The advantages/disadvantages of energy storage devices, which can provide nonpolluting automobile systems are discussed. Four types of storage devices are identified: electro-chemical (batteries) hydrogen electro-mechanical (flywheels) Molten salt heat storage A high speed flywheel with a small permanent magnet motor/generator has more advantages than any of the other systems and might become a...

Variable or noisy ventilation, which includes random breath-to-breath variations in tidal volume (Vt) and frequency, has been shown to consistently improve blood oxygenation during mechanical ventilation in various models of acute lung injury. To further understand the effects of variable ventilation on lung physiology and biology, we mechanically ventilated 11 normal guinea pigs for 3 h using ...

We obtain global stability lobes of two models of turning processes with inherit nonsmoothness due to the presence of state-dependent delays. In the process, we transform the models with state-dependent delays into systems of differential equations with both discrete and distributed delays and develop a procedure to determine analytically the global stability regions with respect to parameters....

The paper is devoted to the local classification of generic control-affine systems on an n-dimensional manifold with scalar input for any n ≥ 4 or with two inputs for n = 4 and n = 5, up to state-feedback transformations, preserving the affine structure (in C∞ category for n = 4 and Cω category for n ≥ 5). First using the Poincare series of moduli numbers we introduce the intrinsic numbers of f...

In this paper, the general formulation of periodically time-varying state-feedback controllers with memory is considered for the first time. New analysis and synthesis conditions for robust stability are proposed. The flexibility of these new results allows the user to freely add degrees-of-freedom to the control law which appears to effectively reduce the conservatism of the synthesis conditio...

Mainstream traffic flow control (MTFC) enabled via variable speed limits (VSLs) has been investigated in previous studies, utilizing various control strategies. In this paper a new feedback control strategy is proposed for MTFC enabled via VSLs, considering multiple bottleneck locations. Results are evaluated using a validated macroscopic model. The feedback concept is robust and can be immedia...

Nociceptive plasticity and central sensitization within the spinal cord depend on neurobiological mechanisms implicated in learning and memory in higher neural systems, suggesting that the factors that impact brain-mediated learning and memory could modulate how stimulation affects spinal systems. One such factor is temporal regularity (predictability). The present paper shows that intermittent...

A novel Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) actuator consisting of several thin NiTi bers woven in a counter rotating helical pattern around supporting disks is rst described. This structure accomplishes a highly eecient transformation between force and displacement overcoming the main mechanical drawback of shape memory alloys, that being limited strain. Time domain open loop experiments were then conduc...

In the nD case, a relationship between control viewed as system interconnection and trajectory control can be obtained in terms of the notion of extended interconnection. Such an interconnection corresponds to the introduction of latent variables in the descriptions of the relevant behaviors. In this paper we define different types of extended interconnections and characterize the corresponding...

This paper examines event-triggered broadcasting of state information in distributed networked systems. Event-triggering has the agent broadcast its state information when its local “error” signal exceeds a given threshold. We present a decentralized approach for determining event-triggering thresholds for nonlinear subsystems with the assumption that each agent only has access to its local sta...