An optimisation support for the design of hybrid production lines including assembly and disassembly tasks

The optimisation problems related to the assignment of tasks to workstations in assembly and disassembly lines have been largely discussed in the literature. They are known, respectively, as Assembly Line Balancing and Disassembly Line Balancing Problems. In this study, both types of task performed on the identical product are integrated in a common hybrid production system. Therefore, the logistic process is simplified and disassembly tasks can supply easier the assembly tasks with the required components. The considered production system has the layout of two parallel lines with common workstations. The product flow is conventional in the assembly line and reverse in the disassembly line. The paper provides a new mathematical model for designing such a hybrid system and an approximate approach based on ant colony optimisation for solving large-scale instances. The solution method is tested in a case study. The obtained results are compared with the solution provided by the design of two independent lines. The analysis of the results highlights the potential benefits of the hybrid production system.     

Added value and employment effects of brick industry

In Germany manufacturing and distribution of bricks care for direct employment of about 10,000 persons. Procurement of preliminary work and the utilisation of the payed salaries, social security contributions, taxes, and profits secure more than further 25,000 jobs. It can be assumed that a substitution of masonry by other building materials is not possible in the near term, since the masonry has increased its market share in the past few years even slightly. Thereby the masonry participates in the added value based on the shell construction of buildings in the amount of 32.4 billion Euro, and in the employment of 480,000 working people. The expansion of these buildings leads to further added value in the amount of 39 billion Euro and further employment of 691,000 employees. In the year 2016 in total, the construction of buildings with masonry has led to an overall economic added value amounting to more than 70 billion Euro and to an employment of about 1.17 million persons. Masonry products form the basis of this added value and employment, without which the construction of the buildings would not be possible.     

A new approach for solution of vehicle routing problem with hard time window: an application in a supermarket chain

In this study, a vehicle routing problem with hard time windows (VRPHTW) that appears to meet demands of customers’ service within time intervals in a supermarket chain is solved. In VRPHTW, to reach a solution by an exact method is quite difficult and sometimes impossible if number of constraints is large enough (i.e., NP-hard), and solution time of a VRPHTW grows exponentially. As the size of the problem grows, a near optimal solution can be found using a heuristic method. A hierarchical approach consisting of two stages as “cluster-first route-second” is proposed. In the first stage, customers are assigned to vehicles using three different clustering algorithms (i.e., K-means, K-medoids and DBSCAN). In the second stage, a VRPHTW is solved using a MILP. The main contribution of the article is that the proposed hierarchical approach enables us to deal with a large size real problem and to solve it in a short time using the exact method. Finally, the proposed approach is employed on a supermarket chain. An instance of the algorithm is demonstrated to illustrate the applicability of the proposed approach and the results obtained are highly favourable.     

基于各向异性二维Ge Se的无偏振器偏振图像传感器

偏振是光的一个重要信息,偏振探测可以把信息量从三维(光强、光谱和空间)扩充到七维(光强、光谱、空间、偏振度、光偏振等),为成像物体提供关键的视觉信息(如表面粗糙度、几何形状或方向),因此偏振成像技术在目标检测等领域有着巨大的潜力.然而这些领域往往需要复杂的偏振编码,现有的复杂透镜系统和偏振器限制了集成成像传感器的小型化能力.本文通过二维各向异性α-Ge Se半导体,成功实现了无偏振器的偏振敏感可见-近红外光电探测器/成像仪.作为传感器系统的关键部件,该原型Au/GeSe/Au光电探测器具有灵敏度高、光谱响应宽、响应速度快(~10³A W^-1, 400–1050 nm, 22.7/49.5μs)等优点.此外,该器件在690–1050 nm光谱范围内表现出独特的偏振灵敏度,并且对沿y方向的偏振光吸收最强,这一点通过分析α-Ge Se的光跃迁行为也得到了证实.最后,将2D-Ge Se器件应用到成像系统中进行偏振成像,在808 nm近红外波段处,在不同的偏振方向上,辐射目标的对比度为3.45.这种成像仪在没有偏振器的情况下,能够在场景中感知双频偏振信号,为偏振成像传感器阵列的广泛应用奠定了基础.     

废纸纤维素/壳聚糖膜的制备及性能

为增强壳聚糖膜的力学性能,制备了废纸纤维素/壳聚糖膜.以包装废弃瓦楞纸为原料,通过碱处理和漂白处理得到再生纤维素,再以不同组分与壳聚糖制备成膜,并对不同原料膜进行形态观察和力学性能检测.研究结果表明:废纸纤维素呈丝状,纤维直径约为15～20μm,结晶度较原始瓦楞纸有大幅提高;当在质量分数为2％的壳聚糖溶液中添加相对质量分数为5％的废纸纤维素时,废纸纤维素/壳聚糖膜力学性能最好,最大拉伸强度达52.3 MPa,断裂伸长率超过20％,纤维素分布均匀.     

The effect of retrogression and re‐aging treatment on mechanical and tribological features of AA7075 aluminium alloy

In this study, T651‐applied AA7075 alloy was subjected to retrogression and re‐aging (RRA) process. Various retrogression temperatures (180 °C, 280 °C, 370 °C) and times (15 min, 30 min, 90 min) were used to determine the effects of temperature and time on the mechanical and tribological properties of the AA7075 alloy. All re‐aging stages were performed at 120 °C for 24 hours. Retrogression and re‐aging‐applied specimens were characterized by scanning electron microscope, transmission electron microscope, x‐ray diffraction, Charpy V‐notch impact and tensile tests. Brinell hardness measurements and ball‐on‐disc type tribometer measurements by using AISI 316 ball as a counterpart have also been conducted. Grain boundary precipitates in the T651‐applied specimen was transformed from continuous to the discontinuous structure after retrogression and re‐aging process. Continuous MgZn₂ precipitates at grain boundaries were disintegrated and re‐precipitated along the grain boundaries. The sizes of intragranular precipitates have become coarsened by comparison with the T651 condition. Hardness, tensile strength and wear resistance were decreased whereas impact toughness values were increased with increasing retrogression temperature and time. The best wear resistance was obtained in the sample treated at 180 °C for 15 minutes.     

The investigation of structural and magnetic properties of Er2−xCoxO3 nano-oxides

Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics - The sol–gel technique was used to synthesize Er2?xCoxO3 (0.0?≤?x?≤?0.30) mixed oxides to...     

The electrical characterization of metal–insulator–semiconductor device with β-naphthol orange interface

Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics - This study was formed by the β-naphthol orange/p-Si metal–insulator–semiconductor (MIS) structure by obtaining...     

Downcomer modification in the Jameson cell and its effects on coarse particle flotation

Jameson cell is a flotation device that has unique characteristics for fine grained particles, and thus, it has more than three hundred applications in worldwide. On the contrary, the flotation performance of the cell decreases by coarser feeding, which limits the application of the Jameson cell. It has been figured out that the main reason for the performance decrease for coarse particle is turbulence which occurs at the outlet of the downcomer in the Jameson cell. Therefore, the aim of this study was to prevent the performance decrease in the Jameson cell by modifying the downcomer which was implemented by taking into account the fluid mechanics law and mathematical modelling. The modified downcomer, which can be called as diffuser, can provide better aggregate stability and less turbulence at the end of the downcomer. Thus, theoretically the better performance was obtained by the use of the new form of downcomer. In addition, a series of experiments were carried out to verify the success of the modified downcomer. According to the results, velocity gradient (G) decreased to 640?s^?1 from 671?s^?1 by using the modified downcomer, and the maximum floatable particle size increased to 255?µm from 225?µm.