Constant Number Research Articles

Optimization of Fixture Number in Large Thin-Walled Parts Assembly Based on IPSO

There are lots of researches on fixture layout optimization for large thin-walled parts. Current researches focus on the positioning problem, i.e., optimizing the positions of a constant number of fixtures. However, how to determine the number of fixtures is ignored. In most cases, the number of fixtures located on large thin-walled parts is determined based on engineering experience, which leads to huge fixture number and extra waste. Therefore, this paper constructs an optimization model to minimize the number of fixtures. The constraints are set in the optimization model to ensure that the part deformation is within the surface profile tolerance. In addition, the assembly gap between two parts is also controlled. To conduct the optimization, this paper develops an improved particle swarm optimization (IPSO) algorithm by integrating the shrinkage factor and adaptive inertia weight. In the algorithm, particles are encoded according to the fixture position. Each dimension of the particle is assigned to a sub-region by constraining the optional position range of each fixture to improve the optimization efficiency. Finally, a case study on ship curved panel assembly is provided to prove that our method can optimize the number of fixtures while meeting the assembly quality requirements. This research proposes a method to optimize the number of fixtures, which can reduce the number of fixtures and achieve deformation control at the same time.

Photolysis of tolfenamic acid in aqueous and organic solvents: a kinetic study.

Tolfenamic acid (TA) is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug that was studied for its photodegradation in aqueous (pH 2.0-12.0) and organic solvents (acetonitrile, methanol, ethanol, 1-propanol, 1-butanol). TA follows first-order kinetics for its photodegradation, and the apparent first-order rate constants (k obs) are in the range of 0.65 (pH 12.0) to 6.94 × 10-2 (pH 3.0) min-1 in aqueous solution and 3.28 (1-butanol) to 7.69 × 10-4 (acetonitrile) min-1 in organic solvents. The rate-pH profile for TA photodegradation is an inverted V (∧) or V-top shape, indicating that the cationic form is more susceptible to acid hydrolysis than the anionic form of TA, which is less susceptible to alkaline hydrolysis. The fluorescence behavior of TA also exhibits a V-top-shaped curve, indicating maximum fluorescence intensity at pH 3.0. TA is highly stable at a pH range of 5.0-7.0, making it suitable for formulation development. In organic solvents, the photodegradation rate of TA increases with the solvent's dielectric constant and solvent acceptor number, indicating solute-solvent interactions. The values of k obs decreased with increased viscosity of the solvents due to diffusion-controlled processes. The correlation between k obs versus ionization potential and solvent density has also been established. A total of 17 photoproducts have been identified through LC-MS, of which nine have been reported for the first time. It has been confirmed through electron spin resonance (ESR) spectrometry that the excited singlet state of TA is converted into an excited triplet state through intersystem crossing, which results in an increased rate of photodegradation in acetonitrile.

The formation mechanism of Sc-based metallofullerenes: a molecular dynamics simulation study.

The practical applications of endohedral metallofullerenes (EMFs) are mainly constrained by their low yields. Understanding the formation mechanisms is therefore crucial for developing methods for high-yield and selective synthesis. To address this, a novel force-field parameter set, "CSc.ff", was created using a single-parameter search optimization method, then molecular dynamics simulations of various systems with a carbon-to-scandium atomic ratio of 12.5 were carried out. The simulations were run under a constant atomic number, volume, and energy (NVE) ensemble. The influence of the working gas, helium, as well as temperature gradients on the formation process was examined. Our simulations reveal that the cage growth patterns of Sc-based EMFs (Sc-EMFs) closely resemble those of hollow fullerenes, evolving from free carbon atoms to chains, rings, and, ultimately, to cage-shaped clusters. Importantly, the Sc-EMFs formed in the simulation frequently exhibit structural defects or under-coordinated carbon atoms. Scandium atoms, whether at the periphery or on the surface of these cages, can be incorporated into the cages, forming Sc-EMFs. Helium was found to not only promote the formation of carbon cages but also facilitate the encapsulation of scandium atoms, playing a crucial role in the formation of cluster fullerenes. Moreover, cooling effectively inhibits the uncontrollable growth of the carbon cage and is essential for forming stable, appropriate-sized cages. This study enhances our understanding of the formation of Sc-EMFs and provides valuable insights for developing more efficient synthetic methods.

