Search Results (2,564)

Geosynthetics-reinforced soil technology represents an innovative reinforcement method for calcareous sand foundations and revetment engineering in coral reef areas. The interaction response at the reinforced soil interface directly influences the safety and stability of reinforced soil structures. However, research on the interaction mechanisms between geosynthetics and calcareous sand interfaces remains insufficient. Therefore, this paper investigates the effects of different normal stresses and various interface types on the shear characteristics of the geosynthetics–calcareous sand interface through a series of large-scale monotonic direct shear tests. By integrating statistical damage theory and accounting for the influence of residual strength, we establish the constitutive relation for interface damage. The results indicate that the shear stress–displacement curves for both the geosynthetics–calcareous sand interface and the unreinforced calcareous sand exhibit softening behavior. Furthermore, the relationship between the interface shear modulus and horizontal displacement for the geogrid–calcareous sand and unreinforced calcareous sand adheres to a power function model, while the relationship for the geotextile–calcareous sand follows a logarithmic function model. In the structural design of geosynthetics-reinforced calcareous sand, it is crucial to consider the influence of residual shear strength on structural stability. This study proposes a statistical damage constitutive model that accounts for the strain-softening characteristics of the geosynthetics–calcareous sand interface, while also considering the impact of residual strength. The findings provide a theoretical basis for the stability analysis of geosynthetics-reinforced calcareous sand structures in coral reefs with significant engineering implications for island reef construction, coastal development, and bank slope protection projects. Full article

Receiver nonlinear distortion severely impacts modern wireless systems. Traditional power series polynomial models suffer from numerical instability in parameter estimation, especially at high orders or with memory. This paper investigates orthogonal memory polynomial models from the perspectives of memory depth, nonlinear order, input signal distribution, and temporal correlation of the input signal, focusing on effective methods for improving the condition number. Comprehensive analysis reveals that the condition number of the Gram matrix grows rapidly with polynomial order and memory depth for the conventional polynomial, while orthogonal polynomials remain well-conditioned due to their inherent orthogonality and normalization. Notably, orthogonal polynomials maintain robust performance even when the input distribution does not perfectly match the basis weight function. Experiments using OFDM and 3-carrier WCDMA signals confirm that orthogonal polynomials achieve condition numbers orders of magnitude lower than those of power series, along with superior fitting accuracy. Full article

In this paper, an intelligent localization framework based on deep learning is proposed to address the limitations of insufficient accuracy and robustness in defect identification and localization during the ultrasonic guided-wave non-destructive testing (NDT) of receiver tubes in tower-type molten salt Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) stations. In the proposed method, a 1D convolutional neural network (1D-CNN) initially processes raw time-series-guided wave signals, achieving coarse identification and preliminary localization of defective segments. Then, Mel spectrograms are employed to exploit multi-dimensional features in the time–frequency domain and transform 1D signals into 2D representations, thereby enriching feature diversity. A regression-based 2D-CNN was designed to predict the start and end points of defect segments, enabling precise interval localization. Furthermore, the Tree Seed Algorithm (TSA) was integrated to jointly optimize key hyperparameters, enhancing training efficiency and prediction accuracy. Experimental validation on a dataset of ultrasonic guided-wave signals from molten salt receiver tubes demonstrates that the TSA-optimized Mel+2D-CNN model achieves superior performance, with a Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 75.11 sampling points and a Coefficient of Determination (R²) of 0.90. At an Intersection over Union (IoU) threshold of 0.3, the model achieves a hit rate of 89.21%, exhibiting significantly higher localization accuracy and stability compared to the 1D-CNN baseline model. These findings indicate that the proposed method effectively enhances the accuracy and robustness of guided wave-based defect localization in slender structures. While promising, the model’s generalization capability remains dependent on the data distribution and operating conditions; future work will focus on validating its engineering applicability across diverse, multi-scenario industrial environments. Full article

