Networks have been widely used to model the structure of various biological systems. Currently, a series of approaches have been developed to construct reliable biological networks. However, the ultimate understanding of a biological system is to steer its states to the desired ones by imposing signals. The control process is dominated by the intrinsic structure and the dynamic propagation. To understand the underlying mechanisms behind the life process, the control theory can be applied to biological networks with specific target requirements. In this article, we first introduce the structural controllability of complex networks and discuss its advantages and disadvantages. Then, we review the effective control to meet the specific requirements for complex biological networks. Moreover, we summarize the existing methods for finding the unique minimum set of driver nodes via the optimal control for complex networks. Finally, we discuss the relationships between biological networks and structural controllability, effective control and optimal control. Moreover, potential applications of general control principles are pointed out.

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A coupled dynamic system consisting of a supporting beam structure and multiple passing rigid bodies is seen in various engineering applications. The dynamic response of such a coupled system is quite different from that of the beam structure subject to moving loads or moving oscillators. The dynamic interactions between the beam and moving rigid bodies are complicated, mainly because of the time-varying number and locations of contact points between the beam and bodies. Due to lack of an efficient modeling and solution technique, previous studies on these coupled systems have been limited to a beam carrying one or a few moving rigid bodies. As such, dynamic interactions between a supporting structure and arbitrarily many moving rigid bodies have not been well investigated, and parametric resonance induced by a sequence of moving rigid bodies, which has important engineering implications, is missed. In this paper, a new semi-analytical method for modeling and analysis of the above-mentioned coupled systems is developed. The method is based on an extended solution domain, by which the number of degrees of freedom of a coupled system is fixed regardless of the number of contact points between the beam and moving rigid bodies at any given time. This feature allows simple and concise description of flexible–rigid body interactions in modeling, and easy and effective implementation of numerical algorithms in solution. The proposed method provides a useful platform for thorough study of flexible–rigid body interactions and parametric resonance for coupled beam–moving rigid body systems. The accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method in computation is demonstrated in several examples.

A beam structure carrying multiple moving oscillators is a mathematical model for various engineering applications, including rapid transit systems. With many moving oscillators having different speeds and varying inter-distances, the number of oscillators on the structure is time-varying, which inevitably complicates the beam–oscillator interactions. Consequently, the order of a mathematical model for the coupled beam–oscillator system changes with time, with many possibilities. Because of this, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for a conventional method to determine the dynamic response of a beam structure carrying many moving oscillators. In the literature, previous investigations have been limited to a beam structure with only one moving oscillator, which may not totally capture the physical behaviors of a structure with many moving oscillators, as seen in certain engineering applications. Developed in this work is a new semi-analytical method that can systematically handle arbitrarily many moving oscillators in both modeling and solution. In the development, an extended solution domain (ESD) is defined and based on the ESD a generalized assumed-mode method is devised. This modeling method completely resolves the issue of changing order in mathematical modeling. Because the proposed method makes use of the exact eigenfunctions of the beam structure (instead of traditional admissible functions), it renders determination of the dynamic response of a coupled beam–oscillator system highly accurate and efficient. The proposed method is demonstrated in several numerical examples. Furthermore, in a benchmark problem, it is shown that for the same accuracy in computation, the elapsed computation time used by the proposed method is just 3.3% of the time required by the finite element method.

Sensor-based optimal spacecraft attitude reorientation control by momentum exchange based on a computational programming approach is addressed in this study. The control problem of a rigid spacecraft actuated by more than three reaction wheels with an open time of maneuver is considered. The modified Rodrigues parameters for large principal rotations are applied to derive our kinematical model. The introduced algorithm can be realized by attitude sensors, such as rate gyros, with an appropriate arrangement. The cost function to be minimized is defined as a weighted performance index of the time of the maneuver and the integral of the squared sum of wheel-torque magnitudes. Instead of utilizing Pontryagin's minimum principle, an iterative procedure is used to reformulate and solve the optimal reorientation control problem as a constrained nonlinear programming problem. To show the feasibility of the proposed method, numerical simulated results are included for illustration.