Fast iterative solution of large undrained soil‐structure interaction problems

In view of rapid developments in iterative solvers, it is timely to re‐examine the merits of using mixed formulation for incompressible problems. This paper presents extensive numerical studies to compare the accuracy of undrained solutions resulting from the standard displacement formulation with a penalty term and the two‐field mixed formulation. The standard displacement and two‐field mixed formulations are solved using both direct and iterative approaches to assess if it is cost‐effective to achieve more accurate solutions. Numerical studies of a simple footing problem show that the mixed formulation is able to solve the incompressible problem ‘exactly’, does not create pressure and stress instabilities, and obviate the need for an ad hoc penalty number. In addition, for large‐scale problems where it is not possible to perform direct solutions entirely within available random access memory, it turns out that the larger system of equations from mixed formulation also can be solved much more efficiently than the smaller system of equations arising from standard formulation by using the symmetric quasi‐minimal residual (SQMR) method with the generalized Jacobi (GJ) preconditioner. Iterative solution by SQMR with GJ preconditioning also is more elegant, faster, and more accurate than the popular Uzawa method. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

ANALYSIS ON THE SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION VARIATION CHARACTERISTIC OF URBAN HEAT ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY AND ITS MECHANISM——A Case Study of Hangzhou City

Urban heat environmental quality(UHEQ) is affected by the interacting of weather condition and underlying surface framework of urban area .In the last two decades,many researchers from domestic and overseas have studied many problems at the aspect of urban heat environment such as urban heat islands ,urban air temperature and their rela-tion with urban land cover,city population,air pollution etc,In the recent years,Hangzhou,acting as a center city of Zhejiang Province in China,its urbanization quantum and quantity have both changed greatly,in particular ,representing as business affairs building,resident real property and all kins of specialty market having arisen in built-up zone,Based on Landsat TM images data in 1991 and 1999,urban underlying surface temperature value and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) were calculated using image interpreting and supervised classification technique by remote sensing software ERDAS image 8.4,The relation model between urban underlying surface temperature (UUST )and urban air temperature was setup according to the certain correlation patten .Reference to the relational standard of assessing human comfort and other meteorology data of Hangzhou City in summer,the spatial distribution characteristic and the spatial varia-tion degree of human comfort of heat environmental quality are estimated and mapped on a middle scale,that is ,in six districts of Hangzhou City .Then the paper reveals the main characteristic of spatial variation from 1991 to 1999.Lastly,the change mechanism is analyzed and discussed from the viewpoint of city planning,construction and environmental protec-tion.     

Reliability assessment of serviceability performance of braced retaining walls using a neural network approach

In urban environments, one major concern with deep excavations in soft clay is the potentially large ground deformations in and around the excavation. Excessive movements can damage adjacent buildings and utilities. There are many uncertainties associated with the calculation of the ultimate or serviceability performance of a braced excavation system. These include the variabilities of the loadings, geotechnical soil properties, and engineering and geometrical properties of the wall. A risk‐based approach to serviceability performance failure is necessary to incorporate systematically the uncertainties associated with the various design parameters. This paper demonstrates the use of an integrated neural network–reliability method to assess the risk of serviceability failure through the calculation of the reliability index. By first performing a series of parametric studies using the finite element method and then approximating the non‐linear limit state surface (the boundary separating the safe and ‘failure’ domains) through a neural network model, the reliability index can be determined with the aid of a spreadsheet. Two illustrative examples are presented to show how the serviceability performance for braced excavation problems can be assessed using the reliability index. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Magnetic susceptibility variations of the Edicaran cap carbonates in the Yangtze platform and their implications for paleoclimate

1 INTRODUCTION One of the most intriguing phenomena in the late Neoproterozoic (~750 to 543 Ma) is the globa occurrence of thin carbonates that directly overlie glacial deposits in almost every continent (Kennedy 1996; Hoffman et al., 1998; Hoffman and Schrag 2002; Brasier and Shields, 2000; James et al., 2001 Jiang et al., 2003; Nogueira et al., 2003). These “cap carbonates”, commonly several to tens of meters thick, have attracted enormous interests because o their unusually negati…     

Free radical scavenging abilities of polypeptide from Chlamys farreri

1 INTRODUCTION Active oxygen free radicals can damage cell structure, even kill the cells, causing aging and cer- tain serious diseases (Bors et al., 1989). Usually, the production and scavenging of active oxygen free radicals are in balance in healthy hu…     

Implications of low-pass filtering on power spectra and autocorrelation functions of turbulent velocity signals

Filtering either through the electronics of an instrument or through digital procedure is performed routinely on geophysical data. When velocity fluctuations are measured in turbulent flows using electromagnetic current meters (ECMs), a builtin lowpass Butterworth filter of order n usually attenuates fluctuations at high frequencies. However, the effects of this filter may not be acknowledged in turbulence studies, thus impeding comparisons between data collected with different ECMs. This paper explores the implications of the filters on the characteristics of velocity signals, mainly on variance, power spectra, and correlation analyses. Variance losses resulting from filtering can be important but will vary with the order n of the Butterworth filter, decreasing as n increases. Knowing the filter response, it is possible to reconstruct the original signal spectrum to evaluate the effect of filtering on variance and to allow comparisons between data collected with different instruments. The autocorrelation function also is affected by filtering which increases the value of the coefficients in the first lags, resulting in an overestimation of the integral length scale of coherent structures. These important effects add to those related to size and shape differences in ECM sensors and must be taken into account in comparative studies.     

贵州和四川盆地云量的气候研究

贵州和四川盆地是我国云量最多的地区,素有“天无三日晴”和“蜀犬吠日”之说,盆地西缘的雅安古时还有“雅州天漏”的谚语。从全球日照百分率分布推知,川黔地区也是世界上天气最阴沉的地区之一。川黔之阴一向为国内外气象界所注意,本文根据1951—1980