In the current energy context, enhancing the precision of wind power prediction serves as a key enabler for the stable development of the power grid. In the existing wind power prediction models, there are often problems of modal aliasing and noise residue, or the prediction accuracy of the model is not high. In an effort to solve the problem of short-term wind power forecasting, a wind power series decomposition and reconstruction method based on improved complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise-variational modal decomposition (ICEEMDAN-VMD) secondary decomposition is proposed. Using ICEEMDAN, wind power data (wind direction, wind speed, temperature, humidity, air pressure, etc.) is decomposed into several IMF sub-series, and these IMF sub-series are categorized into three different frequency components by combining sample entropy, Q statistics and sequence frequency. Secondly, the gray wolf optimization (GWO) is improved by using the empirical exchange strategy (EES), and the optimization performance of the EES-GWO proposed in this paper is verified by using 10 test functions. Finally, the EES-GWO-convolutional neural network–bidirectional gated recurrent unit–global attention (EES-GWO-CNN-BiGRU–Global attention) high-frequency component prediction model is constructed. Finally, we employ the XGBoost model to forecast the mid- and low-frequency components, thereby generating the corresponding forecasting results. The support vector machine (SVM) model nonlinearly integrates all the forecasting results to produce the final forecasting results. Through example analysis and comparison, the performance of the proposed model is verified from two perspectives. Full article

Traditional diagnostics of power transformers heavily rely on signal transformations, such as Welch’s method, to analyze low-frequency noise signals. This study proposes a novel approach using Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), specifically Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks, for direct time-series analysis of raw low-frequency signals without frequency-domain transformation. By training and testing multiple LSTM architectures on transformer vibroacoustic data, the proposed approach achieved approximately 86% accuracy in the fine-grained multi-class benchmark and up to 95.54% in the broader grouped categorization scenario. The model further demonstrated near-perfect classification accuracy in distinguishing transformer types (normal vs. overload) using a simplified RNN architecture. These findings illustrate that RNN-based models can streamline transformer diagnostics and improve accuracy in identifying operational states and types, potentially advancing non-invasive monitoring techniques in power system infrastructure. Full article

Background: Blood flow restriction (BFR) resistance exercise has emerged as a training methodology capable of inducing muscular adaptations comparable to traditional high-load training despite substantially lower mechanical loads. While low-load BFR protocols (20–50% 1RM) are well-established, emerging evidence supports applications across the full loading spectrum, including moderate-to-high loads (>50–90% 1RM), contralateral training effects, and proximal–distal adaptations. In this second installment of the Blood Flow Restriction in Athletic Populations series, we review current evidence on BFR resistance exercise in athletic populations, with emphasis on morphological, neuromuscular, and functional adaptations across diverse application contexts. Methods: A narrative review of research examining BFR resistance exercise in trained and athletic populations was conducted via a PubMed/MEDLINE search. Search terms: (“blood flow restriction” OR “BFR” OR “occlusion training” OR “KAATSU”) AND (“resistance training” OR “resistance exercise” OR “strength training”) AND (“athletes” OR “athletic” OR “trained” OR “elite” OR “sport”) AND (“cross-education” OR “contralateral” OR “cross transfer” OR “proximal” OR “distal”). Studies investigating low-load (20–50% 1RM) and moderate-to-high load (>50% 1RM) protocols, contralateral cross-education effects, and proximal–distal adaptations were evaluated. Primary outcomes included muscle hypertrophy, strength, power, and sport-specific performance measures. Results: Low-load BFR resistance exercise has been shown to produce significant improvements in muscle hypertrophy and strength gains over 4–12 week interventions compared to low-load control conditions. Moderate-to-high load BFR enhanced barbell velocity and power output, particularly at loads > 80% 1RM with intermittent inflation protocols. Contralateral and cross-transfer effects of BFR training demonstrate variable efficacy across muscle groups, with the most consistent evidence supporting cross-transfer enhancement of training adaptations when BFR is applied to one body region while exercising another. Proximal BFR application induced adaptations in both proximal and distal musculature, suggesting systemic mechanisms beyond local vascular restriction. Conclusions: BFR resistance exercise represents a versatile training modality producing meaningful morphological and neuromuscular adaptations across the loading spectrum. Contralateral and proximal–distal effects expand practical applications for injury rehabilitation and targeted adaptation. These findings support BFR integration within periodized training programs when mechanical load management is prioritized. Full article

