Industrial Engineering Applications Research Articles

Study on standby process of an air-based solid packed bed for flexible high-temperature heat storage: Experimental results and modelling

An air-based solid packed bed thermocline tank is a low-cost high-temperature thermal energy storage technology, which is especially suitable for concentrated solar power plants when combined with Brayton cycle. Standby process between charging and discharging is a practical operation concern to improve the flexibility and economy of a concentrated solar power plant, and it is one of the most frequent states of the heat storage tank and is often related to the destratification in the thermocline. Whereas, till date little attention has been paid on to this static process as well as its effects on the heat storage performance, thus this work aims at filling this gap and getting more insights into the standby stage of the air-based solid packed bed thermocline tank by means of both experiments and modelling. In the present study, 1-D two-phase transient models were developed for both the dynamic (charging and discharging) and static (standby) processes, and experiments were conducted on a pilot-scale air-based solid packed-bed thermal energy storage testing system. It was found that the thermal stratification of the testing system decays by 30% after a 6-h standby stage, indicating a largely deteriorated heat storage performance. It was also found that the numerically predicted temperatures agree pretty well with the experimentally measured data under both a charging-standby-discharging cycle and a charging-standby process. In addition, sensitivity analysis was conducted to better understand the heat transfer mechanisms during the standby stage, and contribution of each mechanism to the thermocline destratification was also studied. The results indicate that thermal diffusion and heat loss contribute more to the degradation of the thermocline during the standby stage than natural convection, all of which cannot be simply ignored in the modelling. Moreover, the developed models and the experimental data reported here are reliable and valuable for further extended studies on more systematic and complex problems of related industrial engineering applications.

Tougher and harder zirconia toughened alumina (ZTA) composites through in situ microstructural formation of LaMgAl11O19

Advanced ceramic materials are highly demanded for various modern industrial and practical engineering applications. Nonetheless, the requirement of attainment hard and simultaneously tough materials is a crucial matter for industrial sectors. To accomplish this target, the strategy of designing a novel microstructure of Zirconia Toughened Alumina (ZTA) ceramics was utilised through in situ formation of LaMgAl11O19 (LMA) based on the stoichiometry ratio of constitute oxides inside ZTA composites during sintering process. ZTA Samples were conventionally sintered at 1600 °C for 2 h to ensure fully formation of LMA while their characteristics were analysed using SEM-EDX and XRD. The LMA elongated grains significantly enhanced ZTAs' Indentation Fracture Resistance (KIFR) due to crack deflection and crack bridging mechanisms combined with transgranular and intergranular fracture modes. Additionally, higher hardness was obtained due to high LMA density, creation of low porous ZTA and strong interface bonding between LMA and ZTA grains. The KIFR was stable while the hardness was steadily declined due to more porosity accompanied by LMA in situ formation. Consequently, sustainable high hardness and enhanced KIFR of ZTA ceramics were achieved. The optimum outcomes were superior KIFR (7.8 MPa.m^1/2) and hardness (1660 HV) than the pure ZTA (5.9 MPa.m^1/2, 1568 HV). The investigation provides a new hint for future design and fabrication of economic and high performance ceramics through in situ formation of LMA according to the stoichiometric ratio of the reinforcing oxides.

Application of Industrial Engineering to increase the productivity of an E-Rickshaw factory

Application of Industrial Engineering to increase the productivity of an E-Rickshaw factory

Role of simulation in industrial engineering: focus on manufacturing systems

Simulation has recently grown its importance thanks to the Industry 4.0, based on CPS (Cyber-Physical Systems). Especially, simulation is becoming more central for improved decision-making.The article provides a literature analysis of peer-reviewed surveys about simulation applications in industrial engineering in manufacturing. In particular, a three-axis framework, called 3D-SAM, is proposed to classify the applications and to critically analyse them. The framework can be used as a first input for the Cognition Level of CPS (5C architecture for CPS development) in order to develop integrated simulation models within a Decision Support System (DSS).

