise questions and caution on this problem. A practical approach to ameliorate this problem, perhaps, is to consider several trained ANN models, and to take the average of the predicted values from the trained ANN models as the predicted ground motion measure.

Correlation study between ground motion intensity measure parameters and deformation demands for bilinear SDOF systems

The correlation between ground motion intensity measures （IM） and single-degree-of-freedom （SDOF） deformation demands is described in this study. Peak ground acceleration （APG）, peak ground velocity （VPG）, peak ground displacement （DPG）, spectral acceleration at the first-mode period of vibration [As（T1）] and ratio of VPG to APG are used as IM parameters, and the correlation is characterized by correlation coefficients p. The numerical results obtained by nonlinear dynamic analyses have shown good correlation between As（T1） or VPG and deformation demands. Furthermore, the effect of As（T1） and VPG as IM on the dispersion of the mean value of deformation demands is also investigated for SDOF systems with three different periods T=0.3 s, 1.0 s, 3.0 s respectively.

Is the kinematics of special relativity incomplete?

A thorough analysis of composite inertial motion (relativistic sum) within the framework of special relativity leads to the conclusion that every translational motion must be the symmetrically composite relativistic sum of a finite number of quanta of velocity. It is shown that the resulting spacetime geometry is Gaussian and the four-vector calculus to have its roots in the complex-number algebra. Furthermore, this results in superluminality of signals travelling at or nearly at the canonical velocity of light between rest frames even if resting to each other.

Measurements of the VLBI experiments during the first campaign of the Asian-Pacific space geodynamics (APSG) program

During the first campaign of the Asian-Pacific space geodynamics (APSG) program in October 1997, two VLBl experiments were successfully organized and coordinated by the Astrometry and Geodesy VLBl Group of Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, cooperated with geodetic VLBl group, GSFC, NASA, USA. Six VLBl stations participated in the experiments, including Seshan and Urumqi station of China, Gilcreek station in Alaska and Kokee station in Hawaii of USA, Kashima station of Japan and Hobart station at Tasmania of Australia. Baseline lengths are from 1 900 to 11 000 km and the mean relative uncertainty of the baseline length measurements is 1.0 x 10-9. In addition, the rates of the baseline lengths among the six stations and their three-dimensional velocities are solved out via global analysis of the two APSG sessions and the historical observations of the six stations as well as other VLBl observations from the global observation network. These results are appreciable to the studies of the modern crustal movement in the Asian-Pacific region. Especially,an 8 mm/a eastward motion and a 14 mm/a north by northeast motion are detected respectively for Seshan and Urumqi stations relative to the stable part of the Eurasian plate. The motions directly illustrate the effect of the northward movement of Indian plate on the modern crustal motions of the northwestern and the eastern part of China, which is of important significance to the study of the modern crustal motion of China.

An improved ground motion intensity measure for super high-rise buildings

Ground motion intensity measure (IM) is an important part in performance-based seismic design. A reasonable and efficient IM can make the prediction of the structural seismic responses more accurate. Therefore, a more reasonable IM for super high-rise buildings is proposed in this paper. This IM takes into account the significant characteristic that higher-order vibration modes play important roles in the seismic response of super high-rise buildings, as well as the advantages of some existing IMs. The key parameter of the proposed IM is calibrated using a series of time-history analyses. The collapse simulations of two super high-rise buildings are used to discuss the suitability of the proposed IM and some other existing IMs. The results indicate that the proposed IM yields a smaller coefficient of variation for the critical collapse status than other existing IMs and performs well in reflecting the contribution of higher-order vibration modes to the structural response. Hence, the proposed IM is more applicable to seismic design for super high-rise buildings than other IMs.

A novel virtual four-ocular stereo vision system based on single camera for measuring insect motion parameters

A novel virtual four-ocular stereo measurement system based on single high speed camera is proposed for measuring double beating wings of a high speed flapping insect. The principle of virtual monocular system consisting of a few planar mirrors and a single high speed camera is introduced. The stereo vision measurement principle based on optic triangulation is explained. The wing kinematics parameters are measured. Results show that this virtual stereo system not only decreases system cost extremely but also is effective to insect motion measurement.

ANFIS-based Sensor Fusion System of Sit-to-stand for Elderly People Assistive Device Protocols

This paper describes the analysis and design of an assistive device for elderly people under development at the EgyptJapan University of Science and Technology（E-JUST） named E-JUST assistive device（EJAD）.Several experiments were carried out using a motion capture system（VICON） and inertial sensors to identify the human posture during the sit-to-stand motion.The EJAD uses only two inertial measurement units（IMUs） fused through an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference systems（ANFIS） algorithm to imitate the real motion of the caregiver.The EJAD consists of two main parts,a robot arm and an active walker.The robot arm is a 2-degree-of-freedom（2-DOF） planar manipulator.In addition,a back support with a passive joint is used to support the patient s back.The IMUs on the leg and trunk of the patient are used to compensate for and adapt to the EJAD system motion depending on the obtained patient posture.The ANFIS algorithm is used to train the fuzzy system that converts the IMUs signals to the right posture of the patient.A control scheme is proposed to control the system motion based on practical measurements taken from the experiments.A computer simulation showed a relatively good performance of the EJAD in assisting the patient.