The role of absorption mechanism on the optimization of processing commercial polymers under high repetition rate femtosecond laser irradiation

The response of three of the most used commercial polymers (poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC), poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) and polypropylene (PP)) under irradiation with high repetition rate (1 kHz–1 MHz) femtosecond (450 fs) multi-pulse (N = 10–1500) laser at λ = 343 nm, 515 nm (1.40 J/cm2 for both former wavelengths) and 1030 nm (1.70 J/cm2) is reported, obtaining a study on how the absorption mechanism influences the processing efficiency for these materials. Tunable ablation depth and diameters are accomplished by modifying repetition rates at a constant fluence and number of pulses. The results highlight the role of absorption mechanism, repetition rate ranges and thermal properties of the materials for benefiting ablation efficiency. Furthermore, the use of high repetition rates improves the laser processing, reducing extended thermal effects and increasing ablation uniformity.

Effect of the Stepped Spillway Geometry on the Flow Energy Dissipation

In this research, flume experiments were conducted on stepped weirs to investigate the effect of step shape on the energy dissipation of flow. Four configurations with a constant number of steps were considered, namely, horizontal steps, inclined steps, horizontal steps with rounded sills, and ‎inclined steps with rounded sills. The slopes of inclined steps were 13% and 23%, and the diameters of the rounded sills of the step ends were 10 and 15 cm. The majority of previous studies focused on energy dissipation in stepped weirs in horizontal and inclined steps. In this research, new step geometries were used, such as horizontal steps with rounded sills and inclined steps with rounded sills. Dimensional analysis was applied to correlate the different variables affecting the flow hydraulics. Flow rates in the range of 0.61-9.12 lit/sec were used with each step shape. Results showed that the inclined steps with rounded sills had the highest flow energy dissipation in comparison to the other types. Rounded sills at the end of steps had more effective energy dissipation than did the horizontal step. However, the 23% inclination slope with rounded sills of a 7.5 cm radius was the most effective in dissipating flow energy. Doi: 10.28991/CEJ-2024-010-01-09 Full Text: PDF

THRESHOLD EFFECT IN DUSTY CLUSTERS IN A MAGNETIC FIELD

The process of occurrence of rotational motion of dusty plasma in a longitudinal magnetic field was investigated. It was experimentally found that the occurrence of rotation depends on the number of dust particles in the direction perpendicular to the magnetic induction vector, as well as on their vertical position in the dust trap (i.e., the magnitude of the electric field). The value of the threshold for the appearance of rotation in the magnetic field at a constant number of particles depends on the particle size and discharge conditions. The parameters of the experiment are selected, at which the effect manifests itself in detail. It has been established that for stationary rotation, a stable position of dust particles in the cross section is required, which corresponds to the filling of the shells of a rotating dust structure.

Impact of Network Topology on Neural Synchrony in a Model of the Subthalamic Nucleus-Globus Pallidus Circuit.

Synchronous neural oscillations within the beta frequency range are observed across the parkinsonian basal ganglia network, including within the subthalamic nucleus (STN) - globus pallidus (GPe) subcircuit. The emergence of pathological synchrony in Parkinson's disease is often attributed to changes in neural properties or connection strength, and less often to the network topology, i.e. the structural arrangement of connections between neurons. This study investigates the relationship between network structure and neural synchrony in a model of the STN-GPe circuit comprised of conductance-based spiking neurons. Changes in net synaptic input were controlled for through a synaptic scaling rule, which facilitated separation of the effects of network structure from net synaptic input. Five topologies were examined as structures for the STN-GPe circuit: Watts-Strogatz, preferential attachment, spatial, stochastic block, k-regular random. Beta band synchrony generally increased as the number of connections increased, however the exact relationship was topology specific. Varying the wiring pattern while maintaining a constant number of connections caused network synchrony to be enhanced or suppressed, demonstrating the ability of purely structural changes to alter synchrony. This relationship was well-captured by the algebraic connectivity of the network, the second smallest eigenvalue of the network's Laplacian matrix. The structure-synchrony relationship was further investigated in a network model designed to emulate the action selection role of the STN-GPe circuit. It was found that increasing the number of connections and/or the overlap of action selection channels could lead to a rapid transition to synchrony, which was also predicted by the algebraic connectivity.

