Predictive process mapping for laser powder bed fusion: A review of existing analytical solutions

One of the main challenges in the laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) process is making dense and defect-free components. These porosity defects are dependent upon the melt pool geometry and the processing conditions. Power-velocity (PV) processing maps can aid in visualizing the effects of LPBF processing variables and mapping different defect regimes such as lack-of-fusion, under-melting, balling, and keyholing. This work presents an assessment of existing analytical equations and models that provide an estimate of the melt pool geometry as a function of material properties. The melt pool equations are then combined with defect criteria to provide a quick approximation of the PV processing maps for a variety of materials. Finally, the predictions of these processing maps are compared with experimental data from the literature. The predictive processing maps can be computed quickly and can be coupled with dimensionless numbers and high-throughput (HT) experiments for validation. The present work provides a boundary framework for designing the optimal processing parameters for new metals and alloys based on existing analytical solutions.     

Review on development of metal/ceramic interpenetrating phase composites and critical analysis of their properties

Metal/ceramic composites are in high demand in several industries because of their superior thermo-mechanical properties. Among various composite types, the interpenetrating phase composites (IPCs) with percolating metallic and ceramic phases offer manifold benefits, such as a good combination of strength, toughness, and stiffness, very good thermal properties, excellent wear resistance, as well as the flexibility of microstructure and processing route selection, etc. The fabrication of metal/ceramic IPCs typically involves two steps - i) processing of an open porous ceramic body, and ii) infiltration of metallic melt in the pores to fabricate the IPC. Although significant progress has been made in recent years for developing both porous ceramics and melt infiltration methods, to the best of the knowledge of the authors, no review article summarizing all the aspects of processing and properties of IPCs has been published till date. This review article is aimed at filling this gap. Starting with a brief introduction about the current status and applications of IPCs, the various processing routes for fabricating open porous ceramic preforms and melt infiltration techniques have been discussed. Subsequently, the data available for various important physical, mechanical, and thermal properties for IPCs have been critically analyzed to thoroughly understand their dependence on various structural and processing parameters. To compare the properties of IPCs with other relevant materials, seven different Ashby material property maps have been used, and the domains for IPCs have been created in them. For each map, the concept of material indices has been employed to critically discuss how IPCs perform in relation to other material classes for various optimum design conditions. Finally, a detailed future outlook for further research on IPCs has been provided.     

Strategic Planning for Employment Self-Containment in Metropolitan Sub-Regions

Metropolitan strategic plans often focus on strengthening local employment opportunities to address the congestion and commuting issues threatening city sustainability. The success of such strategies relies on a more equitable distribution of jobs between sub-regions and can be comparatively benchmarked through one of the three related measures of employment self-sufficiency, self-containment or jobs-housing balance. However, in practice, planning policy implementation to meet these targets seldom reduces automobile commuting. This paper investigates self-containment across a range of occupation and industry types to highlight large differences in commuting and employment patterns through a case study of Perth’s Northwest sub-region, Western Australia. Its findings suggest the application of current sub-regional policy and targets within Perth may reinforce the wage and skill disadvantage of outer metropolitan sub-regions over the inner core. It recommends a more nuanced understanding of these measures taking into account the complex dynamics of both employment opportunities and commuting patterns across sub-regions of a city.     

Topological preservation techniques for nonlinear process monitoring

This work proposes a novel approach for the offline development and online implementation of data-driven process monitoring (PM) using topological preservation techniques, specifically self-organizing maps (SOM). Previous topological preservation PM applications have been restricted due to the lack of monitoring and diagnosis tools. In the proposed approach, the capabilities of SOM are further extended so that all aspects of PM can be performed in a single environment. First for fault detection, using SOM's vector quantization abilities, an SOM-based Gaussian mixture model (GMM) is proposed to define the normal region. For identification, an SOM-based contribution plot is proposed to identify the variables most responsible for the fault. This is done by analyzing the residual of the faulty point and an SOM model of the normal region used in fault detection. The data points are projected on the model by locating the best matching unit (BMU) of the point. Finally, for fault diagnosis a procedure is formulated involving the concept of multiple self-organizing maps (MSOM), creating a map for each fault. This allows the ability to include new faults without directly affecting previously characterized faults. A Tennessee Eastman Process (TEP) application is performed on dynamic faults such as random variations, sticky valves and a slow drift in kinetics. Previous studies of the TEP have considered particular feed-step-change faults. Results indicate an excellent performance when compared to linear and nonlinear distance preservation techniques and standard nonlinear SOM approaches in fault diagnosis and identification.     