Investigation of machining rate and roughness for rotary ultrasonic drilling of Inconel 718 alloy with slotted diamond metal bonded tool

Super alloy has extensive engineering applications in nuclear industries owing to its outstanding performance characteristics at elevated temperature. More than 30% of consumption in nuclear industries is super alloy. A number of holes are required to be drilled into super alloys for their final stage assembly. During conventional machining process, excessive heat is generated, which is the cause of heat treated zone that further affect the life and performance of the product. To overcome this difficulty, a rotary ultrasonic machining method came into existence to machine super alloys by hybrid cutting action (vibratory and rotary) of diamond impregnated core drill. This study focuses on the machining characteristics of super alloy by RUM process. The empirical modelling of process parameters of RUM is carried out for super alloy (Inconel 718) using an experimental design approach called response surface methodology. Material removal efficiency of RUM and surface topography of the machined material are studied. The results reported that for quality and productivity aspect, the feed rate in RUM is found a most critical factor. [Received 5 April 2017; Revised 10 June 2017; Accepted 26 June 2017]

Chances and Limitations of a Virtual Reality-supported Tool for Decision Making in Industrial Engineering

Besides from pure entertainment, Virtual Reality promises changes for the so-called Industry 4.0 sector. VR allows to visualize complex engineering data and provides a set of multimodal tools to inspect a 3D model on various levels. Early VR setups consisted of projectors, walls and powerful PCs to synchronize the data. These systems were expensive, presuppose expert knowledge and needed much space to be used efficiently. VR technology is still in its early stages, but, as innovations pick up pace, systems get easier to set up and the advances in graphics power allow for novel modes of visualization and interaction. This paper discusses a set of application areas for VR in industry and describes the implementation of a light-weight VR-system for industrial engineering applications. Our approach handles the complexity of native CAD engineering data and integrates tools to support engineering design review. We discuss the chances and limitations of the system and provide best practices for future VR applications in the field of Industry 4.0.

Multidimensional Knapsack Problem Based on Uncertain Measure

The research of classical multidimensional knapsack problem always assumes that the weights,the values and the capacities are constant values. However, in the real-life industrial engineering applica-tions, the multidimensional knapsack problem often comes with uncertainty for lacking of the informationabout these parameters. This paper investigates a constrained multidimensional knapsack problem underuncertain environment, in which the relevant parameters are assumed to be uncertain variables. Withinthe framework of uncertainty theory, two types of uncertain programming models with discount con-straints are constructed for the problem with di erent decision criteria, i.e., the expected value criterionand the critical value criterion. Taking full advantage of the operational law for uncertain variables, theproposed models can be transformed into their corresponding deterministic models. After theoreticallyinvestigating the properties of the models, we do some numerical experiments. The numerical resultsillustrate that the proposed models are feasible and ecient for solving the constrained multidimensionalknapsack problem with uncertain parameters.

A LiDAR and IMU Integrated Indoor Navigation System for UAVs and Its Application in Real-Time Pipeline Classification.

Mapping the environment of a vehicle and localizing a vehicle within that unknown environment are complex issues. Although many approaches based on various types of sensory inputs and computational concepts have been successfully utilized for ground robot localization, there is difficulty in localizing an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) due to variation in altitude and motion dynamics. This paper proposes a robust and efficient indoor mapping and localization solution for a UAV integrated with low-cost Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) and Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) sensors. Considering the advantage of the typical geometric structure of indoor environments, the planar position of UAVs can be efficiently calculated from a point-to-point scan matching algorithm using measurements from a horizontally scanning primary LiDAR. The altitude of the UAV with respect to the floor can be estimated accurately using a vertically scanning secondary LiDAR scanner, which is mounted orthogonally to the primary LiDAR. Furthermore, a Kalman filter is used to derive the 3D position by fusing primary and secondary LiDAR data. Additionally, this work presents a novel method for its application in the real-time classification of a pipeline in an indoor map by integrating the proposed navigation approach. Classification of the pipeline is based on the pipe radius estimation considering the region of interest (ROI) and the typical angle. The ROI is selected by finding the nearest neighbors of the selected seed point in the pipeline point cloud, and the typical angle is estimated with the directional histogram. Experimental results are provided to determine the feasibility of the proposed navigation system and its integration with real-time application in industrial plant engineering.

