Ergonomics interventions to reduce musculoskeletal risk factors in a truck manufacturing plant

Ergonomic interventions may potentially reduce MSDs, but the context of industries (barriers, ever-changing situations, dialogue processes) might play a significant role in the success of interventions. This study evaluates the effectiveness of ergonomic interventions including engineering/technical and organizational interventions, and the involvement of the stakeholders in reducing musculoskeletal risk factors/symptoms. A pre-post-test experimental study in non-randomized groups was performed over three years in a sector of a truck assembly plant. The mean age of the operators in the sector for the initial and second assessment time was 42.0 (±7.6) years and 39.0 (±8.7), respectively. The mean length of work experience in the current job was 15.2 (±7.2) years and 13.9 (±7.3) for the initial and second assessment times, respectively. Five engineering ergonomic solutions and organizational interventions were implemented after a comprehensive ergonomic analysis. The organizational interventions consisted mostly of transferring and redistributing the tasks, i.e., ergonomically balancing and redesigning of the workstations. Before performing the interventions, the findings of the ergonomic study were presented at several meetings to encourage the involvement of the stakeholders (including managers, engineers, and operators) in the interventions. This study showed that a combination of ergonomic measures—engineering and organizational interventions—could reduce physical workloads. Musculoskeletal symptoms decreased after interventions although the difference was not significant.     

Simplified anode architecture for PEMFC systems based on alternative fuel feeding: Experimental characterization and optimization for automotive applications

The need to reduce PEMFC systems cost as well as to increase their durability is crucial for their integration in various applications and especially for transport applications. A new simplified architecture of the anode circuit called Alternating Fuel Feeding (AFF) offers to reduce the development costs. Requiring a new stack concept, it combines the simplicity of Dead-End Anode (DEA) with the operation advantages of the hydrogen recirculation. The three architectures (DEA, recirculation and AFF) are compared in terms of performance on a 5-kW test bench in automotive conditions, through a sensitivity analysis. A gain of 17% on the system efficiency is observed when switching from DEA to AFF. Moreover, similar performances are obtained both for AFF and for recirculation after an accurate optimization of the AFF tuning parameters. Based on DoE data, a gain of 25% on the weight of the anodic line has been identified compared to pulsed ejector architecture and 43% with the classic recirculation architecture with blower only (Miraï).     

MOCVD生长薄膜材料制作半导体可饱和吸收镜

介绍了当前国际上流行的用半导体可饱和吸收镜来对固体激光器、光纤激光器和半导体激光器进行被动锁模的方法,阐述了半导体可饱和吸收镜用来作为被动锁模吸收体的原理,并介绍了如何利用金属有机气相淀积(MOCVD)技术生长各种波长激光器所需要的半导体可饱和吸收镜.     

Numerical simulation of typical contact situations of brake friction materials

In the paper, a model typical for contact situations of automotive brakes is established based on the method of movable cellular automata. The processes taking place at local contacts in an automotive brake system are analysed. Based on microscopic and micro-analytical observations, the following contact situations were simulated: (i) a couple of ferritic steel against pearlitic steel, both covered by an oxide layer mixed with graphite nanoparticles and (ii) the same situation but without oxide layers. The results of calculated mean coefficients of friction of the oxide-on-oxide contact correspond well to expected values for a real braking system, whereas steel-on-steel contact are twice as high. This allows one to make some conclusions; for example, oxide formation will take place more quickly than friction layer elimination, and finally this is responsible for the stabilisation of the coefficient of friction.     

The mirror effect and mixture signal detection theory.

The mirror effect for word frequency refers to the finding that low-frequency words have higher hit rates and lower false alarm rates than high-frequency words. This result is typically interpreted in terms of conventional signal detection theory (SDT), in which case it indicates that the order of the underlying old item distributions mirrors the order of the new item distributions. However, when viewed in terms of a mixture version of SDT, the order of hits and false alarms does not necessarily imply the same order in the underlying distributions because of possible effects of mixing. A reversal in underlying distributions did not appear for fits of mixture SDT models to data from 4 experiments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Failure of a Cast Aluminum Engine Head in a High Performance Application

The investigation described in this article examined a cast aluminum head used in a high performance (drag racing) application. These engine heads had been failing within a few seconds of startup. A sample head was examined to determine the cause. Visual inspection found two cracks on the exhaust side of the head. One crack initiated at the bottom of a spark plug well. The head was then sectioned for metallographic examination and fracture analysis. Metallographic examination revealed a large number of shrinkage pores throughout the casting. The fracture surface intersected many of these shrinkage pores. A significantly sized pore was located near the bottom of the suspect spark plug well near a stress-concentrating feature. This pore acted as the crack-initiating defect, which caused the engine head to fail.     

RAID技术综述

通过对各种RAID级别的实现原理进行描述，综合分析了各种模式的性能、优缺点以及应用范围。     

CO2激光器线偏振光输出腔内起偏器的研究

混合InGaAs光电二极管阵列ETX128FPA是16384元InGaAs焦平面阵列,供1.0～1.7μm波段内的近红外成象使用。这种128×128元的二维光电二极管阵列是使用钢冲击结合技术把InGaAs材料结合到高级的CMOS倍增管上而制成的。     

被动锁模复合环形腔掺饵光纤激光器的自启动分析

本文对被动锁模复合环形腔掺饵光纤激光器的自启动工作特性进行了分析，指出谐振腔内残余反射面的存在是阻碍激光器实现自启动锁模的主要原因。利用半导体激光器有源区的折射率随注入电流的变化而改变的特性，在谐振腔中获得了一个可移动腔镜，克服了腔内残余反射面的影响，实现了锁模的自启动。