Xinhua News published a report on Grey System Theory
On the 40th anniversary of the Grey System Theory, Xinhua News, a top Chinese newspaper, has published a report on the Grey System Theory and its application in aerospace and other equipment manufacturing. The report was prepared by Yang Binping, and was published on November 30, 2022. The English version of the report is shared below:
The 40th Anniversary of Grey System Theory of Applied Aerospace and Other Major Equipment
On Nov 29, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA) held the opening ceremony of an exhibition to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the creation of Grey System Theory.
In 1982, Professor Deng Julong, a Chinese scholar, published his first paper on grey system theory, which marked the emergence of a new theory of grey system theory. What is grey system theory? Professor Sifeng Liu, a famous teacher of the national “Ten Thousand Talent Plan” and director of the Institute of Grey Systems Studies of NUAA, introduced that, colloquially speaking, the so-called grey system is between the white system and the black box. It’s not all known information like the white system, and it’s not all unknown information like the black box. Grey system is to extract valuable information through the mining and development of the “part” of known information, so as to achieve the correct description of system operation behavior and evolution law, so that people can use mathematical models to achieve the prediction, decision and optimization control of uncertain system with “poor information”. Professor Deng Julong established the grey system theory based on the in-depth research and exploration of the control problem of uncertain systems with poor information.
Sifeng Liu told reporters that major equipment such as aerospace has a significant “poor information” characteristic, “during the Second World War, aerospace equipment was manufactured in large quantities, people found that a lot of rockets, aircraft reliability is very low, some countries’ aircraft fell down more than others shot down, some rockets exploded on the take-off platform. Sifeng Liu said that in the face of major equipment reliability problems, scientists around the world carried out research, and the reliability growth model built by American scholars based on stochastic analysis theory has been widely adopted by countries around the world. In recent years, in the absence of sufficient data, Chinese scientists have tried to apply the method and model of grey system to solve the problem of reliability growth evaluation and prediction, and have innovated and developed the original local theory.
Academician Zhongde Shan, President of Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, said that the grey system theory, which was born in China, has formed a relatively perfect system structure in the 40 years of development through the unremitting efforts of several generations. It has been widely used to solve practical problems in the fields of natural science, social science and engineering technology, and has achieved a lot of application results in China and many countries in the world.
Up to now, scholars from more than 100 countries and regions have published more than 300,000 research and application papers on grey system theory, which has strongly promoted the innovation and development of various fields. The theory has been widely used in the development of major aerospace models, the application of mechanical engineering, power engineering, geotechnical engineering, hydrology, water resources and hydraulic engineering. Especially in the development of major aerospace models, it solved the problem of “poor information” data modeling and analysis for the development of COMAC C919 large passenger aircraft, ensuring the successful development of C919, perfect maiden flight and airworthiness evidence; It solved the problems of quality control and reliability test analysis of small data and poor information of Beijing Institute of Telemetry, and ensured the development progress, quality and reliability of Long March 5 and Long March 5B carrier rocket supporting products.