High frequency testing of rubber mounts

Rubber and fluid-filled rubber engine mounts are commonly used in automotive and aerospace applications to provide reduced cabin noise and vibration, and/or motion accommodations. In certain applications, the rubber mount may operate at frequencies as high as 5000 Hz. Therefore, dynamic stiffness of the mount needs to be known in this frequency range. Commercial high frequency test machines are practically nonexistent, and the best high frequency test machine on the market is only capable of frequencies as high as 1000 Hz. In this paper, a high frequency test machine is described that allows test engineers to study the high frequency performance of rubber mounts at frequencies up to 5000 Hz.     

Modeling and solving the bi-objective capacitated location-routing problem with probabilistic travel times

The location-routing problem (LRP) is a relatively new research area within location analysis that concerns simultaneously both the problems of location of facilities and routing of vehicles among the established facilities and the demand points. In this work, we address the capacitated LRP with probabilistic travel times, which may arise in many practical contexts in logistics and supply chain management, and present some bi-objective mathematical programming formulations to model the problem using different stochastic programming approaches. The first objective is to minimize the overall system-wide costs, while the second objective concerns minimization of the maximum delivery time to the customers. In all the cases, the deterministic equivalents of the stochastic models have been extracted. To solve the resulted models, a variable neighborhood descent-based heuristic is proposed and finally computational study is performed and numerical results are reported.     

Characterization and formation mechanism of nanocrystalline W–Al alloy prepared by mechanical alloying

Tungsten and aluminum elemental powders with composition W–20 wt.% Al were mechanical alloyed in high energy planetary ball mill. Structural and morphological changes of powder particles after different milling times were studied by X-ray diffractometer, scanning electron microscopy and microhardness measurements. Mechanical alloying of this system led to the formation of W–Al alloy as a result of formation of W/Al layered microstructure having faceted interface between layers. This alloy indicated high microhardness value of about 570 Hv.     

On the tube hydroforming process using rectangular,trapezoidal, and trapezoid-sectional dies: modeling and experiments

It is generally known that the contact between tube and die, in the case of tube hydroforming process, leads to the appearance of friction effects. In this context, there are many different models for representing friction and many different tests to evaluate it. In the present paper, the pin-on-disk test has been used and the theoretical model of Orban-2007 has been chosen and developed to evaluate friction coefficient. The main goal is to prove the capacity of theoretical model to present the friction conditions in comparison with the pin-on-disk test. From the Orban model, values of 0.05 and 0.25 of friction coefficient have been found under lubricated and dry tests, respectively. On the other hand, by the classical pin-on-disk test, other values were experimentally obtained as friction coefficient at the copper/steel interface. In the case of pure expansion hydroforming, based on an internal pressure loading only, a “corner filling” test has been run for tube hydroforming. Both dry and lubricated contacts have been considered. Various configurations and shapes have been studied such as the rectangular, trapezoidal, and trapezoid-sectional dies. Finite element simulations with 3D shell and 3D solid models have been performed with different values of friction coefficients. From the main results, it was found that the critical thinning occurs in the transition zone for the square and rectangular section die and in the sharp angle for the trapezoidal and trapezoid-sectional die. The comparison between numerical data and experimental results shows a good agreement. Moreover, the thickness distribution along the cross section is relatively consistent with those measured for the 3D shell model; however, the 3D solid models do not provide a realistic representation of the thickness distribution in the shaped tube. Finally, the results obtained from the theoretical model were more efficient than the results obtained from the pin-on-disk test.