Study of an object recognition algorithm

This project introduces an improvement of the vision capacity of the robot Robotino operating under ROS platform. A method for recognizing object class using binary features has been developed. The proposed method performs a binary classification of the descriptors of each training image to characterize the appearance of the object class. It presents the use of the binary descriptor based on the difference of gray intensity of the pixels in the image. It shows that binary features are suitable to represent object class in spite of the low resolution and the weak information concerning details of the object in the image. It also introduces the use of a boosting method (Adaboost) of feature selection al- lowing to eliminate redundancies and noise in order to improve the performance of the classifier. Finally, a kernel classifier SVM (Support Vector Machine) is trained with the available database and applied for predictions on new images. One possible future work is to establish a visual servo-control that is to say the reac- tion of the robot to the detection of the object.

气脉冲除灰技术燃烧和除灰过程研究

中国电站锅炉燃用大量的未经洗选的劣质煤，导致严重的锅炉积灰问题，尤其是125-600MWe的大型锅炉的回转式空气预热器堵灰更加严重。积灰不仅使锅炉热效率下降，而且堵塞烟气流道，影响了锅炉的正常运行。已有的各种除灰器都有较大的局限性。中国科学院力学研究所燃烧研究实验室根据我国国情开发出了燃烧气脉冲除灰技术，并在30多台大型电站锅炉应用取得了很好的效果。为了理解气脉冲除灰的工作过程，掌握运行规律，解释应用中出现的问题，以提高技术水平和开发新产品，尚需对气脉冲除灰的燃烧和除灰过程做更深入的研究。本论文工作针对燃烧气脉冲除灰技术在实际使用中提出的问题，开展了实验室研究。主要研究了乙炔、水煤气、液化石油气和甲烷四种燃料在气脉冲实验装置中的火焰传播情况和压力波形。研究了混合比、阻塞比和出口截面比对火焰速度和压力峰值的影响。在现有点火条件下找到了在静止混合气体中四种燃料的贫点火极限和乙炔在有一定流速时的贫点火极限；比较了燃烧室内乙炔空气混合物静止时和有一定流速时的爆炸压力峰值。初步搞清了各种因素对火焰速度和压力波形的影响，实验结果对实际应用有指导作用。为了理解火焰传播和压力波形之间的关系，用燃烧室内压力均匀的简化模型，计算了压力波形并且与实验结果进行了对照，由此推算了湍流燃烧速度并探讨了各种因素对它的影响。用考虑了管内有压力波传播的一维简化模型，计算了火焰传播过程中燃烧室两端的压力波形和火焰面前后的气流速度，以及不同时刻的燃烧室内气体流速分布。估算了气流剪切力的量级，进行了模拟积灰的气脉冲对比实验，测量了同一气脉冲条件下两种厚薄不同板的振动加速度值及其随时间和空间的衰减情况。还得到了压力在空间的衰减变化情况。定性地研究了积灰脱落机理，初步认为：对于粘结灰只有振动才有效，气流的剪切不能除去粘结灰。

Biology, Oceanography, and Fisheries of the North Pacific Transition Zone and Subarctic Frontal Zone: Papers from the North Pacific Transition Zone Workshop, Honolulu, Hawaii, 9-11 May 1988

In the past few years, large-scale, high-seas driftnet fishing has sparked intense debate and political conflict in many oceanic regions. In the Pacific Ocean the driftnet controversy first emerged in the North Pacific transition zone and subarctic frontal zone, where driftnet vessels from Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Taiwan pursue their target species of neon flying squid. Other North Pacific driftnet fleets from Japan and Taiwan target stocks of tunas and billfishes. Both types of driftnet fishing incidentally kill valued non-target species of marine life, including fish, mammals, birds, and turtles. In response to public concerns about driftnet fishing, government scientists began early on to assemble available information and consider what new data were required to assess impacts on North Pacific marine resources and the broader pelagic ecosystem. Accordingly, a workshop was convened at the NMFS Honolulu Laboratory in May 1988 to review current information on the biology, oceanography, and fisheries of the North Pacific transition zone and subarctic frontal zone. The workshop participants, from the United States and Canada, also developed a strategic plan to guide NMFS in developing a program of driftnet fishery research and impact assessment. This volume contains a selection of scientific review papers presented at the 1988 Honolulu workshop. The papers represent part of the small kernel of information available then, prior to the expansion of cooperative international scientific programs. Subsequent driftnet fishery monitoring and research by the United States, Canada, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan have added much new data. Nevertheless, this collection of papers provides a historical perspective and contains useful information not readily available elsewhere. (PDF file contains 118 pages.)

