Friction coefficients in cold forging: A global perspective

Worldwide, at least twenty different tribological tests have been proposed for the empirical determination of friction coefficients in cold forging processes. Due to the varying test setups, means of measurement, and level of abstraction, the comparability of the outcomes is, however, disputable. Within this work, six established test principles are compared using identical tribological systems. Large differences between the empirically determined friction coefficients are observed but can be explained under consideration of the respective tribological loads. Additional investigations of an extrusion process reveal that friction models also have to take into account the varying local thickness of the lubricant film.     

Mechanisms of ion-induced GaN thin layer splitting

The underlying physics and the role of H-defect interaction in H ion-induced splitting of GaN were investigated by transmission electron microscopy, high resolution X-ray diffraction, positron annihilation spectroscopy, ion channeling, elastic recoil detection, and infrared spectroscopy. A high concentration of void-like nanoscopic structures, nanobubbles, is detected immediately after implantation. Positron annihilation measurements demonstrate that the detected structures are vacancy clusters. FTIR data show that H-defect vibrational spectrum peaks at 3141 cm^?1 mode attributed to V_Ga–H₄. A large fraction of H was found to be trapped in higher frequency modes which we associate tentatively to N–H stretch modes in the internal surfaces of nanobubbles. These nanobubbles persist during annealing up to 450 °C. An increase of the strain is observed in this temperature range. This strain relaxes partially above 450 °C following the formation of the platelets which are embryos of the microcracks.     

Industrial aspects and literature survey: Combined inventory management and routing

This paper describes industrial aspects of combined inventory management and routing in maritime and road-based transportation, and gives a classification and comprehensive literature review of the current state of the research.The literature is contrasted with aspects of industrial applications from a constructive, but critical, viewpoint. Based on the status and trends within the field, future research is suggested with regard to both further development of the research area and industrial needs. By highlighting the industrial aspects, practitioners will hopefully see the benefit of using advanced decision support systems in complex situations related to combined inventory management and routing in their business. In addition, a classification and presentation of the research should help and motivate researchers to further focus on inventory management and routing challenges.     

Essential work of fracture and viscoplastic response of a carbon black-filled thermoplastic elastomer

Observations are reported on a carbon black-filled thermoplastic elastomer in uniaxial cyclic tensile tests with various maximum strains and double-edge-notched-tensile (DENT) tests with various ligament widths at ambient temperature. It is shown that the stress-strain diagrams in DENT tests measured relatively far away from the ligament coincide with those in tensile cyclic tests on un-notched samples. To describe the viscoplastic response of un-notched specimens, constitutive equations are derived, and adjustable parameters are found by fitting the experimental data. It is demonstrated how the energy stored in a DENT sample under tension can be accounted for in calculations of the specific essential work of fracture.     

Wind resource assessment from C-band SAR

Using accurate inputs of wind speed is crucial in wind resource assessment, as predicted power is proportional to the wind speed cubed. First, wind speeds retrieved from a series of 91 ERS-2 SAR and Envisat ASAR images, at moderate wind speeds (2-15 m s^− 1), were validated against in situ measurements from an offshore mast in the North Sea. The wind direction input, necessary for SAR wind speed retrievals, was obtained from the meteorological mast and from a local gradient analysis of wind streaks in the SAR images. A wind speed standard deviation of ∼ 1.1 m s^− 1 was found when in situ wind directions were used. The use of local gradient wind directions yielded a standard deviation of ∼ 1.3 m s^− 1. Wind speeds retrieved from three geophysical model functions (CMOD-IFR2, CMOD4, and CMOD5) were compared. The best approximation to the in situ measurements of wind speed was found for CMOD-IFR2, despite a bias on the order of − 0.3 m s^− 1. CMOD4 retrievals also underestimated the wind speed, whereas the bias on CMOD5 retrievals was negligible. Then, wind resource assessments were made from the SAR-based wind observations to show how errors in wind speed from the different SAR wind retrievals were reflected in the wind statistics. The mean wind speed, obtained for all of the 91 SAR scenes, was linked closely to the bias of SAR wind retrievals. Agreement to ± 15% of the in situ measurements was found for all the wind retrieval methods tested. The accuracy of power density estimates for the entire data set was evaluated by the standard deviation of SAR wind retrievals relative to the in situ measurements. SAR wind fields retrieved with CMOD-IFR2, using in situ wind direction inputs, exactly yielded the power density predicted from in situ measurements alone. The SAR-based wind resource assessment also corresponded well to predictions from longer time series of in situ measurements. This indicates that a reliable wind resource assessment may be achieved from a series of randomly selected SAR images. The findings presented here could be useful in future wind resource assessment based on SAR images.     