Managing readiness-relevant activities for the organizational dimension of ERP implementation

An organization requires performing readiness-relevant activities to ensure successful implementation of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. This paper develops a novel approach to managing these interrelated activities to get ready for implementing an ERP system. The approach enables an organization to evaluate its ERP implementation readiness by assessing the degree to which it can achieve the interrelated readiness relevant activities using fuzzy cognitive maps. Based on the interrelationship degrees among the activities, the approach clusters the activities into manageable groups and prioritizes them. To help work out a readiness improvement plan, scenario analysis is conducted.     

Deriving high-resolution urban air pollution maps using mobile sensor nodes

Up-to-date information on urban air pollution is of great importance for environmental protection agencies to assess air quality and provide advice to the general public in a timely manner. In particular, ultrafine particles (UFPs) are widely spread in urban environments and may have a severe impact on human health. However, the lack of knowledge about the spatio-temporal distribution of UFPs hampers profound evaluation of these effects. In this paper, we analyze one of the largest spatially resolved UFP data set publicly available today containing over 50 million measurements. We collected the measurements throughout more than two years using mobile sensor nodes installed on top of public transport vehicles in the city of Zurich, Switzerland. Based on these data, we develop land-use regression models to create pollution maps with a high spatial resolution of 100 m × 100 m. We compare the accuracy of the derived models across various time scales and observe a rapid drop in accuracy for maps with sub-weekly temporal resolution. To address this problem, we propose a novel modeling approach that incorporates past measurements annotated with metadata into the modeling process. In this way, we achieve a 26% reduction in the root-mean-square error–a standard metric to evaluate the accuracy of air quality models–of pollution maps with semi-daily temporal resolution. We believe that our findings can help epidemiologists to better understand the adverse health effects related to UFPs and serve as a stepping stone towards detailed real-time pollution assessment.     

Study on the influence of maintenance operations on energy consumption and emissions in healthcare centres by fuzzy cognitive maps

The present work is aimed at performing a qualitative analysis of the effect of maintenance intensity on energy consumption, energy costs and emissions in healthcare centres. Most relevant variables involved in the maximization of the building efficiency were determined by means of fuzzy cognitive maps. Twelve variables were observed to show a direct connection to the energy and environmental efficiency as well as to its maintenance condition. The joint effect of these factors was seen to improve the overall performance of the building in terms of efficiency. However, even though maintenance appeared as one of the most highly-rated variables, it did not seem to affect the overall performance by itself, but it was rather due to the synergistic action of the remaining variables. The behaviour of those variables was evidenced to show a significant change for buildings below 1250?m² floor area as compared to those exceeding such threshold value.     

Crowd counting in complex scenes based on an attention aware CNN network

Crowd counting with density estimation has been an active research community due to its significant applications in the fields of public security, video surveillance, traffic monitoring. However, Crowd counting for congested scenes often suffers from some obstacles including severe occlusions, large scale variations, noise interference, etc. In this paper, using the first ten layers of a modified VGG16 and dilated convolution layers as the framework, we have proposed a CNN based crowd counting and density estimation model improved by the attention aware modules with residual connections. To tackle the problem of noise interference, convolutional block attention modules have been introduced into the deep network to segment the foreground and background to focus on interest information, refining deeper features of the input image. To improve information transmission and reuse, residual connections are utilized to link 3 attention blocks. Meanwhile, dilated convolution layers keep larger reception fields and obtain high-resolution density maps. The proposed method has been evaluated on three public benchmarks, i.e. Shanghai Tech A & B, UCF-QNRF and MALL, achieving the mean absolute errors of 64.6 & 8.3, 113.8 and 1.68, respectively. The results outperform some existing excellent approaches. This indicates that the proposed model has high accuracy and better robustness, which is suitable for crowd counting and density estimation in various congested scenes.     

The built environment,transportation policy,and population health: a comparison of two cities

This preliminary study assesses the relationship between active transportation, the built environment, and population perceived health in two comparable cities in the Southeastern United States at different stages of improving infrastructure for active commuting. Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey data from 2006 to 2012 were analyzed for Charlotte, NC, and Jacksonville, FL. The annual difference between the percentage of Charlotte respondents rating physical health as good compared to Jacksonville’s increased at a rate of 13% based on an exponential growth regression model (p = 0.02). Supportive urban and transportation policies aimed at facilitating healthy behaviors are associated with healthier communities.     

5083和7020变形铝合金加工图的研究

在动态材料模型理论基础上,对5083和7020两种典型变形铝合金的加工图进行研究分析,结果表明:5083铝合金适宜加工区的温度为450～500℃、应变速率为0.005～0.1s-1;7020铝合金适宜加工区的温度为450～550℃、应变速率为0.001～O.1s-1.同时通过选取7020铝合金在不同加工条件下的压缩试样...