Rock engineering is highly susceptible to cyclic loads resulting from earthquakes, quarrying or rockbursts. Acquiring the fatigue properties and failure mechanism of rocks is pivotal for long-term ...stability assessment of rock engineering structures. So far, significant progress has been gained on the mechanical characteristics of rocks subjected to cyclic loading. For providing a global insight of typical results and main features of rocks under cyclic loading conditions, this study comprehensively reviews the state-of-the-art of deformation and failure mechanism and fatigue constitutive relationship of rocks subjected to cyclic loading in the past 60 years. Firstly, cyclic tests on rocks are classified into different types based on loading paths, loading parameters, loading types and environment conditions. Secondly, representative results are summarized and highlighted in terms of the fatigue response of rocks, including the deformation degradation, energy dissipation, damage evolution and failure characteristics; both laboratory testing and numerical results are presented, and various measurement techniques such as X-ray micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) and digital image correlation (DIC) are considered. Thirdly, the influences of cyclic loads on the mechanical characteristics of rocks are discussed, including the cyclic stress, frequency, amplitude and waveform. Subsequently, constitutive relationships for rocks subjected to cyclic loading are outlined, in which typical fatigue constitutive models are compared and analyzed, regarding the elastoplastic model, the internal variable model, the energy-based damage model and the discrete element-based model. Finally, some ambiguous questions and prospective research are interpreted and discussed.
A damage constitutive model is proposed to describe the deformation and strength characteristics of intermittent jointed rocks under cyclic uniaxial compression. First, a coupled damage tensor for ...intermittent jointed rocks is derived based on the Lemaitre strain equivalence hypothesis, which combines the Weibull statistical damage model for micro-flaws and the fracture mechanics model for macro-joints. Second, a fatigue constitutive model with an internal variable (i.e., irreversible plastic strain) is proposed to reproduce the degradation behaviors in fatigue deformation and strength of rocks under cyclic loading. Finally, a damage constitutive model with a definite physical significance is constructed for the intermittent jointed rocks under cyclic uniaxial compression. Our new model comprehensively reflects the coupled damage induced by micro-flaws and macro-joints, in which the geometric parameters and the mechanical properties of intermittent joints are considered simultaneously. Moreover, this model is able to reproduce the hysteretic stress-strain curves and the cumulative fatigue plastic deformation of rock materials under cyclic loading. In addition, a compaction coefficient, which is defined as the ratio of the secant modulus to the Young's modulus, is proposed to reflect the compaction stage of rock materials during the first loading process. To validate this new model, nine cyclic uniaxial compression tests are conducted on both intact and jointed rock samples prepared with synthetic rock-like materials. A reasonable consistency is observed between the theoretical and experimental results for the cyclic stress-strain curves and the fatigue deformation modulus.
There has been increasing interest in modelling survival data using deep learning methods in medical research. Current approaches have focused on designing special cost functions to handle censored ...survival data. We propose a very different method with two simple steps. In the first step, we transform each subject's survival time into a series of jackknife pseudo conditional survival probabilities and then use these pseudo probabilities as a quantitative response variable in the deep neural network model. By using the pseudo values, we reduce a complex survival analysis to a standard regression problem, which greatly simplifies the neural network construction. Our two-step approach is simple, yet very flexible in making risk predictions for survival data, which is very appealing from the practice point of view. The source code is freely available at http://github.com/lilizhaoUM/DNNSurv.
Internal initiation and propagation of micro cracks in rock materials might result in macroscopic fragmentation and energy dissipation under dynamic strain rate. Understanding the internal mechanism ...of rock failure and energy consumption is significant in assessing the stability of engineering rock mass under dynamic disturbance. This study experimentally investigated the energy dissipation and fragment distribution of rock specimens containing symmetrical and asymmetrical cross fissures under static and dynamic loadings. Our results reveal that the dynamic strength of rock specimens evidently increases with increasing strain rate, while the dynamic elastic modulus does not depend on the loading rate. For a given dynamic strain rate, the rock specimens containing asymmetrical cross fissures (one of the fissures had a relatively large dip angle) had higher dynamic strengths than those containing symmetrical cross fissures. During loading process, tensile cracks and shear cracks significantly affect the failure patterns of cross-fissured rock specimens under static and dynamic loadings, respectively. All the cross-fissured specimens show similar “X” shaped shear failure mode regardless of fissure configuration subjected to dynamic strain rate. The cross-fissured rock specimens with higher strain rates feature smaller location parameter and scale parameter of the fragment size distribution by GEV fitting. The fractal dimension of cross-fissured specimens show an evident loading rate dependence, and the size distribution of the fragments in asymmetrically cross-fissured specimens under dynamic loading is most homogeneous. The dissipated energy density of all the rock specimens obviously increase as the dynamic strain rate increases, while the energy utilization efficiency is less affected by the strain rate.
