Performance-price Ratio Research Articles

A new strategy applying ternary blends of modified natural rubber with fluoroplastic and fluorocarbon elastomer for high-performance thermoplastic vulcanizate

High-performance thermoplastic vulcanizates (TPVs) are a class of specialty polymers with exceptional mechanical properties, rubber-like elasticity, excellent processability and recyclability, and an excellent price-performance ratio that make them ideal for a variety of industrial applications. In this work, a successful method of creating high-performance TPV using a ternary blend of poly(methyl methacrylate) modified natural rubber (MGNR), poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF), and fluorocarbon elastomer (FKM) was employed. Combining NR known for its exceptional rubber elasticity and resilience, with fluoropolymers, known for their exceptional chemical resistance and thermal stability, resulted in materials with a synergistic blend of properties. The developed PVDF/FKM/MGNR blend showed higher elasticity, tensile strength, and elongation at break than PVDF/FKM and PVDF/MGNR blends because the ternary blend had greatly improved phase morphology and compatibility between the three phases. The domain size in the ternary blend was smaller than 150 nm. The ternary blends also exhibited excellent thermal properties, where melting and crystallization temperatures were reduced significantly with MGNR due to possible dipole-dipole interactions. At the same time, the oil resistance and shape memory behavior of PVDF/FKM/MGNR were improved at an appropriate blend ratio. The ternary TPVs demonstrated good shape fixities (90–100 %) and shape recoveries (70–80 %). This research offers valuable insights into the design of high-performance thermoplastic elastomers based on natural rubber, which have excellent mechanical properties, solvent resistance, and potential for intelligent and lightweight application.

How does module tracking for agrivoltaics differ from standard photovoltaics? Food, energy, and technoeconomic implications

Module tracking can be an effective approach for spatial-temporal sharing of sunlight between solar modules and crops in agrivoltaics (AV). For desired food-energy yield across various seasons and crops, tracking needs to be customized based on factors including crop type, module array density, economics and social preferences, and policy. Here, we explore customized tracking (CT) along single axis for AV to meet the desired food-energy yield and economic performance for a variety of module configurations and crop types. CT is implemented through a time multiplexing of standard tracking and anti-tracking along the day to balance sunlight between modules and crops, respectively. Module energy and spatial-temporal shading are modeled using the view factor approach while the crop response to shading is modeled empirically. Economic factors including module hardware/soft costs and crop profit are explored to model the economic performance using price-performance ratio. A case study done at Punjab, Pakistan shows that 5 hours of daily standard tracking around noon can ensure 80 % of the typical energy yield targets while maintaining 40 % and 80 % relative biomass yield for crops having high and moderate shade sensitivity, respectively. When module row spacing is increased 2–3 times relative to a typical ground mounted photovoltaic (GMPV) system, biomass yield for crops having high shade sensitivity can be substantially recovered while also improving economic performance. Due to a higher capital cost, 30–40 % increase in feed-in-tariff could be required to make the tracking AV economically competitive to a typical GMPV. The proposed approach can be highly effective for customized module tracking design and economic analysis for AV.

High-precision reading of a weak magnetostatic field

Efforts have recently been put into developing proton precession magnetometers (PPM) in order to measure weak magnetic fields with high precision. Although high-cost commercial PPMs are available today, there are ongoing studies for low power consumption, low cost, high accuracy and resolution. Accordingly, in this study, a new PPM with a measurement range of 20,000 nT-120,000 nT, a production cost of $2000 and an accuracy of 0.13 nT was developed and its performance in determining the earth’s magnetic field was examined. It was determined that the developed PPM has an advantage over its commercial equivalents (G857, WCZ, etc.) in terms of price-performance ratio and can be used to determine small magnetic field values such as the earth’s magnetic field.

Purchase intention for second-hand luxury goods: An empirical study of Chinese consumers.

Second-hand luxury goods feature both characteristics of luxury products like perceived value including social, emotional, and quality value, and second-hand goods like price-performance ratio. Enlarging the second-hand luxury market is of significance to protect the environment and save rare and valuable natural resources, and thus investigating the determinants of purchase intention is meaningful. From the perspective of the psychology of consumers, the influence of factors related to consumers (recycling awareness, subjective norms, attitudes, perceived behavioral control) and products (perceived value, price-performance ratio) on the intention to buy second-hand luxury goods is explored in this study through an online survey with Chinese consumers as a sample. The results are analyzed using the structural equation model (SEM) and show that consumers' attitudes, perceived behavioral control, and recycling awareness will promote the intention of purchasing second-hand luxury goods, and the perceived value and price-performance ratio of second-hand luxury goods also have a positive impact on the purchase intention. However, there is no significant relationship between subjective norms and purchase intention. In addition, this study also explores the interrelationship between constructs and draws corresponding conclusions, providing references for the subsequent development of the second-hand luxury market.

