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We prove that uniform random quadrangulations of the sphere with$n$faces, endowed with the usual graph distance and renormalized by$n$^{−1/4}, converge as$n$→$∞$in distribution for the Gromov–Hausdorff topology to a limiting metric space. We validate a conjecture by Le Gall, by showing that the limit is (up to a scale constant) the so-called$Brownian map$, which was introduced by Marckert–Mokkadem and Le Gall as the most natural candidate for the scaling limit of many models of random plane maps. The proof relies strongly on the concept of$geodesic stars$in the map, which are configurations made of several geodesics that only share a common endpoint and do not meet elsewhere.

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For cable bridges, the cable tension force plays a crucial role in their construction, assessment and long-term structural health monitoring. Cable tension forces vary in real time with the change of the moving vehicle loads and environmental effects, and this continual variation in tension force may cause fatigue damage of a cable. Traditional vibration-based cable tension force estimation methods can only obtain the time-averaged cable tension force and not the instantaneous force. This paper proposes a new approach to identify the time-varying cable tension forces of bridges based on an adaptive sparse time-frequency analysis method. This is a recently developed method to estimate the instantaneous frequency by looking for the sparsest time-frequency representation of the signal within the largest possible time-frequency dictionary (i.e. set of expansion functions). In the proposed approach, first, the time-varying modal frequencies are identified from acceleration measurements on the cable, then, the time-varying cable tension is obtained from the relation between this force and the identified frequencies. By considering the integer ratios of the different modal frequencies to the fundamental frequency of the cable, the proposed algorithm is further improved to increase its robustness to measurement noise. A cable experiment is implemented to illustrate the validity of the proposed method. For comparison, the Hilbert–Huang transform is also employed to identify the time-varying frequencies, which are then used to calculate the time-varying cable-tension force. The results show that the adaptive sparse time-frequency analysis method produces more accurate estimates of the time-varying cable tension forces than the Hilbert–Huang transform method.

In this paper, we study intermittent behaviors of coupled piecewise-expanding map lattices with two nodes and a weak coupling. We show that the successive phase transition between ordered and disordered phases occurs for almost every orbit. That is, we prove $\liminf_{n\rightarrow \infty}| x_1(n)-x_2(n)|=0$ and $\limsup_{n\rightarrow \infty}| x_1(n)-x_2(n)|\ge c_0>0$, where $x_1(n), x_2(n)$ correspond to the coordinates of two nodes at the iterative step $n$. We also prove the same conclusion for weakly coupled tent-map lattices with any multi-nodes.