The correlation of the liquidus curves and valence electron structures of a ternary lithium halide molten-salt electrolyte for liquid metal batteries.

Liquid metal batteries have received considerable attention owing to their excellent properties. However, an electrolyte with low melting temperature is required to decrease operating temperature for the safety of liquid metal batteries and for saving energy. For revealing the mechanism of low liquefaction temperature, an empirical electron theory of solid molecules was used to study the thermal properties of pure lithium halides and their ternary-phase systems systematically. The theoretical bond lengths, melting points, liquefaction temperatures and mixed energies of pure lithium halides and their ternary phases match the experimental values well. The mechanism of liquefaction temperature for ternary lithium halides depends on their valence electron structures. The liquefaction temperature can be stabilized on a liquidus line or curve through the modulation of the constant number of covalent electrons (nc) and lattice electrons (nl). The liquefaction temperatures on various liquidus lines and curves are positively related to the linear density of valence electron pairs on the strong Li-X bond, bonding factor, and number of valence electrons in the s orbital but are negatively related to the number of valence electrons in the p orbital. With an increase in the linear density of the valence electron pair number and bonding factor, bond strength is enhanced, which increases the resistance of the strong Li-X bond against the break force induced by thermal phonon vibrations, and more thermal phonons with high vibrating energy are required for breaking the strongest Li-X bond at a higher temperature; therefore, the liquefaction temperature increases.

Predictive Temperature Control of an Industrial Heating Process

This paper presents an approach to control the temperature of an industrial heating process where a workpiece is transported through a heating unit in order to reach a certain temperature. To control this process is challenging due to the variable and possibly abruptly changing feed rate while requiring the final workpiece temperature to be maintained at a constant value. The speed itself cannot be influenced by the control system. However, its future trajectory is known to a certain extent at runtime. A model predictive controller is presented, which is characterized by the fact that the prediction horizon is dynamically adjusted to the transportation speed, that the traveled distance of the workpiece within the horizon is constant. Moreover, the step size of the integrator is also adapted, yielding a constant number of integration steps despite large variations in velocity. Because of the special structure of the used model, the system state cannot be reused from one time step to the next and needs to be reconstructed in a receeding horizon fashion, even if the model was perfect. This is also a distinctive feature of the presented control scheme. Simulation and measurement results are provided, showing that the presented controller achieves promising results and outperforms the existing lookup-table-based controller currently in use.

Thermal Transpiration Flow: Molecular Dynamics Study from Dense to Dilute Gas

Thermal transpiration flow, a flow from cold to hot, driven by a temperature gradient along a wall under a high Knudsen number condition, was studied using the molecular dynamics method with a two-dimensional channel consisting of infinite parallel plates with nanoscale clearance based on our previous study. To accelerate the numerical analysis, a dense gas was employed in our previous study. In this study, the influence of the number density of gas was investigated by varying the height of the channel while keeping the number of molecules to achieve the flow ranging from dense to dilute gas while maintaining a constant Knudsen number. From the flow velocity profile compared to the number density profile, the thermal transpiration flow was observed for all number density conditions from dense to dilute gas. A similar flow structure was exhibited regardless of the number density. Thus, the numerical analysis in a dense gas condition is considered to be valid and useful for analyzing the thermal transpiration flow.