AHP/ANP is well represented in MCDM 2017, Ottawa

MCDM 2017 is progressing well. There are about 200 papers accepted and among them at least about 15% are AHP/ANP related. There are two invited sessions on AHP/ANP Theory and Applications in Supply Chain Management and Industrial Engineering, each having four papers, in addition to about twenty contributed papers on AHP/ANP. https://doi.org/10.13022/ijahp2017.v9.is1.479

Bioinspired Smart Coating with Superior Tribological Performance.

Inspired by the structure of cancellous bone and the nutrition metabolism of articular cartilage, we present a novel concept for a synthetic articular-cartilage-like material. The bioinspired material possesses a low coefficient of friction even under ultrahigh loads and has an extremely long lifetime. Furthermore, the composite shows zero-wear behavior and causes negligible wear damage to the friction pair. The superior tribological performance is attributed to the spontaneously generated articular-cartilage-like layer, which is constantly replenished by frictional heat and pressure. Our findings open a new area for industrial scale engineering applications to improve the friction and wear properties of moving components.

6th International Conference on Fracture Fatigue and Wear

ChairmanProf. Magd Abdel WahabGhent University, BelgiumCo-chairmanProf. Nao-Aki NodaKyushu Institute of Technology, JapanDr. Ana NevesPorto University, PortugalInternational Scientific CommitteeProf. S Abdullah, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, MalaysiaDr. J Abenojar, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, SpainDr. H Ali, University of Bristol, UKProf. S Bordas, University of Luxembourg, LuxembourgProf. T Hattori, Shizuoka Institute of Science and Technology, JapanDr. Miguel Angel Martinez, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, SpainDr. K Masuda, University of Toyama, JapanProf. T Miyazaki, University of Ryukyu, JapanProf. K Oda, Oita University, JapanProf. RV Prakash, Indian Institute of Technology, IndiaProf. T Qin, China Agricultural University, ChinaProf. F Rezai-Aria, Ecole des Mines d’Albi, FranceDr. A Rudawska, Lublin University of Technology, PolandDr. MS Prabhudev, Government Polytechnic, Kalgi, IndiaDr. Y Sano, Kyushu Institute of Technology, JapanProf. J Song, Ostwestfalen-Lippe University, GermanyProf. J Toribio, University of Salamanca, SpainDr. N Tsutsumi, Oita University, JapanProf. C Xu, China Agricultural University, ChinaProf. C Zhou, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, ChinaDr. Y-L Zhou, National University of Singapore, SingaporeEditorialThis volume contains the proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Fracture Fatigue and Wear FFW 2017, Porto, Portugal, 26-27 July 2017. Fracture Fatigue and Wear 2017 is the 6th FFW conference. Previous conferences were celebrated in Jinan (China, 2010), Kitakyushu (Japan, 2013), Kitakyushu (Japan, 2014), Gent (Belgium, 2015) and Kitakyushu (Japan, 2016).The sixth international conference on Fracture, Fatigue and Wear will be held in the city of Porto, Portugal. The overall objective of the conference is to bring together international scientists and engineers in academia and industry in fields related to Fracture Mechanics, Fatigue of Materials, Tribology and Wear of Materials. The conference covers industrial engineering applications of the above topics including theoretical and analytical methods, numerical simulations and experimental techniques. One of the aims of conference is to promote cooperation between international scientists and engineers from a large number of disciplines, who are involved in research related to Fracture, Fatigue and Wear. The presentations of FFW 2017 are divided into 3 main sessions, namely 1) Fracture, 2) Fatigue and 3) Wear.The organising committee is grateful to keynote speakers; Professor Hong Liang, Mechanical Engineering, Texas A & M University, for her keynote lecture entitled ‘Direct and in situ Observation of Initiation of Wear’ and Professor Xudong Qian, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, National University of Singapore, for his keynote lecture entitled ‘Ductile Fracture Assessment and Representation in Large-Scale Structures’.Special thanks go to members of the Scientific Committee of FFW 2017 for reviewing the articles published in this volume and for judging their scientific merits. Based on the comments of reviewers and the scientific merits of the submitted manuscripts, the articles were accepted for publication in the conference proceedings and for presentation at the conference venue. The accepted papers are of a very high scientific quality and contribute to advancement of knowledge in all research topics relevant to FFW conference.Finally, the organising committee would like to thank all authors, who have contributed to this volume and presented their research work at the confrence venue in Porto.Professor Magd Abdel WahabChairman of FFW 2017

