An Experimental Study on Three General Interface Layout Designs for Chemical Process Plants

The human‐machine interface design is not a new problem; however, existing knowledge appears to be focused either on interface conceptual design, which determines what information at what time needs to be displayed, or on interface detailed design, which determines the form of display elements. This article presents a study on interface layout design. Three interface layout designs were proposed based on the proximity compatibility priniciple, which were on the same interface conceptual design. In particular, the first interface layout design is with the highest degree of proximity cognition and the second and third with a reduced degree of proximity cognition. They are called sophisticated, semisophisticated, and nonsophisticated interfaces, respectively. An experiment with a simple process plant was conducted to understand user behaviors on the three interfaces. It is noted that in order to provide an unbiased comparative evaluation of these interfaces the same application problem and similar look‐and‐feel forms of interfaces were designed. In the experiment, three general classes of tasks were considered, namely, normal control operation, fault detection (or monitoring), and fault diagnosis. Two categories of measures were used: the performance measure and the subjective measure. The major results obtained from the experiment are 1) the nonsophisticated interface is the best for fault detections in terms of performance measure; besides, this interface has the lowest mental workload for fault detection; 2) the sophisticated interface is the best for normal operation in terms of performance measure; 3) there appears no significant difference for fault diagnosis in terms of performance measures for all these three interfaces; 4) for normal operation and fault diagnosis, the mental workloads for the three interfaces have no significant difference. Overall, the experiment suggests that the nonsophisticated interface be used in practice with additional two reasons: 1) most of time in the chemical process plant today is the fault detection or operation monitoring task, and 2) it is relatively easier for the nonsophisticated interface to adapt to changes in the chemical process plant design, which are common in today's manufacturing environments.     

Is It Possible to Retain Customer Loyalty When a Service Has Failed?

This article aims to analyze the impact of recovery on loyalty in the context of a service chain characterized by the e‐quality–perceived value–loyalty relationship. A sample of 91 out of 1,201 respondents claimed to have had service problems with an online travel agency website. A causal model to test relationships was performed using structural equations modeling, and it was found that data fit with the proposed model. The really important point to retaining customers is quality. It is not so clear that the recovery effort might affect loyalty. Our findings underpin some previous stream of literature confirming that recovery does not always affect loyalty. Although the literature has not reached a consensus in this topic, we add new elements in this debate.     

Design of a printed log‐periodic dipole array antenna with high gain for millimeter‐wave applications

In this article, a V‐band printed log‐periodic dipole array (PLPDA) antenna with high gain is proposed. The antenna prototype is designed, simulated, fabricated, and tested. Simulation results show that this antenna can operate from 42 to 82 GHz with a fractional impedance bandwidth of 64.5% covering the whole V‐band (50–75 GHz). The antenna has a measured impedance matching bandwidth that starts from 42 to beyond 65 GHz with good agreement between the experimental and simulated results. At 50 and 65 GHz, the antenna has a measured gain of 10.45 and 10.28 dBi, respectively, with a gain variation of 2.6 dBi across the measured frequency range. The antenna prototype exhibits also stable radiation patterns over the operating band. It achieves side‐lobe suppression better than 17.26 dB in the H‐plane and better than 8.95 dB in the E‐plane, respectively. In addition, the cross‐polarization component is 18.5 dB lower than the copolarization with front‐to‐back ratio lower than 24.1 dB in both E‐ and H‐planes across the desired frequency range. Based on a comparison of performance among the reported work in the literature, we can say that the proposed PLPDA antenna is a proper candidate to be used in many applications at V‐band frequency. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 25:185–193, 2015.     

Ferroelectric liquid crystals: Excellent tool for modern displays and photonics

The ferroelectric liquid crystals, because of their fast electro‐optical response, are one of the most important classes of liquid crystals. Here, in this review, we have summarized the different electro‐optical modes for ferroelectric liquid crystals. Clark–Lagerwall effect (surface stabilized ferroelectric liquid crystal), deformed helix ferroelectric (DHF) effect, electrically suppressed helix (ESH) mode, DHF orientational Kerr effect, and ESH diffraction modes have been discussed. All of the crucial features, that is, optics, electro‐optics, dynamics, and their dependence on material parameters, operational regime, and applications, have been reviewed.     

Millimeter‐wave planar high gain SIW antenna using half elliptic radiation slots

This article reports a high gain millimeter‐wave substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) antenna using low cost printed circuit board technology. The half elliptic slots which can provide small shunt admittance, low cross polarization level and low mutual coupling are etched on the board surface of SIW as radiation slots for large array application. Design procedure for analyzing the characteristics of proposed radiation slot, the beam‐forming structure and the array antenna are presented. As examples, an 8 × 8 and a 32 × 32 SIW slot array antennas are designed and verified by experiments. Good agreements between simulation and measured results are achieved, which shows the 8 × 8 SIW slot array antenna has a gain of 20.8 dBi at 42.5 GHz, the maximum sidelobe level of 42.5 GHz E‐plane and H‐plane radiation patterns are 22.3 dB and 22.1 dB, respectively. The 32 × 32 SIW slot array antenna has a maximum measured gain of 30.05 dBi at 42.5 GHz. At 42.3 GHz, the measured antenna has a gain of 29.6 dBi and a maximum sidelobe level of 19.89 dB and 15.0 dB for the E‐plane and H‐plane radiation patterns. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 25:709–718, 2015.     