Morphology and turbulent burning velocity of n-decane/air expanding flames at constant turbulent Reynolds numbers

In this work we experimentally investigated the propagation and the turbulent burning velocity of n-decane/air turbulent expanding flames at 423 K and 0.5-3.0 atm, with constant turbulent Reynold number, ReT,flow = (urmsLI)/ν, ranging from 174 to 4712, using a medium-scale, fan-stirred combustion chamber, where urms and LI are respectively the turbulence intensity and the integral length scale, and ν is the kinematic viscosity of a fresh mixture. It was found that the n-decane/air turbulent expanding flame is self-similar, and the normalized turbulent flame propagation speed scales with the turbulent flame Reynold number, ReT,flame = (urms/SL)(〈r〉/δL), to the one-half power for mixtures characterized by non-unity Lewis numbers, where the mean flame radius (〈r〉) is the length scale, and the thermal diffusivity (α = SLδL) is the transport property. The turbulent burning velocity (ST,c=0.5) at the mean progress variable (〈c〉) of 0.5 decreases with the pressure at a constant ReT,flow, following the similar pressure dependence of the laminar burning velocity (SL). The ST,c=0.5/SL of the fuel-rich n-decane/air flame (ϕ = 1.4) is twice larger than that of the fuel-lean mixture (ϕ = 0.8), which would be attributed to the promotion of local burning rates by coupling between the differential diffusion and the turbulent flame stretch on the local flame fronts. In addition, five useful modified correlations for the turbulent burning velocity with the experimental Lewis number (LeBM) consideration were obtained based on the present experimental data of n-decane/air turbulent expanding flames. Particularly, the successful scaling of the modified correlation based on Damköhler's second hypothesis, ST,c=0.5/SL = 1 + 0.115(ReT,flowLeBM−2)0.5, suggesting that the ST,c=0.5/SL is inversely proportional to the LeBM. The importance of using experimental determined values of the Lewis number in the scaling of turbulent burning velocity with the differential diffusion consideration should be emphasized.

PERILAKU BERKENDARA SEPEDA MOTOR 150 CC MENGGUNAKAN METODE NATURALISTIC DRIVING STUDY DAN DRIVERS BEHAVIOUR QUESTIONNAIRE

Driver behavior is the most dominant factor in accidents. Almost all accidents are preceded by violations of traffic signs. Through previous accident data, important and useful information can be known. The study aims to analyze two-wheeled motorbike riding behavior using Naturalistic Driving Study (NDS) and determine the influence of age and behavior of 150cc motorbike riders. Data taken from recordings taken by respondents and questionnaires. The results of the regression test to determine differences in age on motorbike rider behavior with a constant value of a = 196.03 show that this figure is a constant number which means that, if it does not involve age (X), the value of riding behavior (Y) is -5, 3956x. The regression coefficient is -5.3945. This figure is minus (-), which means that age (X) has a negative effect on driving behavior (Y).

Performance analysis of REST API technologies using Spring and Express.js examples

The purpose of this article is a comparative analysis of two technologies for building applications in REST architecture. A Java-based development framework - Spring, and a framework designed for JavaScript language and Node environment - Express.js were analyzed. The test application was designed and implemented in both studied technologies. Using the Apache JMeter tool, HTTP request processing times were measured by operating on simple text data. The experiment was based on 5 scenarios repeated for a different number of users in the range of 10 to 100, with a constant number of executed requests to the server. The analysis conducted showed that the application implemented in Express.js handles HTTP requests up to 249% more efficiently than its counterpart in Spring.

Effect of adiabatic ground on thermofluidic behavior and cooling time analysis from a hollow tube

Efforts are made to elucidate natural convection around a tube placed on/close to the adiabatic ground in a stagnant ambient air within laminar regime. Thermofluidic characterization is carried out by employing important governing input quantities, such as Rayleigh number gap and aspect ratio The heat loss rate from the inner surface drops abruptly when the tube is placed on the ground. The growth rate of heat loss rate with is relatively more abrupt at higher value of for a constant Nusselt number on outer wall is found to increase monotonically as grows continually for a constant and whereas an opposite trend is anticipated for Nusselt number on inner wall The reduction gradient of with is considerably lower at lower value of in comparison to higher Again, two distinguished zones are identified (Zone A and B), namely, (i) zone A, where the effect of ground on the thermofluidic behvaiour around the tube is observed, and (ii) zone B suggests no effect of ground. Furthermore, cooling time estimation is performed by considering the initial temperature of the cylinder as the wall temperature at time 0 s. The required cooling time reduces considerably with the rise of for a particular and Lastly, a new correlation for Nusselt number has been anticipated. It shows quite satisfactory agreement within ±6% of the computational data.