A cost-effective dual-layer grain boundary diffusion strategy to significantly enhance coercivity of sintered Nd-Ce-Fe-B magnets

In an attempt to obtain cost-effective sintered Nd-Ce-Fe-B magnet and overcome the coercivity-remanence trade-off challenge caused by heavy rare earth (HRE) diffusion, a novel dual-layer coating method has been proposed for the grain boundary diffusion process (GBDP). A high coercivity increment of 8.56 kOe is achieved by dual-layer coated DyHx/Pr80Al20 (DH/PA) diffusion with 0.8 wt% DyHx and a slight remanence reduction from 12.85 to 12.71 kG. Although the DyHx diffused magnet has a coercivity increment of 9.24 kOe, it consumes twice as much DyHx as the DH/PA diffused magnet at the great sacrifice of remanence. This can be attributed to the formation of continuous grain boundary phase and thin Dy-rich shell via microstructural observations. Further TEM characterization indicates that the amorphous triple junction grain boundary phase (TJP) gradually transforms into the crystalline Nd2O3 structure after GBDP. The coexistence of cubic-Nd2O3 phase and hexagonal-Nd2O3 phase found in the dual-layer coated Pr80Al20/DyHx (PA/DH) diffused magnet creates a more intricate grain boundary phase structure, hindering the diffusion of Dy. Comparably, the formation of single cubic-Nd2O3 (Ia3̅ structure) grain boundary phase in the DH/PA and DyHx diffused magnets is an important reason for the significant increase in coercivity. Based on the evaluation of magnetic performance and cost, the DH/PA diffused magnet achieves a higher price-performance ratio (PPR). This cost-effective bilayer grain boundary diffusion strategy provides a valuable reference for high PPR Nd-Ce-Fe-B magnet fabrication.

A Study of University Students’ Purchasing Decision Behaviors for Counterfeit Sport Shoes

Based on the Engel-Kollat-Blackwell model of consumer behaviors, this study aimed to understand university students’ consumer decision-making patterns for counterfeit sport shoes, including the effect of needs (functional needs, symbolic needs, and experiential needs), information search, price, brand awareness, and the price-performance ratio on repurchase intentions. This study adopts a convenient sampling method to investigate university students who have purchased counterfeit sport shoes. A total of 234 valid questionnaires were collected. The results of the partial least squares (PLS) analysis showed that the university students, searched for product information when having the functional needs and symbolic needs for sport shoes. This study shows that after students have conducted a product search, the price, brand awareness, and price-performance ratio affected them repurchase intentions. The findings of this study could provide a reference for practical actions to resist counterfeit sport shoes.

Techno-Economic Assessment of a Novel Continuous Hot-Roll Process for Manufacturing Nanograin NdFeB Magnets

Rare earth permanent magnets (REPMs) play a pivotal role in clean energy technologies like electric vehicles and wind turbines. However, their reliance on critical materials like dysprosium presents supply risks. This study introduces an innovative manufacturing approach for nanograin NdFeB magnets using a continuous hot-roll deformation process. This method has the potential to eliminate the need for dysprosium, reducing costs and material criticality. A techno-economic assessment (TEA) evaluates the economic feasibility of the proposed approach relative to conventional methods. The novel process amalgamates densification and texture development into a continuous, rapid heating and cooling method, minimizing grain growth. The TEA reveals that for an annual production of 100 metric tons of magnets, the novel method yields profits of $1.31M annually versus losses of $14.15M and $2.51M for conventional sintering and hot-press hot-deformation approaches respectively. Over a 20-year lifespan, the net present value is $21.60M using an 8% discount rate. The price-performance ratio is 10.86 × 103 $/m3/MGOe, which is better than the benchmark for commercial viability. Overall, the hot-roll approach streamlines production, enhances properties, eliminates waste, and improves economics, offering advantages over conventional manufacturing process chains.

“Under Armour” Style of Media Marketing and Its Future

Under Armour has become a popular brand in a highly competitive market, and its use of media such as “word-of-mouth advertising”, “star effect”, “film and television advertising” and “actively adapting to the Internet era” has made its profits more and more profitable. But this approach still has a lot to improve, for example, the company’s sales reflected in the financial statements in recent years are not impressive, the comfort of its clothing has been challenged by many peers, the aesthetics of product equipment has been criticized, and the price-performance ratio is not advantageous, and its future development direction has made many customers and analysts want to study. How it can reverse the current disadvantage is also a topic of interest to many people. This paper expanded the explanation and description of its media communication advantages, as well as explain and analyze the company’s marketing strategy and give feasible recommendations.

