Analytical Toolkit Research Articles

A Multi-Scale System Analysis and Verification for Improved Contact Fatigue Life Cycle of a Cam-Roller System

Surface distress in the form of contact fatigue is encountered in cam-roller systems. The contact fatigue appears to be initiated at micrometer-scale subsurface region. High stress is a result of the macro-scale requirement on the cam-roller motion event that produces high contact loads due to inertia of the roller and its follower link. Sliding of the roller and its impact onto the cam surface further compounds the detrimental effect of contact load. While conventionally a Hertz contact stress analysis can be used in ascertaining contact stress and maximum subsurface von Mises stress, it generally underestimates the stress when compared to the micrometer-scale subsurface stresses due to the presence of surface roughness. Contact analyses of cam and roller with rough surfaces are performed to examine the effects of two surface treatments. These involve surface finishing process in which a surface is rendered smooth, and the addition of a coating to the roller surface. Measurements of such cam and roller surfaces are used in micro-contact analysis module of a Surface Distress Analytical Toolkit to examine the effect of surface finish and coating on maximum subsurface stress. It is found that smooth surface provides a 53% reduction in maximum subsurface stress. The analysis also shows that the addition of coating further reduces subsurface stress nearly 7%. The impact of the combined treatment of the surface is an increase in contact fatigue life of the cam-roller system by nearly two orders of magnitude. The above findings are confirmed by laboratory tests using six rollers with various degrees of finishing processes, and with and without addition of coating to the surfaces. Examination of the rollers indicates a general improvement in roller performance due to addition of coating. Most notably, the combination of finishing process and coating was found to provide the best contact fatigue life since the corresponding rollers showed no observable wear even after testing for 2161h, or the same number of cycles accumulated over about 500,000 truck miles.

A Common Information Model (CIM) Toolkit Framework Implemented in Java

The common information model (CIM) is an object-oriented representation of a power system and is used primarily as a data exchange format for power system operational control systems. CIM has the potential to be used as much more than an intermediary exchange language. This paper explores the possible use of CIM as the core of a power systems analytical toolkit for storing, processing, extracting, and exchanging data directly from CIM objects. To this end, this paper discusses solutions to some of the challenges in storing and processing large power system network models as native Java objects without sacrificing reliability and robustness. This paper highlights the advantages provided by such a system when dealing with extensions to the CIM standard and overcoming the problems posed with simultaneously maintaining backward compatibility without sacrificing a higher level of detail. This paper also addresses the issue of data processing performance in contrast to other approaches.

A Method for Risk Assessment for Three Contaminated Sites in Northern Italy

A stepwise human health risk assessment procedure carried out using American Society for Testing and Materials methodology was applied to three contaminated sites located in northern Italy: an uncontrolled landfill, an abandoned industrial site and an industrial waste contaminated land. Two different tiers of analysis were performed by means of the analytical model RBCA Tool Kit and the numerical model API-DSS, respectively. The latter was applied according to both a deterministic and a probabilistic risk analysis. The comparison of the two approaches highlighted the great benefit provided by probabilistic analysis for the risk assessment based on site specific parameters and more complex models, in particular for groundwater exposure route. Finally, the risk-based site specific target levels were compared to the generic regulatory threshold limits fixed by the Italian regulation. The comparison showed the regulatory limits generally too restrictive for non-carcinogenic substances but less protective for carcinogenic chemicals, outlining the need of a site-specific risk assessment especially for carcinogenic substances.

Typography: body and dress of a text - a signing mode between language and image

This study demonstrates how semiotic theories can be used to understand typography. Starting from the assumption that typography represents a mode/code in its own right, which interacts with all other textual signing modes, the article outlines a typographic `grammar' as a structured set of networked resources. The analytical toolkit is then illustrated with the help of two sample texts. Based on some general semiotic reflections about the nature and operations of the graphic sign, this article also attempts a concise account of typographic meaning making and its communicative effects.

Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage. Edited by Peter A. Hall and David Soskice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. 560p. $72.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.

The volume and quality of the scholarship generated of late on the question of the “varieties of capitalism” has been truly outstanding. We now know far more than we ever did about the internal workings of particular national economies, and about the determinants of what Angus Maddison once termed the “proximate” causes of their competitive strengths and weaknesses. That knowledge has come in part from the work of a talented set of comparative political scientists and industrial sociologists, many of whom participate in this collection. It has also come from the work of a set of economists and economic historians with sufficient professional courage and intellectual integrity to operate at (or even beyond) the edge of their notoriously narrow and institutionally blind discipline. But because that knowledge has come from so many sources, and because so much of it has entered the public domain in the form of discrete case studies or collections of relatively disconnected essays, what the subfield now needs, more than anything else, is the consolidation of a set of organizing frameworks and governing concepts designed to go beyond proximate causes to a fuller understanding of the dynamics of competitive advantage. This is why Peter Hall and David Soskice's much-heralded collection of essays, Varieties of Capitalism, is so important a milestone in the development of the subdiscipline of comparative political economy. At long last it gives us what Pepper D. Culpepper calls here an “analytical tool kit” (p. 303): a collection of essays built around the powerful conceptual devices of “comparative institutional advantage” and “institutional complementarities”—concepts deployed to explain “how the institutions structuring the political economy confer comparative advantages on a nation, especially in the sphere of innovation” (p. v).

Letters to the editor

Sir, Dr David Kernick’s advocacy of government health warnings for health economists (‘Provocations’, BJHCM May 2000) is a nice mixture of gobbledegook and failure to appreciate the role economists play. Economists apply their analytical tool-kit to evaluate the costs and benefits of alternative ways of using scarce resources. Like all other professional groups, some economists are better at this task than others.

Problems and Challenges in Reforming International Agricultural Economics

SummaryStarting from the premise that the agricultural economics profession is defined primarily by the range of problems on which it works, as opposed to the initial or developmental training of the individuals, the traditional analyses base narrowly on the neoclassical paradigm are increasingly insufficient for the problems commonly found in the agri‐food industry. Two areas in which the profession is particularly weak are the economics and evolution of institutions, and the human capital component in economic development. For the latter, it includes both matching training to the nature and scope of problems facing individuals and the economics of human capital development and maintenance for a viable and growing agri‐food industry. As well, new areas of endeavour such as environmental sustainability and property rights associated with biotechnology offer opportunity for leadership from the profession. Finally, with increasingly complex and interdependent problems in the agri‐food sector, as well as the need to integrate processes for change into the analytical tool kit of the profession, the concept of strategic linkages across disciplines and professions will need to be pursued. Without such a multidisciplinary interdisciplinary approach, professional analysis founded narrowly on the neoclassical paradigm defeats the problem solving strength the profession has nurtured

Evolution of problem solving techniques using the analytical tool kit

Evolution of problem solving techniques using the analytical tool kit