With the continuous growth of data-intensive applications and artificial intelligence workloads, traditional dynamic random access memory (DRAM) is increasingly struggling to meet demands in terms of capacity scale, energy consumption constraints, and data retention after power failure. Consequently, non-volatile memory (NVM) has emerged as a crucial technology for bridging the gap between the memory and storage layers. However, due to inherent differences in write life, read–write performance variations, and consistency guarantee after failure, the systematic application of NVM still faces a series of challenges. Addressing these issues, this paper takes as its starting point the adaptation of medium characteristics and system design, and summarizes the research progress in aspects such as write optimization, consistency and security coordination mechanisms, data structure modification under hybrid memory architecture, and cross-layer resource collaboration. It also conducts an in-depth analysis of representative solutions and evaluation methods. The review results show that current research has shifted from improving a single performance bottleneck to multi-mechanism collaborative optimization. Various technical approaches have proven complementary in alleviating write amplification, enhancing persistence efficiency, and optimizing access patterns. This paper demonstrates that achieving stable and scalable application of NVM requires establishing a more systematic collaborative design concept between durability, security, and performance. As AI training workloads and big data analytics place increasing demands on memory bandwidth and persistence, the techniques surveyed here provide a foundational basis for next-generation memory-centric computing infrastructures. Full article

Tailings are unconventional geomaterials that require dynamic characterisation due to seismic hazards at several storage facilities. Due to the anthropic origin of these materials, their dynamic properties differ from those reported for natural soils. In particular, the damping ratio is a relevant parameter that controls the dynamic response of tailings storage facilities. It can be estimated using different experimental methods. The objective of this research is to disclose the results obtained through laboratory tests in which the damping ratio was evaluated independently by Half-Power Bandwidth or the free-vibration decay methods. A comprehensive testing plan comprising resonant column tests and free-vibration decay tests was carried out on three types of tailings from the Riotinto mines (Huelva, Spain): Cerro Salomón Sand (CSS), High-Density Sludge (HDS), and Copper Lamas (CL). These tests were carried out under different effective consolidation pressures and torsional excitations. The results allowed the establishment of a series of relationships between the testing conditions and the identification of differences between the methods for tailings. Full article

This paper addresses the problem of nonparametric regression for functional time series, a setting complicated by the infinite-dimensional nature of the covariates, temporal dependence, and potential for outliers. We propose a new robust estimator that combines three powerful ideas: (i) k-nearest neighbors (kNN) for adaptive localization in the functional space; (ii) local linear smoothing to reduce bias; and (iii) $\mathcal{M}$-estimation to ensure resilience against atypical observations. The key theoretical contribution establishes the almost-complete convergence of the proposed estimator under mild conditions that account for the functional geometry, weak dependence (via quasi-association), and robustness constraints. The obtained rate of convergence explicitly reveals the interplay between the functional concentration, dependence strength, and local smoothness of the model. A simulation study demonstrates that this method offers superior stability and predictive accuracy compared to classical alternatives, particularly under heavy-tailed errors and data contamination. The practical relevance of the approach is further illustrated through a one-step-ahead prediction application to a real-world environmental dataset of hourly NOx measurements. Full article