Novel neural network modeling method and applications

Neural networks play an important role for designing the parametric model of electromagnetic structures. The current neural network methods are unfit for a circuit model with many input variables because it is costly to extract a large number of the training data and test data to complete the highly nonlinear mapping approximation. This article proposes a new neural network modeling method—the multidimensional neural network model, which can be used to solve the issue of multivariable radiofrequency and microwave passive device modeling. The entire multidimensional neural network modeling problem is simplified into a set of neural network submodels through decomposition method. Then the submodels are combined into an equivalent model, and the final entire model is produced through the neural‐network mapping model developed with the submodels and equivalent model. A microstrip hairpin filter model is developed using the proposed method. The simulation results show the correctness and the effectivity of the proposed method. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 25:769–779, 2015.     

Design of a compact dual‐band folded‐waveguide bandpass filter using multilayer waveguide resonators

A novel compact dual‐band bandpass filter based on multilayer folded‐waveguide (FWG) structure is presented in this article.In this design, slots are used to realize direct coupling between adjacent resonators and apertures are adopted to implement cross coupling between non‐adjacent resonators.A new technique of external quality factor of FWG resonator and coupling coefficients between different resonators are studied using full‐wave simulator. In order to demonstrate the proposed technique, a four‐pole dual‐band bandpass filter is designed, fabricated and measured using vector network analyzer. Measurement results which are well agreed with simulation results are presented. Moreover, four‐pole substrate integrated folded waveguide SIFW dual‐band bandpass filter, using two layers of slotted folded waveguide resonators, is demonstrated. The proposed filter has a compact size and it is excellent candidate for the application of wireless communication systems. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 25:780–788, 2015.     

Novel ultra‐compact two‐dimensional waveguide‐based metasurface for electromagnetic coupling reduction of microstrip antenna array

A novel ultracompact two‐dimensional (2D) waveguide‐based metasurface is proposed herein and applied for the first time to reduce mutual coupling in antenna array for multiple‐input multiple‐output applications. The unit cell of the proposed 2D waveguide‐based metasurface is ultracompact (8.6 mm × 4.8 mm, equal to λ₀/14.2 × λ₀/25.5) mainly due to the symmetrical spiral lines etched on the ground. The metasurface exhibits a bandgap with two transmission zeros attributing to the negative permeability in the vicinity of magnetic resonance and the negative permittivity in the vicinity of electric resonance. Taking advantage of these two features, a microstrip antenna array is then designed, fabricated, and measured by embedding an 8 × 1 array of the well‐engineered 2D waveguide‐based metasurface elements between two closely spaced (9.2 mm, equal to λ₀/13.3) H‐plane coupled rectangular patches. There is good agreement between the simulated and measured results, indicating that the metasurface effectively reduces antenna mutual coupling by more than 11.18 dB and improves forward gain. The proposed compact structure has one of the highest reported decoupling efficiencies among similar periodic structures with comparable dimensions. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 25:789–794, 2015.     

Signage Versus Environmental Affordances: Is the Explicit Information Strong Enough to Guide Human Behavior During a Wayfinding Task?

This study aims to explore how people behave when they have to find a location within a complex building and are confronted with situations where directional signage (i.e., explicit information) is in opposition to environmental affordances that naturally direct users towards a specific path, creating a situation with conflicting information (e.g., a brighter corridor vs. a darker corridor but with a directional sign indicating to follow the darker one). A virtual reality–based methodology was used and a between‐subject design was considered. Thus, participants were given the tasks of finding three publicly accessible central points in a virtual hotel and confronted with a two forced‐choice task of local scenes in which environmental variables (i.e., corridor width and brightness) and signage varied systematically, in two experimental conditions (i.e., neutral and signage). For the signage condition, signs were inserted to explicitly point in the opposite direction than that implicitly suggested by the environmental affordances, creating situations with conflicting information. Results indicate that environmental variables were able to direct people indoors acting as environmental affordances. Users preferred to follow the wider and brighter paths. However, when directional signage pointed in the opposite direction of the paths preferred by the participants, most of them complied with signage.     

Modeling of microstrip antennas using neural networks techniques: A review

Artificial neural networks modeling have recently acquired enormous importance in microwave community especially in analyzing and synthesizing of microstrip antennas (MSAs) due to their generalization and adaptability features. A trained neural model estimates response very fast, which is nearly equal to its measured and/or simulated counterpart. Thus, it completely bypasses the repetitive use of conventional models as these models need rediscretization for every minor changes in the geometry, which itself is a time‐consuming exercise. The purpose of this article is to review this emerging area comprehensively for both analyzing and synthesizing of the MSAs. During reviewing process, some untouched cases are also observed, which are essentially required to be resolved for antenna designers. Unique and efficient neural networks‐based solutions are suggested for these cases. The proposed neural approaches are validated by fabricating and characterizing of the prototypes too. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 25:747–757, 2015.