A ‘locking-bolt’ demountable shear connector (LBDSC) is proposed to facilitate the deconstruction and reuse of steel-concrete composite structures, in line with achieving a more sustainable construction design paradigm. The LBDSC is comprised of a grout-filled steel tube and a geometrically compatible partially threaded bolt. The latter has a geometry that ‘locks’ the bolt in compatible holes predrilled on the steel flange and eliminates initial slip and construction tolerance issues. The structural behaviour of the LBDSC is evaluated through nine pushout tests using a horizontal test setup. The effects of the tube thickness, strength of concrete slab, and strength of infilled grout on the shear resistance, initial stiffness, and du

Trajectory tracking and vibration suppression are essential objectives in a flexible joint manipulator control. The flexible joint manipulator is an under-actuated system, in which the number of control actions is less than the degree of freedom to be controlled. It is very challenging to control the underactuated nonlinear system with two degree of freedom. This paper presents a hierarchical sliding mode control (HSMC) for a rotary flexible joint manipulator (RFJM). Firstly, the rotary flexible joint manipulator is modeled by two subsystems. Secondly, the sliding surfaces for both subsystems are constructed. Finally, the control action is designed based on the Lyapunov function. Computer simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of

A substantial portion of today’s multimedia data exists in the form of unstructured text. However, the unstructured nature of text poses a significant task in meeting users’ information requirements. Text classification (TC) has been extensively employed in text mining to facilitate multimedia data processing. However, accurately categorizing texts becomes challenging due to the increasing presence of non-informative features within the corpus. Several reviews on TC, encompassing various feature selection (FS) approaches to eliminate non-informative features, have been previously published. However, these reviews do not adequately cover the recently explored approaches to TC problem-solving utilizing FS, such as optimization techniques.

Recent years have witnessed an increase in the use of composite coatings for numerous applications, including aerospace, aircraft, and maritime vessels. These materials owe this popularity surge to the superior strength, weight, stiffness, and electrical insulation they exhibit over conventional substances, such as metals. The growing demand for such materials is accompanied by the inevitable need for fast, accurate, and affordable nondestructive testing techniques to reveal any possible defects within the coatings or any defects under coating. However, typical nondestructive testing (NDT) techniques such as ultrasonic testing (UT), infrared thermography (IRT), eddy current testing (ECT), and laser shearography (LS) have failed to p

To investigate the efficacy of polyether‐ether‐ketone (PEEK) wire as a fixed orthodontic retainer, by comparing its performance to other retainer wires and optimizing its adhesion to composite bonding materials.

Software Defined Network (SDN) is a new technology that separate the ‎control plane from the data plane. SDN provides a choice in automation and ‎programmability faster than traditional network. It supports the ‎Quality of Service (QoS) for video surveillance application. One of most ‎significant issues in video surveillance is how to find the best path for routing the packets ‎between the source (IP cameras) and destination (monitoring center). The ‎video surveillance system requires fast transmission and reliable delivery ‎and high QoS. To improve the QoS and to achieve the optimal path, the ‎SDN architecture is used in this paper. In addition, different routing algorithms are ‎used with different steps. First, we eva