Vehicle trajectories are time series, and entropy is a powerful tool for testing or quantifying the complexity of a given series. Entropy tools are often applied to variables such as velocity, acceleration, space headway, and time headway, but the local position data have not been addressed previously. The novelty of this study is that it uses the Improved Permutation Entropy (IPE) for the first time to analyze vehicle position data and convert those data into a limited range (0–0.3317), aiming to understand individual vehicle behavior during car-following and introduce a new prediction method for developing artificial intelligence-based car-following models. The study uses the IPE analysis results as a new input variable, in addition to existing input variables, to improve the prediction accuracy of these models. Three types of neural networks were adopted according to the development of artificial intelligence models: artificial neural networks (ANNs), long short-term memory networks (LSTMs), and Transformer models. The results indicate that all models using the proposed prediction method, which includes the IPE analysis result, outperformed those using the traditional prediction method. The Transformer & IPE model shows the best performance in prediction accuracy of the follower acceleration output; the statistically significant percentage improvements were 2.04%, 1.42%, 1.22%, and 2.62% for RMSE, MAE, MASE, and R², in that order. Furthermore, the results indicate that all models using the proposed prediction method outperformed the benchmarking Intelligent Driver Model (IDM) for the follower acceleration output. Full article

Improving the prediction accuracy of renewable energy power generation units is an important goal of the “source-storage integration” approach. However, the abundance of anomalous data and indistinct features in renewable energy station data seriously affects the health status prediction of these generator sets. To effectively enhance the performance of renewable energy generation prediction, this paper proposes an efficient data cleaning method for renewable energy stations based on anomaly detection and feature enhancement. First, anomaly detection is achieved by calculating a baseline power curve and partitioning data, utilizing the Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN). Subsequently, considering that current models often learn low-frequency features while ignoring high-frequency features when processing time-series data, a data feature enhancement method is proposed. The proposed method integrates high-/low-frequency data decomposition, time–frequency domain conversion, and an improved attention mechanism to effectively enhance the high-frequency features of renewable energy station data, and reduces the RMSE of mainstream forecasting models significantly. Finally, using data from a renewable energy station in a region of China, the effectiveness and superiority of the anomaly detection and feature enhancement methods are analyzed. The results show that for renewable energy generation data, the proposed method reduces the RMSE of LSTM and Transformer models by 15.12%, 16.67% and 16.24%, 18.32% respectively, significantly improving prediction accuracy. Full article

The rapid integration of distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) generation is reshaping low-voltage distribution grids (LVDGs), creating voltage rise, reverse power flow, and congestion challenges for distribution system operators (DSOs). Flexibility in generation and demand, broadly understood as the capability to adjust generation or consumption in response to variability and uncertainty in net load, is increasingly central to cost-effective grid operation under high PV penetration. This review examines flexibility and controllability options in LVDGs, focusing on voltage regulation methods, supply- and demand-side flexibility resources, and market-based coordination mechanisms. The Norwegian Regulation on Quality of Supply (FoL) provides the regulatory context: it enforces 1 min average voltage compliance, stricter than the 10 min averaging window of EN 50160, making short-duration voltage excursions operationally significant and directly influencing the trade-off between curtailment, grid reinforcement, and local flexibility measures. Inverter-based active–reactive power control emerges as the most cost-effective overvoltage mitigation option, complemented by local battery energy storage systems (BESS) and demand response for congestion relief and energy shifting. Key gaps include limited LV observability, insufficient application of quasi-static time series (QSTS) assessment in planning, and underdeveloped DSO-aggregator coordination frameworks. Combined inverter control, feeder-end storage, and demand-side flexibility can defer costly reinforcements, particularly in rural 230 V IT feeders where voltage constraints dominate. Full article

