An investigation of tool wear in high-speed turning of AISI 4340 steel

A commercially available insert has been used to turn an AISI 4340 steel at speeds placed between 325 and 1000 m/min. The flank wear was measured in connection to cutting time. This is to determine the tool life defined as the usable time that has elapsed before the flank wear has reached the criterion value.It is shown that an increase in cutting speed causes a higher decrease of the time of the second gradual stage of the wear process. This is due to the thin coat layer which is rapidly peeled off when high-speed turning.The investigation included the realization of a wear model in relation to time and to cutting speed. An empirical model has also been developed for tool life determination in connection with cutting speed.On the basis of the results obtained it is possible to set optimal cutting speed to achieve the maximum tool life.     

Integration of Subjective and Objective Usability Evaluation Based on IEC/IEC 15939: A Case Study for Traffic Supervision Systems

Usability evaluation for interactive systems is one of the greatest interests for the Human–Computer Interaction community. To support this evaluation, several subjective and objective methods have been proposed and applied in academy and industry. In this context, usability evaluators usually work with a lot of and different kinds of data (e.g., ordinal values from questionnaires and performance rates) generated from different methods and tools and related to different usability criteria. In this article, we propose to integrate these data in a single way to better support the quality evaluators’ decision-making for traffic supervision systems domain. We apply the measurement information model defined by IEC/IEC 15939 with the use of indicators in an interactive system evaluation environment. Four indicators are presented from their specifications to their application in the evaluation of a system from a company. These indicators integrate evaluation results from usability questionnaires, an automated ergonomic guidelines inspector, and an electronic informer.     

Widgets Dedicated to User Interface Evaluation

In this article, evaluation-based widgets are proposed as a contribution to assist evaluators for early evaluation of user interfaces. This contribution imbricates the ergonomic quality evaluation process into widgets used for user-interface graphical composition. In other words, these widgets evaluate themselves according to a defined set of ergonomic guidelines. The proposed widgets indicate the possible interface design ergonomic inconsistencies as a notification to the designer. The guidelines set can be modified through an interface dedicated to guidelines definition into XML files. The proposed widgets are intended for the evaluation of different kind of user interfaces: WIMP, web, and mobile. An experimental evaluation, involving these evaluation-based widgets, is proposed to illustrate and to validate the approach.     

Effects of sandblasting on the efficiencies of solar panels

Photovoltaic solar-energy can be a solution, if efficiently used, for providing electrification, water pumping and communications in inaccessible regions as in the south of Algeria. The glass protected solar panels made for these purposes are, however, constantly exposed to the damaging effects caused by sandstorms. These occur particularly in spring with velocities that can reach 120 km/h, and for various durations, typically 48 h. The small particles of sand (of average size <120 μm) rise high into the atmosphere, and the relatively large particles (average size >120 μm) remain at lower altitudes and at ground level. This preliminary work considers the effects of the sandblasting duration on the efficiencies of solar panels. The results show that the solar panels' efficiencies decrease during sandstorms, and some of these decreases are permanent when the protective glass sheets are damaged by erosion.     

The modelling of bolted flange joints used with disc springs and tube spacers to reduce relaxation

Bolted flange joints are prone to leakage when exposed to high temperature. In several cases, the root cause is relaxation that takes place as a result of material creep of the gasket, the bolt and the flange. One way to overcome this problem is to make the joint less stiff by introducing disc springs or the use of longer bolts with spacers. Although widely used, these two methods have no reliable analytical model that could be used to evaluate the exact number of washers or length of the bolts required to reduce relaxation to a minimum acceptable level.This paper describes an analytical model based on the flexibility and deflection interactions of the joint different elements including the axial stiffness of the flange and bolts, used to evaluate relaxation. The developed analytical flange model can accommodate either disc springs or longer bolts with spacer tubes to reduce the bolt load loss to a maximum acceptable value. This model is validated by comparison with the more accurate FEA findings. Calculation examples on a bolted flanged joint are presented to illustrate the suggested analytical calculation procedure.     

Sliding wear behaviour of oriented ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene

The impact of processing‐induced chain orientation on the sliding wear behaviour of ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) was investigated. The orientation of the molecular network of UHMWPE was done by means of uniaxial tension up to different residual strains. We found that high residual strain levels (higher than 0.45) enabled the sliding dissipated energy of UHMWPE to be decreased in dry conditions. In particular, oriented UHMWPE with a residual strain of 0.85 exhibited, at 500 000 sliding cycles in dry conditions, a decrease in volumetric wear loss by a factor of 3.3 and 19.4 compared with the reference UHMWPE tested in directions parallel and perpendicular to the chain direction, respectively. It is argued that oriented UHMWPE exhibits less adhesion during interfacial wear than the reference material, and hence orientation of UHMWPE bulk may be an alternative treatment to crosslinking for dry sliding conditions. In the case of sliding testing conducted in Ringer's solution, the benefit of the initial chain orientation was quite weak due to a lubrication effect of the solution that markedly limited the effect of chain orientation on the sliding behaviour.     

Composition of peel essential oils from four selected Tunisian Citrus species: Evidence for the genotypic influence

The peel essential oils from four selected Tunisian Citrus species: sweet orange (Citrus sinensis Osbeck), mandarin (Citrus reticulata Blanco); sour orange (Citrus aurantium L.) and pummelo (Citrus grandis Osbeck), cultivated under the same pedoclimatic and cultural conditions have been analysed by gas chromatography (GC) and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS). The essential oils content ranged from 1.06% to 4.62% (w/w) in pummelo and mandarin, respectively. The qualitative and quantitative analysis led to the identification of 70 components in all oil samples. The analysed oils consist mainly in monoterpene hydrocarbons (97.59–99.3%), with limonene (92.52–97.3%) and β-pinene (1.37–1.82) being the major constituents. The remaining chemical classes were weakly represented (<1%). Both qualitative and quantitative differences between oil samples have been observed and numerous components have been proposed as marker compounds. Since the influence of different environmental factors has been eliminated, the observed chemical variability between the studied species and cultivars seems likely to results from the genetic variability.