Injection molding of products with functional surfaces by micro-structured, PVD coated injection molds

Molding of micro structures by injection molding leads to special requirements for the molds e.g. regarding wear resistance and low release forces of the molded components. At the same time it is not allowed to affect the replication precision. Physical vapor deposition (PVD) is one of the promising technologies for applying coatings with adapted properties like high hardness, low roughness, low Young’s modulus and less adhesion to the melt of polymers. Physical vapor deposition technology allows the deposition of thin films on micro structures. Therefore, the influence of these PVD layers on the contour accuracy of the replicated micro structures has to be investigated. For this purpose injection mold inserts were laser structured with micro structures of different sizes and afterwards coated with two different coatings, which were deposited by a magnetron sputter ion plating PVD technology. After deposition, the coatings were analyzed by techniques regarding hardness, Young’s modulus and morphology. The geometries of the micro structures were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy before and after coating. Afterwards, the coated mold inserts were used for injection molding experiments. During the injection molding process, a conventional and a variothermal temperature control of the molds were used. The molded parts were analyzed regarding roughness, structure height and structure width by means of laser microscopy.     

Ant algorithms and simulated annealing for multicriteria dynamic programming

The paper presents a comparison of ant algorithms and simulated annealing as well as their applications in multicriteria discrete dynamic programming. The considered dynamic process consists of finite states and decision variables. In order to describe the effectiveness of multicriteria algorithms, four measures of the quality of the nondominated set approximations are used.     

Reoptimization of the Shortest Common Superstring Problem

A reoptimization problem describes the following scenario: given an instance of an optimization problem together with an optimal solution for it, we want to find a good solution for a locally modified instance.     

Mathematical programs with complementarity constraints in the context of inverse optimal control for locomotion

In this paper an inverse optimal control problem in the form of a mathematical program with complementarity constraints (MPCC) is considered and numerical experiences are discussed. The inverse optimal control problem arises in the context of human navigation where the body is modelled as a dynamical system and it is assumed that the motions are optimally controlled with respect to an unknown cost function. The goal of the inversion is now to find a cost function within a given parametrized family of candidate cost functions such that the corresponding optimal motion minimizes the deviation from given data. MPCCs are known to be a challenging class of optimization problems typically violating all standard constraint qualifications (CQs). We show that under certain assumptions the resulting MPCC fulfills CQs for MPCCs being the basis for theory on MPCC optimality conditions and consequently for numerical solution techniques. Finally, numerical results are presented for the discretized inverse optimal control problem of locomotion using different solution techniques based on relaxation and lifting.     

China’s ‘old’ and ‘new’ Mekong River politics: the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation from a comparative benefit-sharing perspective

This article analyzes China’s Mekong River politics before and after the establishment of the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) from a comparative benefit-sharing perspective. China’s pre-LMC approach focused too much on the creation of economic benefits from and beyond the river while neglecting ecological benefits to the river. Moreover, despite the problems this ‘old’ approach caused for China and its downstream neighbours, China’s current LMC strategy seems to essentially replicate its former approach. While sustainable water resources management is identified as a priority area, actual cooperation and benefit sharing in this field remain insufficient.     

A Novel Formalism for Partially Defined Asynchronous Feedback Digital Circuits

In contrast to combinational logic and master clocked sequential logical, asynchronous feedback circuits are partially defined due to analogous meta-stabilities. We present a novel formalism to exactly explore this digitally assisted analog phenomenon in order to build up a representative test bench that is able to enforce race constraints (meta-stable behavior) for non-deterministics, instabilities as well as for oscillations in feedback structures. Further, we introduce our definitions for consistently modeling under state transition graphs, we provide all entities for modeling asynchronous feedback structures and state our proposed methodology with an exemplary asynchronous circuitry. The given example is explained at a high level of abstraction, all data for revision is provided, too. The approach seems to be capable to test for meta-stabilities, analog behavior in feedback digital structures.     

Acousto-capacitive tomography of liquid multiphase systems

This paper discusses a tomographic approach focusing on ultrasonic measurements to monitor liquid multiphase mixtures. Separately a capacitive tomography low-cost setup is regarded. Both sensor arrays aim for the localization of variable phase boundaries and the physical characterisation of spatially distributed phases. Focusing on a real time processing, a reduced number of transducers in combination with a fast linear modelling and direct image reconstruction methods are used. Experimental results of a layered 3-phase-system validate the potential and limits of physical resolution of both approaches. Finally, the prospectively intended data fusion of both approaches is discussed.     

Multi-objective optimization of the design of two-stage flash evaporators: Part 2. Multi-objective optimization

Flash evaporation process is currently developing in the wine industry where it is used for flash-cooling or concentration. The design of flash evaporators is faced with specific constraints and must take into account multiple design objectives. In this paper, the development of a multi-objective optimization method is investigated for the joint optimization of design objectives such as process transportability, environmental efficiency, operative cost or cooling power. The optimization method is based on the aggregation of design objectives through desirability functions and indexes. Desirability functions are suitable for formulating design constraints more precisely than inequality relations and, moreover, the global design model results in an unconstrained optimization problem. However, aggregation methods do make it difficult to compute the global optimum of the design problem. This difficulty has been addressed by developing a distributed genetic algorithm which is not so sensitive to this type of numerical solving difficulty. Another difficulty arises from the weighting method for the aggregation of desirability functions since weight parameters have no physical meaning. This weighting problem is approached through a sensitivity analysis of the weight parameters and by observing their relative influence.     

Properties of purified direct steam grown silicon thermal oxides

Thermal silicon oxides are known to very effectively passivate silicon surfaces. Choosing a water vapor ambient instead of a dry oxygen atmosphere increases the oxidation rate by about one order of magnitude and considerably reduces process time and costs. State of the art pyrox systems produce steam by pyrolysis of hydrogen and oxygen gas. A new approach is the purification of vaporized deionized (DI) water. In this work we present a direct comparison of both steam generation systems, which are connected to the same quartz tube of an industrial high quality tube furnace. The higher steam saturation of the direct steam process enhances the growth rate by about 20% compared to a pyrolytic steam based process. On low-resistivity p-type substrates, excellent surface recombination velocities of around 25 cm/s are found for both systems after a forming gas anneal. Detailed characterization shows similar physical properties of the oxide layers grown by either steam from pyrolysis or purified steam. Moreover, thermal oxide rear surface passivated silicon solar cells show similar high efficiencies exceeding 18.0% irrespective of the applied steam generation technology.