障碍物扰动对半开口管道中火焰传播特性的影响

自从1926年Chanman和Wheeler率先开创有障碍物管道中的火焰传播研究工作以来，管道中障碍物扰动引起的火焰加速现象引起了广泛的关注。由于这类现象在燃烧科学上的学术意义及其在生产中诸如安全问题等方面的实际意义，人们相继进行了一系列的研究工作。归纳起来，可以分为两大类：1）封闭管道的火焰传播。人们在不同形状的管道或容器中研究了障碍物对火焰加速的影响，在理论分析和数值计算方面也作了一些有益的工作；2）开口管道的火焰传播。相对于闭口管道，开口管道中的火焰传播研究则逊色得多。这方面尚缺乏系统的实验数据，理论方面的分析也欠缺得多。但当前在实际中，并不乏开口体系的应用，如，现已广泛应用于电力系统的一种燃气除灰装置，是一燃烧气体燃料的半开口系统。因此，研究半开口管道中非稳态燃烧的加速机制具有重要意义。在本论文工作中，通过大量的实验研究，比较系统地研究了障碍物的扰动对预混火焰传播特性的影响。实验在一长L=5m、内径D＝80mm的一端封闭、一端开口的火焰传播管内进行，管内均匀布置障碍物，通过改变障碍物的形状、间距、阻塞比大小，同时选用五种不同的可燃气体，探索了障碍物结构对预混湍流火焰加速和管内压力上升的影响。实验表明，对于敏感气体如氢气和乙炔，由于障碍物扰动产生的影响，火焰不断加速，并最终达到一准稳定状态；在适当的条件下，火焰传播状态可由爆燃向爆轰转变，此时火焰速度发生跃变；而对干不敏感气体如甲烷，则爆燃转爆轰现象不容易发生。在不同的火焰传播状态，障碍物结构特性对火焰速度和压力产生的影响各不相同。在缓燃态，随着阻塞比的变化，最大火焰速度先上升后下降，在BR=0.3～0.4之间存在一最大值；在銮塞态，最大火焰速度受阻塞比变化的影响不明显，略低于燃烧产物的声速；在阻塞比BR＝0.5附近，压力达到最大值。而在爆轰态，随着阻塞比的增加，最大火焰速度和压力逐渐降低，爆燃转爆轰的浓度范围变小。由于在有障碍物的管道中，火焰速度很容易达到声速（变塞态）或超声速（爆轰态），必须考虑流体的马赫数效应。本文在前人研究成果的基础上，给出了湍流马赫数修正的可压缩性两方程湍流模型，模拟了半开口狭长管道中重复布置的障碍物引起的湍流火焰加速现象。最大火焰速度和管内压力的计算结果与实验测量值吻合良好，这表明用修正后的湍流模型能够比较真实地模拟障碍物管内预混火焰的发展过程。通过对管道内障碍物扰动引起的燃烧波加速的机理和技术研究，对流场扰动对燃烧波产生和发展的影响规律有了比较全面的了解，研究结果对气脉冲除灰技术的完善具有直接的指导意义。

Turbulent collision of inertial particles: point-particle based, hybrid simulations and beyond

Point-particle based direct numerical simulation (PPDNS) has been a productive research tool for studying both single-particle and particle-pair statistics of inertial particles suspended in a turbulent carrier flow. Here we focus on its use in addressing particle-pair statistics relevant to the quantification of turbulent collision rate of inertial particles. PPDNS is particularly useful as the interaction of particles with small-scale (dissipative) turbulent motion of the carrier flow is mostly relevant. Furthermore, since the particle size may be much smaller than the Kolmogorov length of the background fluid turbulence, a large number of particles are needed to accumulate meaningful pair statistics. Starting from the relative simple Lagrangian tracking of so-called ghost particles, PPDNS has significantly advanced our theoretical understanding of the kinematic formulation of the turbulent geometric collision kernel by providing essential data on dynamic collision kernel, radial relative velocity, and radial distribution function. A recent extension of PPDNS is a hybrid direct numerical simulation (HDNS) approach in which the effect of local hydrodynamic interactions of particles is considered, allowing quantitative assessment of the enhancement of collision efficiency by fluid turbulence. Limitations and open issues in PPDNS and HDNS are discussed. Finally, on-going studies of turbulent collision of inertial particles using large-eddy simulations and particle- resolved simulations are briefly discussed.