With the increasing occurrence of extreme high-temperature weather events, the traditional bundled operation of wind power (WP), photovoltaic power (PV), and pumped storage hydropower (PSH) is facing dual challenges, namely intensified renewable energy fluctuations and insufficient flexible regulation capability of PSH. Therefore, this paper proposes an optimal scheduling strategy for bundled operation based on capacity interval matching of PSH with WP and PV under extreme high-temperature weather. First, typical scenarios are generated based on a Time-series Generative Adversarial Network (TimeGAN), and an interval matching transaction model is established based on the forecast intervals of WP and PV capacity and the corrected intervals of PSH capacity. Second, considering PSH as an independent market entity, a bi-level optimization model is constructed, in which the upper-level objective is to maximize the revenue of PSH, while the lower-level objective is to minimize the total cost of the joint clearing of the energy and ancillary service markets. Finally, simulation case studies verify that under extreme high-temperature weather, the proposed optimal scheduling method increases the bundled operation capacity by 17.9% and improves the revenue of PSH in the reserve ancillary service market by 14.8%, thereby effectively enhancing the economic performance of PSH while ensuring the safe and stable operation of the system. Full article

The output power of photovoltaic (PV) systems is influenced by various environmental factors, exhibiting strong nonlinearity and non-stationarity, which poses significant challenges for accurate forecasting. To address these issues, this paper proposes a short-term PV power forecasting method based on wavelet convolutional neural networks and an improved Transformer. First, the Complete Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition with Adaptive Noise (CEEMDAN) is employed to decompose the original PV power sequence into several intrinsic mode functions (IMFs). Fuzzy entropy is then utilized to evaluate the complexity of each component, and subsequences with similar entropy values are reconstructed to reduce the non-stationarity of the original series. Subsequently, Pearson correlation coefficients and the maximal information coefficient (MIC) are applied to capture both linear and nonlinear relationships between each reconstructed component and meteorological features, enabling the selection of strongly correlated variables. On this basis, a wavelet convolutional network (WTConv) is introduced to perform multi-scale decomposition and frequency-band feature extraction on the reconstructed components by integrating wavelet transform with convolution operations, effectively expanding the receptive field and extracting deep-seated features of the sequences. Finally, an improved iTransformer model is adopted for time-series modeling, leveraging its inverted encoding structure and self-attention mechanism to fully capture long-term dependencies among multivariate variables. The proposed model is validated using actual power data from a PV plant in Ningxia, China, across four seasons. Comprehensive experiments, including ablation studies, comparative analyses, loss function convergence evaluation, and Diebold–Mariano significance tests, are conducted to thoroughly assess the model’s effectiveness and superiority. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model achieves excellent prediction accuracy and stability in spring, summer, autumn, and winter, showing strong potential for engineering applications. Full article

To address the limited accuracy of power demand prediction for hybrid electric vehicles under complex and dynamic driving conditions, this paper proposes a hybrid prediction approach based on the cascade correction of Long Short-Term Memory networks and Least Squares Support Vector Machines (LSTM-LSSVM-CC). The proposed method adopts a stage-wise modeling framework that exploits the least-squares optimality of LSSVM for low-frequency steady-state signals and the dynamic compensation capability of LSTM for high-frequency non-stationary residuals, thereby achieving complementary feature representation in the frequency domain. Specifically, an LSSVM is first used to construct a baseline regression model that captures stationary components, followed by an LSTM network that performs deep temporal modeling of the residual sequence to correct nonlinear prediction errors. Extensive experiments conducted on three standard driving cycles—CLTC-P, WLTP, and UDDS—demonstrate that the proposed model consistently outperforms conventional methods including LSSVM, RNN, ELMAN, and Random Forest in multi-step predictions, achieving an average RMSE reduction of 28–52% and maintaining correlation coefficients (R²) between 0.87 and 0.99. Particularly under highly dynamic and abrupt load conditions, the model exhibits superior real-time performance and stability while significantly mitigating cumulative prediction errors. These results demonstrate that the proposed LSTM-LSSVM-CC model achieves robust modeling performance of non-stationary time series while balancing prediction accuracy and computational efficiency, providing an effective technical foundation for hybrid vehicle energy management optimization and offering a transferable theoretical framework for time-series prediction in complex systems. Full article