Competitive Equilibria with a Constant Number of Chores

We study markets with mixed manna, where m divisible goods and chores shall be divided among n agents to obtain a competitive equilibrium. Equilibrium allocations are known to satisfy many fairness and efficiency conditions. While a lot of recent work in fair division is restricted to linear utilities and chores, we focus on a substantial generalization to separable piecewise-linear and concave (SPLC) utilities and mixed manna. We first derive polynomial-time algorithms for markets with a constant number of items or a constant number of agents. Our main result is a polynomial-time algorithm for instances with a constant number of chores (as well as any number of goods and agents) under the condition that chores dominate the utility of the agents. Interestingly, this stands in contrast to the case when the goods dominate the agents utility in equilibrium, where the problem is known to be PPAD-hard even without chores.

Direct numerical simulation of flow and heat transfer of supercritical water with different heat fluxes

The flow and heat transfer characteristics of supercritical water (SCW) are important considerations in the thermal-hydraulic design of the Supercritical Water-Cooled Reactor (SCWR). In the present study, the direct numerical simulation (DNS), developed with OpenFOAM, was utilized to investigate the effect of heat flux on the flow and heat transfer of SCW in a vertical circular pipe. The investigation involves detailed analyses of the wall temperature, velocity distribution, and turbulent statistics at various heat fluxes. It was found that buoyancy first impairs heat transfer, and then recovers heat transfer. This is attributed to the variation of buoyancy production and turbulence production, which are resulted from the buoyancy direct effect and indirect effect, respectively. As the heat flux increases, the recovery occurs earlier with higher magnitude. The vortex structures based on Q-criterion clearly illustrate the same process as well. Several heat-transfer correlations were assessed based on the DNS results. It indicates that Dittus and Boelter correlation (1930) cannot accurately predict the heat-transfer characteristics of SCW, while Chen and Fang correlation (2014) exhibits a higher level of predictive accuracy for Nusselt number. In addition, several turbulence models were evaluated against the DNS data. The results show significant deviations in predicting the heat transfer of SCW. The large discrepancy may be due to the inappropriate model coefficients, the failed predication of turbulence kinetic energy, as well as the constant turbulent Prandtl number commonly applied.

Optimizing the hydraulic performance of a baffled horizontal subsurface flow constructed wetland through computational fluid dynamics modelling

Baffled constructed wetlands (CWs) offer a promising solution to address low hydraulic efficiency in traditional CWs. However, there is a research gap in the field regarding the optimal length and quantity of baffles, and their comprehensive effects on hydraulic efficiency. This study is the first CFD-based assessment to comprehensively investigate the combined influence of baffle length and the number of baffles on the hydraulic efficiency of CWs. Using OpenFOAM simulations at a laboratory scale, various baffle configurations were examined with lengths ranging from 0.4 m to 0.58 m and baffle numbers varying from 0 to 11. Experimental tracer tests were conducted to validate the simulations. The high correlation coefficient (R2) between the tracer test results and simulations (ranging between 0.84 and 0.93) further underscores the reliability of the findings. Residence time distributions (RTDs) were derived from the temporal evolution of the outlet concentration of a tracer. The results indicate that augmenting the number of baffles under a fixed baffle length has a greater impact on the RTD curves, causing a backward displacement of the peak time. However, when the number of baffles is three or fewer, extending the baffle length does not significantly affect the RTD. When the baffle length is held constant at 0.58 m, there is a 58% enhancement in hydraulic efficiency as the number of baffles increases from 0 to 5. However, when maintaining a constant number of 11 baffles, increasing the baffle length from 0.4 to 0.5 m results in only a 5.5% improvement in hydraulic efficiency. Moreover, a generalized predictive equation for hydraulic efficiency was derived based on the CFD results and dimensional analysis. The study enhances the optimization of constructed wetland design by providing greater understanding of hydrodynamic behavior, leading to improved performance and applicability in practical environmental engineering.