Numerical Investigation On The Flowfield Of "Swallowtail" Cavity For Supersonic Mixing Enhancement

A "swallowtail" cavity for the supersonic combustor was proposed to serve as an efficient flame holder for scramjets by enhancing the mass exchange between the cavity and the main flow. A numerical study on the "swallowtail" cavity was conducted by solving the three-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations implemented with a k-epsilon turbulence model in a multi-block mesh. Turbulence model and numerical algorithms were validated first, and then test cases were calculated to investigate into the mechanism of cavity flows. Numerical results demonstrated that the certain mass in the supersonic main flow was sucked into the cavity and moved spirally toward the combustor walls. After that, the flow went out of the cavity at its lateral end, and finally was efficiently mixed with the main flow. The comparison between the "swallowtail" cavity and the conventional one showed that the mass exchanged between the cavity and the main flow was enhanced by the lateral flow that was induced due to the pressure gradient inside the cavity and was driven by the three-dimensional vortex ring generated from the "swallowtail" cavity structure.

Self-organized generation of transverse waves in diverging cylindrical detonations

Self-organized generation of transverse waves associated with the transverse wave instabilities at a diverging cylindrical detonation front was numerically studied by solving two-dimensional Euler equations implemented with an improved two-step chemical kinetic model. After solution validation, four mechanisms of the transverse wave generation were identified from numerical simulations, and referred to as the concave front focusing, the kinked front evolution, the wrinkled front evolution and the transverse wave merging, respectively. The propagation of the cylindrical detonation is maintained by the growth of the transverse waves that match the rate of increase in surface area of the detonation front to asymptotically approach a constant average number of transverse waves per unit length along the circumference of the detonation front. This cell bifurcation phenomenon of cellular detonations is discussed in detail to gain better understanding on detonation physics.

Laminar Burning Velocities and Markstein Lengths of Premixed Methane/Air Flames near the Lean Flammability Limit in Microgravity

Effects of flame stretch on the laminar burning velocities of near-limit fuel-lean methane/air flames have been studied experimentally using a microgravity environment to minimize the complications of buoyancy. Outwardly propagating spherical flames were employed to assess the sensitivities of the laminar burning velocity to flame stretch, represented by Markstein lengths, and the fundamental laminar burning velocities of unstretched flames. Resulting data were reported for methane/air mixtures at ambient temperature and pressure, over the specific range of equivalence ratio that extended from 0.512 (the microgravity flammability limit found in the combustion chamber) to 0.601. Present measurements of unstretched laminar burning velocities were in good agreement with the unique existing microgravity data set at all measured equivalence ratios. Most of previous 1-g experiments using a variety of experimental techniques, however, appeared to give significantly higher burning velocities than the microgravity results. Furthermore, the burning velocities predicted by three chemical reaction mechanisms, which have been tuned primarily under off-limit conditions, were also considerably higher than the present experimental data. Additional results of the present investigation were derived for the overall activation energy and corresponding Zeldovich numbers, and the variation of the global flame Lewis numbers with equivalence ratio. The implications of these results were discussed. 2010 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH): an Overview and Recent Developments

Smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) is a meshfree particle method based on Lagrangian formulation, and has been widely applied to different areas in engineering and science. This paper presents an overview on the SPH method and its recent developments, including (1) the need for meshfree particle methods, and advantages of SPH, (2) approximation schemes of the conventional SPH method and numerical techniques for deriving SPH formulations for partial differential equations such as the Navier-Stokes (N-S) equations, (3) the role of the smoothing kernel functions and a general approach to construct smoothing kernel functions, (4) kernel and particle consistency for the SPH method, and approaches for restoring particle consistency, (5) several important numerical aspects, and (6) some recent applications of SPH. The paper ends with some concluding remarks.

Numerical and Experimental Investigation On The Prevention of Co Deflagration

The exhaust gases from industrial furnaces contain a huge amount of heat and chemical enthalpy. However, it is hard to recover this energy since exhaust gases invariably contain combustible components such as carbon monoxide (CC). If the CO is unexpectedly ignited during the heat recovery process, deflagration or even detonation could occur, with serious consequences such as complete destruction of the equipment. In order to safely utilize the heat energy contained in exhaust gas, danger of its explosion must be fully avoided. The mechanism of gas deflagration and its prevention must therefore be studied. In this paper, we describe a numerical and experimental investigation of the deflagration process in a semi-opened tube. The results show that, upon ignition, a low-pressure wave initially spreads within the tube and then deflagration begins. For the purpose of preventing deflagration, an appropriate amount of nitrogen was injected into the tube at a fixed position. Both simulation and experimental results have shown that the injection of inert gas can successfully interrupt the deflagration process. The peak value of the deflagration pressure can thereby be reduced by around 50%. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Two new integral transforms and their applications

This thesis is in two parts. In Part I the independent variable θ in the trigonometric form of Legendre's equation is extended to the range ( -∞, ∞). The associated spectral representation is an infinite integral transform whose kernel is the analytic continuation of the associated Legendre function of the second kind into the complex θ-plane. This new transform is applied to the problems of waves on a spherical shell, heat flow on a spherical shell, and the gravitational potential of a sphere. In each case the resulting alternative representation of the solution is more suited to direct physical interpretation than the standard forms.