A decision-making formula for value engineering applications in the Sri Lankan construction industry

PurposeThe construction industry in many developing countries is reluctant to apply value engineering (VE) due to uncertainty of outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to examine the existing practices of VE techniques and make recommendations to organisations and national construction regulatory bodies, to standardise VE practices. A decision-making formula is introduced to determine profitability of VE applications prior to implementation.Design/methodology/approachA broad literature review and six case study projects that applied VE were selected. Thirty-nine semi-structured interviews were conducted to gather data within cases. Six expert interviews were conducted as confirmatory interviews to clarify and validate research outcome. Content analysis and cognitive mapping were used to analyse data among case studies.FindingsApplication, knowledge and experience on VE techniques among construction professionals are unsatisfactory. Recommendations include reducing contractor’s design responsibility, introducing proper VE guidelines and statutory regulations. A framework is introduced to assist authorities to standardise application of VE techniques. A decision-making formula is suggested to determine margins of contractor’s portion due to VE techniques and original profits gained.Originality/valueThe formula can be used as a decision-making tool by construction industry practitioners to determine successfulness of proposed VE techniques, and the proposed framework can be used to guide construction professional bodies to standardise VE practices.

Stress analysis of compound cylinders subjected to thermo-mechanical loads

Axisymmetric pressure vessels have wide application in industrial engineering. They are often subjected to combined mechanical and thermal loads. In order to improve their pressure-carrying capacity, especially those with a cylindrical shape, some basic techniques are used such as increasing wall thickness, autofrettage and compound cylinders. This paper presents a basic model that can be used to study the effects of temperature and internal pressure on the stress distributions and displacement fields in compound cylinders. The analytical model is based on the thick walled cylinders theory. The results of the developed analytical approach are compared and validated to a finite element axisymmetric model.

Novel Cell-Inorganic Hybrid Catalytic Interfaces with Enhanced Enzymatic Activity and Stability for Sensitive Biosensing of Paraoxon.

To improve the biosensing performance of organophosphorus hydrolase (OPH), the novel bioinorganic hybrid catalysts were facilely explored by biomineralization and cell surface display technology. During biomineralization, cobalt phosphate crystals were deposited onto the surface of OPH-fused bacteria, and the inorganic crystals at middle of cell collapsed inwardly to form the final spindle morphology because of the lowest energy principle and the mechanics principle. OPH would show the allosteric effect from "inactive" form to "active" form, and the "active" form was "fixed" when OPH was embedded into cobalt phosphate. Therefore, the activity of mineralized OPH-fused cells was greatly enhanced about 3 times in comparison with original OPH-fused cells. Additionally, the stability of the novel hybrid catalysts was also significantly improved. Further, the as-synthesized bioinorganic hybrid catalysts were applied to sensitive paraoxon biosensing, which exhibited lower limit of detection than that of the original counterpart. Thus, this hybrid biocatalytic system would provide a model to develop a wide range of biocatalysts and find a wide range of applications in industrial catalysis, analytical chemistry, and environmental engineering.