Vapour-liquid equilibrium of the CH4Ar,CH4CO,and ARCO systems at elevated pressures

High pressure vapour-liquid equilibrium data for the CH₄Ar, CH₄CO, and ArCO systems are presented in this work. The data are obtained isothermally and for each data point T, P, x_i, and y_i are measured. When possible, the measurements are compared to other published data, and good agreement is found with previous investigations.Each isotherm is subjected to a thermodynamic analysis, and activity coefficients are calculated. When both components are condensable, the ordinary symmetrical convention for normalization of activity coefficients is used, and when one component is supercritical, the unsymmetrical convention is used.The activity coefficients are adjusted to a constant pressure via the Poynting correction factor, and these pressure adjusted activity coefficients are subjected to a thermodynamic consistency test based on the isothermal-isobasic form of the Gibbs-Duhem equation. It is found that the maximum inconsistency for the data presented in this work is 10%.     

The robust vehicle routing problem with time windows

This paper addresses the robust vehicle routing problem with time windows. We are motivated by a problem that arises in maritime transportation where delays are frequent and should be taken into account. Our model only allows routes that are feasible for all values of the travel times in a predetermined uncertainty polytope, which yields a robust optimization problem. We propose two new formulations for the robust problem, each based on a different robust approach. The first formulation extends the well-known resource inequalities formulation by employing adjustable robust optimization. We propose two techniques, which, using the structure of the problem, allow to reduce significantly the number of extreme points of the uncertainty polytope. The second formulation generalizes a path inequalities formulation to the uncertain context. The uncertainty appears implicitly in this formulation, so that we develop a new cutting plane technique for robust combinatorial optimization problems with complicated constraints. In particular, efficient separation procedures are discussed. We compare the two formulations on a test bed composed of maritime transportation instances. These results show that the solution times are similar for both formulations while being significantly faster than the solutions times of a layered formulation recently proposed for the problem.     

A combined analysis of plant connectivity and alarm logs to reduce the number of alerts in an automation system

A process alarm arises when normal operation limits are exceeded and an alarm management system alerts the operator of a process plant. Due to the material, energy and information flow in a plant, single disturbances can cause multiple consequent alarm messages, and the alarm messages may overload the operator by presenting many redundant alarms. This undesired situation is called an ‘alarm flood’. In such situations, the operator might not be able to fulfil his required tasks to keep the plant within safe operation limits and to find the root cause of the disturbance. The aim of the work presented in this paper is to reduce the number of alerts presented to the operator. If alarms are related to one another, those alarms should be grouped and presented as one alarm problem. For the implementation of the concept, a software prototype has been developed to perform this reduction automatically. The analysis process starts with the alarm history which is a log containing all past alarm messages. This is combined with the plant topology of the controlled system and a set of rules. The rules describe typical interrelations between alarm messages which have a common cause. The combination of these three elements yields an effective alarm management strategy that can help plant owners and operators to comply with standards for alarm management such as ANSI/ISA 18.2 (2009) and EEMUA 191 (2007) which set limits on the number of alarms per unit time for an operator. The effectiveness of the approach is illustrated by two industrial examples where a significant reduction of alarms has been achieved.