In Part II separation of variables is applied to the initial-value problem of the propagation of acoustic waves in an underwater sound channel. The Epstein symmetric profile is taken to describe the variation of sound with depth. The spectral representation associated with the separated depth equation is found to contain an integral and a series. A point source is assumed to be located in the channel. The nature of the disturbance at a point in the vicinity of the channel far removed from the source is investigated.

Part I. On the breaking of nonlinear dispersive waves. Part II. Variational principles in continuum mechanics

A model equation for water waves has been suggested by Whitham to study, qualitatively at least, the different kinds of breaking. This is an integro-differential equation which combines a typical nonlinear convection term with an integral for the dispersive effects and is of independent mathematical interest. For an approximate kernel of the form e^(-b|x|) it is shown first that solitary waves have a maximum height with sharp crests and secondly that waves which are sufficiently asymmetric break into "bores." The second part applies to a wide class of bounded kernels, but the kernel giving the correct dispersion effects of water waves has a square root singularity and the present argument does not go through. Nevertheless the possibility of the two kinds of breaking in such integro-differential equations is demonstrated.

Difficulties arise in finding variational principles for continuum mechanics problems in the Eulerian (field) description. The reason is found to be that continuum equations in the original field variables lack a mathematical "self-adjointness" property which is necessary for Euler equations. This is a feature of the Eulerian description and occurs in non-dissipative problems which have variational principles for their Lagrangian description. To overcome this difficulty a "potential representation" approach is used which consists of transforming to new (Eulerian) variables whose equations are self-adjoint. The transformations to the velocity potential or stream function in fluids or the scaler and vector potentials in electromagnetism often lead to variational principles in this way. As yet no general procedure is available for finding suitable transformations. Existing variational principles for the inviscid fluid equations in the Eulerian description are reviewed and some ideas on the form of the appropriate transformations and Lagrangians for fluid problems are obtained. These ideas are developed in a series of examples which include finding variational principles for Rossby waves and for the internal waves of a stratified fluid.

Nonlinear dynamic transfer functions for certain retinal neuronal systems

The applicability of the white-noise method to the identification of a nonlinear system is investigated. Subsequently, the method is applied to certain vertebrate retinal neuronal systems and nonlinear, dynamic transfer functions are derived which describe quantitatively the information transformations starting with the light-pattern stimulus and culminating in the ganglion response which constitutes the visually-derived input to the brain. The retina of the catfish, Ictalurus punctatus, is used for the experiments.

The Wiener formulation of the white-noise theory is shown to be impractical and difficult to apply to a physical system. A different formulation based on crosscorrelation techniques is shown to be applicable to a wide range of physical systems provided certain considerations are taken into account. These considerations include the time-invariancy of the system, an optimum choice of the white-noise input bandwidth, nonlinearities that allow a representation in terms of a small number of characterizing kernels, the memory of the system and the temporal length of the characterizing experiment. Error analysis of the kernel estimates is made taking into account various sources of error such as noise at the input and output, bandwidth of white-noise input and the truncation of the gaussian by the apparatus.

Nonlinear transfer functions are obtained, as sets of kernels, for several neuronal systems: Light → Receptors, Light → Horizontal, Horizontal → Ganglion, Light → Ganglion and Light → ERG. The derived models can predict, with reasonable accuracy, the system response to any input. Comparison of model and physical system performance showed close agreement for a great number of tests, the most stringent of which is comparison of their responses to a white-noise input. Other tests include step and sine responses and power spectra.

Many functional traits are revealed by these models. Some are: (a) the receptor and horizontal cell systems are nearly linear (small signal) with certain "small" nonlinearities, and become faster (latency-wise and frequency-response-wise) at higher intensity levels, (b) all ganglion systems are nonlinear (half-wave rectification), (c) the receptive field center to ganglion system is slower (latency-wise and frequency-response-wise) than the periphery to ganglion system, (d) the lateral (eccentric) ganglion systems are just as fast (latency and frequency response) as the concentric ones, (e) (bipolar response) = (input from receptors) - (input from horizontal cell), (f) receptive field center and periphery exert an antagonistic influence on the ganglion response, (g) implications about the origin of ERG, and many others.

An analytical solution is obtained for the spatial distribution of potential in the S-space, which fits very well experimental data. Different synaptic mechanisms of excitation for the external and internal horizontal cells are implied.