Forward Security with Crash Recovery for Secure Logs

Logging is a key mechanism in the security of computer systems. Beyond supporting important forward security properties, it is critical that logging withstands both failures and intentional tampering to prevent subtle attacks leaving the system in an inconsistent state with inconclusive evidence. We propose new techniques combining forward security with crash recovery for secure log data storage. As the support of specifically forward integrity and the online nature of logging prevent the use of conventional coding, we propose and analyze a coding scheme resolving these unique design constraints. Specifically, our coding enables forward integrity, online encoding, and most importantly a constant number of operations per encoding. It adds a new log item by 𝖷𝖮𝖱 ing it to k cells of a table. If up to a certain threshold of cells is modified by the adversary, or lost due to a crash, we still guarantee recovery of all stored log items. The main advantage of the coding scheme is its efficiency and compatibility with forward integrity. The key contribution of the paper is the use of spectral graph theory techniques to prove that k is constant in the number n of all log items ever stored and small in practice, e.g., k = 5. Moreover, we prove that to cope with up to \(\sqrt {n}\) modified or lost log items, storage expansion is constant in n and small in practice. For k = 5, the size of the table is only 12% more than the simple concatenation of all n items. We propose and evaluate original techniques to scale the computation cost of recovery to several GBytes of security logs. We instantiate our scheme into an abstract data structure which allows to either detect adversarial modifications to log items or treat modifications like data loss in a system crash. The data structure can recover lost log items, thereby effectively reverting adversarial modifications.

The Complexity Landscape of Fixed-Parameter Directed Steiner Network Problems

Given a directed graph G and a list ( s 1 , t 1 ), …, ( s d , t d ) of terminal pairs, the Directed Steiner Network problem asks for a minimum-cost subgraph of G that contains a directed s i → t i path for every 1≤ i ≤ d . The special case Directed Steiner Tree (when we ask for paths from a root r to terminals t 1 , …, t d ) is known to be fixed-parameter tractable parameterized by the number of terminals, while the special case Strongly Connected Steiner Subgraph (when we ask for a path from every t i to every other t j ) is known to be W[1]-hard parameterized by the number of terminals. We systematically explore the complexity landscape of directed Steiner problems to fully understand which other special cases are FPT or W[1]-hard. Formally, if ℋ is a class of directed graphs, then we look at the special case of Directed Steiner Network where the list ( s 1 , t 1 ), …, ( s d , t d ) of demands form a directed graph that is a member of ℋ. Our main result is a complete characterization of the classes ℋ resulting in fixed-parameter tractable special cases: we show that if every pattern in ℋ has the combinatorial property of being “transitively equivalent to a bounded-length caterpillar with a bounded number of extra edges,” then the problem is FPT, and it is W[1]-hard for every recursively enumerable ℋ not having this property. This complete dichotomy unifies and generalizes the known results showing that Directed Steiner Tree is FPT [Dreyfus and Wagner, Networks 1971], q -Root Steiner Tree is FPT for constant q [Suchý, WG 2016], Strongly Connected Steiner Subgraph is W[1]-hard [Guo et al., SIAM J. Discrete Math. 2011], and Directed Steiner Network is solvable in polynomial-time for constant number of terminals [Feldman and Ruhl, SIAM J. Comput. 2006], and moreover reveals a large continent of tractable cases that were not known before.

Minimizing cell number fluctuations in self-renewing tissues with a stem-cell niche.

Self-renewing tissues require that a constant number of proliferating cells is maintained over time. This maintenance can be ensured at the single-cell level or the population level. Maintenance at the population level leads to fluctuations in the number of proliferating cells over time. Often, it is assumed that those fluctuations can be reduced by increasing the number of asymmetric divisions, i.e., divisions where only one of the daughter cells remains proliferative. Here, we study a model of cell proliferation that incorporates a stem-cell niche of fixed size, and explicitly model the cells inside and outside the niche. We find that in this model, fluctuations are minimized when the difference in growth rate between the niche and the rest of the tissue is maximized and all divisions are symmetric divisions, producing either two proliferating or two nonproliferating daughters. We show that this optimal state leaves visible signatures in clone size distributions and could thus be detected experimentally.