High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) provides superior coding efficiency than previous video coding standards at the cost of increasing encoding complexity. The complexity increase of motion ...estimation (ME) procedure is rather significant, especially when considering the complicated partitioning structure of HEVC. To fully exploit the coding efficiency brought by HEVC requires a huge amount of computations. In this paper, we analyze the ME structure in HEVC and propose a parallel framework to decouple ME for different partitions on many-core processors. Based on local parallel method (LPM), we first use the directed acyclic graph (DAG)-based order to parallelize coding tree units (CTUs) and adopt improved LPM (ILPM) within each CTU (DAGILPM), which exploits the CTU-level and prediction unit (PU)-level parallelism. Then, we find that there exist completely independent PUs (CIPUs) and partially independent PUs (PIPUs). When the degree of parallelism (DP) is smaller than the maximum DP of DAGILPM, we process the CIPUs and PIPUs, which further increases the DP. The data dependencies and coding efficiency stay the same as LPM. Experiments show that on a 64-core system, compared with serial execution, our proposed scheme achieves more than 30 and 40 times speedup for 1920 × 1080 and 2560 × 1600 video sequences, respectively.
A novel method is developed for characterizing the mechanical response and failure mechanism of brittle rocks under dynamic compression-shear loading: an inclined cylinder specimen using a modified ...split Hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB) system. With the specimen axis inclining to the loading direction of SHPB, a shear component can be introduced into the specimen. Both static and dynamic experiments are conducted on sandstone specimens. Given carefully pulse shaping, the dynamic equilibrium of the inclined specimens can be satisfied, and thus the quasi-static data reduction is employed. The normal and shear stress–strain relationships of specimens are subsequently established. The progressive failure process of the specimen illustrated via high-speed photographs manifests a mixed failure mode accommodating both the shear-dominated failure and the localized tensile damage. The elastic and shear moduli exhibit certain loading-path dependence under quasi-static loading but loading-path insensitivity under high loading rates. Loading rate dependence is evidently demonstrated through the failure characteristics involving fragmentation, compression and shear strength and failure surfaces based on Drucker–Prager criterion. Our proposed method is convenient and reliable to study the dynamic response and failure mechanism of rocks under combined compression-shear loading.
High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) uses a very flexible tree structure to organize coding units, which leads to a superior coding efficiency compared with previous video coding standards. However, ...such a flexible coding unit tree structure also places a great challenge for encoders. In order to fully exploit the coding efficiency brought by this structure, huge amount of computational complexity is needed for an encoder to decide the optimal coding unit tree for each image block. One way to achieve this is to use parallel computing enabled by many-core processors. In this paper, we analyze the challenge to use many-core processors to make coding unit tree decision. Through in-depth understanding of the dependency among different coding units, we propose a parallel framework to decide coding unit trees. Experimental results show that, on the Tile64 platform, our proposed method achieves averagely more than 11 and 16 times speedup for 1920x1080 and 2560x1600 video sequences, respectively, without any coding efficiency degradation.
Dendrobium is known for its pharmacological actions including anti-cancer effect, anti-fatigue effect, gastric ulcer protective effect, and so on. At present, only studies on endophytic fungi of ...Dendrobium affecting the metabolites of host plants have been reported, very little research has been done on endophytic bacteria. In this study, we have demonstrated the great diversity of endophytic bacteria in 6 Dendrobium samples from different origins and cultivars. According to the results of the culture-independent method, the endophytic bacterial community in Dendrobium stems showed obvious different in the 6 samples and was influenced by origin and cultivar. Some bacteria including Ralstonia, Comamonas and Lelliottia were first detected in Dendrobium in this study. Based on the culture-dependent method, a total of 165 cultivable endophytic bacteria isolates were isolated from the sterilized Dendrobium stems, and were classified into 43 species according to the 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis. Moreover, 14 of the 43 strains showed antimicrobial activity against phytopathogen using the Kirby-Bauer method. Strain NA-HTong-7 (Bacillus megaterium, 99.12%) showed the highest antimicrobial activity. This study was the first comprehensive study on endophytic bacteria of Dendrobium from different origins and cultivars, which provides new insights into the endophytic bacteria from Dendrobium.
A new strategy for the design of container molecules is presented. Sulfonylcalix4arenes, which are synthetic macrocyclic containers, are used as building blocks that are combined with various metal ...ions and tricarboxylate ligands to construct metal–organic “supercontainers” (MOSCs). These MOSCs possess both endo and exo cavities and thus mimic the structure of viruses. The synthesis of MOSCs is highly modular, robust, and predictable. The unique features of MOSCs are expected to provide exciting new opportunities for the exploration of their functional applications.
Verticillium dahliae isolates are most virulent on the host from which they were originally isolated. Mechanisms underlying these dominant host adaptations are currently unknown. We sequenced the ...genome of V. dahliae Vd991, which is highly virulent on its original host, cotton, and performed comparisons with the reference genomes of JR2 (from tomato) and VdLs.17 (from lettuce).
Pathogenicity-related factor prediction, orthology and multigene family classification, transcriptome analyses, phylogenetic analyses, and pathogenicity experiments were performed.
The Vd991 genome harbored several exclusive, lineage-specific (LS) genes within LS regions (LSRs). Deletion mutants of the seven genes within one LSR (G-LSR2) in Vd991 were less virulent only on cotton. Integration of G-LSR2 genes individually into JR2 and VdLs.17 resulted in significantly enhanced virulence on cotton but did not affect virulence on tomato or lettuce. Transcription levels of the seven LS genes in Vd991 were higher during the early stages of cotton infection, as compared with other hosts. Phylogenetic analyses suggested that G-LSR2 was acquired from Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. vasinfectum through horizontal gene transfer.
Our results provide evidence that horizontal gene transfer from Fusarium to Vd991 contributed significantly to its adaptation to cotton and may represent a significant mechanism in the evolution of an asexual plant pathogen.
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