Uniform segment-wise body parametric convection heat transfer coefficient model for sitting posture in vehicles

In many industrial multi-physics engineering applications, models need to capture the heat transfer effects of spatial and temporal changes in conditions around the human body. For thermal comfort assessment, convection heat transfer coefficients (hc) form part of the heat balance equation of the human body. In many non-uniform flow conditions, due to the turbulently mixed or stratified environment, convection heat transfer varies significantly on the human body. Parametric, segment-wise applicable convection heat transfer correlations are seen as an alternative in order to bridge these scales and levels in space and time. Therefore, robust reduced-order convective heat transfer models are needed for predicting heat transfer between the human body and its surroundings. The main goal of this research is to develop a reduced order model database that provides the segment-wise convective heat transfer coefficients (hc) for typical indoor flow responses in multiple applications. In this article, a new parametric approach was detailed for estimating segment-wise body convection heat transfer coefficients for sitting posture in vehicles. The methodology follows a new strategy, i.e., in this application domain, here a car cabin, primarily relevant parameters are identified which affect the convective heat exchange. Following the sensitivity analysis of numerous computational fluid dynamics simulations with varying conditions, we identify relevant primary variables and heat transfer coefficients correlations and test the model robustness accordingly. A database-driven approach is developed in order to make correlations accessible during simulations, for example addressing energy performance. Finally, the experimentally investigated heat transfer analysis around the human body is presented and later compared with numerically reproduced data.

Review of coal-water fuel pulverization technology and atomization quality registration methods

Possibilities of coal-water fuel application in industrial power engineering are considered and described. Two main problems and disadvantages of this fuel type are suggested. The paper presents information about liquid fuel atomization technologies and provides data on nozzle type for coal-water fuel pulverization. This article also mentions some of the existing technologies for coal-water slurry spraying quality determination.

Influence of Mn Content on Tribological Wear Behaviour of ZA-27 Alloy

The impact of Mn content on tribological wear behaviour of ZA-27 alloy which is used in an Industrial engineering and tribological applications has been studied. Wear test were conducted under the operational conditions of varying in Nr. pressures and sliding speeds using pin-on-disc wear testing machine. To peruse the wear mechanisms of worn out surface of samples were investigate by SEM images. Result shows 1.5 m/s sliding speed and 0.2498 MPa is observed as critical sliding speed and critical Nr. pressure. Also, minimum vol. wear rate and frictional force for 0.5% Mn content ZA-27 alloy. Laminative wear mechanism for 0.2% Mn, three body wear mechanism for 0.5% Mn and abrasive wear mechanism for 1% Mn is observed.

DEM GPU studies of industrial scale particle simulations for granular flow civil engineering applications

The use of the Discrete Element Method (DEM) for industrial civil engineering industrial applications is currently limited due to the computational demands when large numbers of particles are considered. The graphics processing unit (GPU) with its highly parallelized hardware architecture shows potential to enable solution of civil engineering problems using discrete granular approaches. We demonstrate in this study the pratical utility of a validated GPU-enabled DEM modeling environment to simulate industrial scale granular problems. As illustration, the flow discharge of storage silos using 8 and 17 million particles is considered. DEM simulations have been performed to investigate the influence of particle size (equivalent size for the 20/40-mesh gravel) and induced shear stress for two hopper shapes. The preliminary results indicate that the shape of the hopper significantly influences the discharge rates for the same material. Specifically, this work shows that GPU-enabled DEM modeling environments can model industrial scale problems on a single portable computer within a day for 30 seconds of process time.

Special Issue on Advanced Computational Methods, Systems, and Industrial Engineering Applications

Special Issue on Advanced Computational Methods, Systems, and Industrial Engineering Applications

Parametric R-norm directed-divergence convex function

In this paper, we define parametric [Formula: see text]-norm directed-divergence convex function and discuss their special cases and prove some properties similar to Kullback–Leibler information measure. From [Formula: see text]-norm divergence measure new information measures have also been derived and their relations with different measures of entropy have been obtained and give its application in industrial engineering.