Can MWCNT (20%)-MgO (80%)/10W40 nano-lubricant be used in industries? (Statistical analysis by focusing on economic factors and rheological behavior for best lubrication conditions)

Hybrid nanofluid (NF) is a new generation of NF that create different and sometimes desirable properties due to the combination of two or more nanoparticles (NPs). Also, they have higher physical properties than conventional NFs in terms of thermal conductivity (TC) and viscosity. In this study, the rheological behavior of MWCNT-MgO (20:80)/10 W40 hybrid NF using 174 experimental data in temperature conditions T = 5–55 °C, solid volume fractions SVF = 0.05–1% and the shear rate SR = 666.5–11997 s−1 was investigated. The results of the experiments show that increasing the temperature reduces the viscosity of the BF. It is observed that temperature changes have the greatest effect on the viscosity of NFs. To predict the viscosity of hybrid NF, an empirical relationship based on temperature, SVF, and SR parameters is proposed. Comparing the price-performance ratio of different hybrid NFs concerning price performance factor (PPF), the results of this comparison show that the relative viscosity may be higher than other NFs, but its PPF is lower. To fit the curve of this relationship, the step-by-step regression method with a determination coefficient of 0.9973 is used. The experimental data have an acceptable agreement with the predicted data.

College Students’ Purchase Intention for Counterfeit Sport Shoes

The purpose of this study is to analyze the intention of college students to purchase counterfeit sports shoes, with needs, information search, price, brand awareness, and the price performance ratio as the analysis factors. This study adopted a random sampling method to survey 726 college students in China. The results of the partial least squares (PLS) analysis showed that the college students, regardless of whether they had experience in purchasing counterfeit sport shoes, searched for product information when having the functional needs and symbolic needs for sport shoes. This study shows that after students have conducted a product search, the price, brand awareness, and price-performance ratio affected their purchase intentions. The findings of this study could provide a reference for practical actions to resist counterfeit sport shoes.

Comparison of the Performance of Solar Panels Designed in Three Different Ways under the Same Conditions

Renewable energy sources such as solar energy have great potential to alleviate some of the negative environmental problems, including climate change, caused by intensive fossil fuel use. Solar energy will play an important part in future energy systems because of its rapid installation technology and lowering costs. In order to use solar radiation intensity in a wide range in the most efficient way, the plants must either be at an optimum angle in the area where they are installed or they should be designed with moving systems. In this study, performance and efficiency comparisons of solar tracking systems and fixed-designed systems based on real-field conditions have been made. In this way, price performance ratios can be determined clearly and it will be easier to decide on the types of power plants to be built. While solar tracking systems move according to the most efficient position that they can get from the sun through radiation sensors, they are designed with elements such as PLCs using multi-year solar data that operate with an open loop and based on meteorological data. In this study, three different power plant types designed as 1-axis, 2-axis, and fixed angle were controlled as open loop with PLC software and production differences between power plants were evaluated for 1 year. According to this research we have done, it has been concluded that 2-axis tracking systems produce approximately 32% more energy annually than a fixed-angle system, with an annual efficiency rate of 23% higher than a 1-axis system.

Perovskites and Photovoltaic Cells – a History of Records

In recent years the solar cells have experienced a rapid development. Due to this shift in application area, the cells performances are becoming increasingly important issues to be solved. In laboratory tests, a Swiss-American research team demonstrated that the solar cell could convert direct sunlight into electricity at 29.8% efficiency. A good price-performance ratio is the key for the future production.

Artificial-Intelligence-Based Charger Deployment in Wireless Rechargeable Sensor Networks

To extend a network’s lifetime, wireless rechargeable sensor networks are promising solutions. Chargers can be deployed to replenish energy for the sensors. However, deployment cost will increase when the number of chargers increases. Many metrics may affect the final policy for charger deployment, such as distance, the power requirement of the sensors and transmission radius, which makes the charger deployment problem very complex and difficult to solve. In this paper, we propose an efficient method for determining the field of interest (FoI) in which to find suitable candidate positions of chargers with lower computational costs. In addition, we designed four metaheuristic algorithms to address the local optima problem. Since we know that metaheuristic algorithms always require more computational costs for escaping local optima, we designed a new framework to reduce the searching space effectively. The simulation results show that the proposed method can achieve the best price–performance ratio.

Complexity of Smart Home Setups: A Qualitative User Study on Smart Home Assistance and Implications on Technical Requirements

Setup and management of smart home systems is a complex task, and thus challenging for technically inexperienced users. We conducted a qualitative user study to evaluate whether an assistance system could empower users to make better and informed decisions regarding the selection of devices, their interoperability, the resulting set of features and their price. A group of 20 participants used our assistance app on a smartphone to configure a smart home while optimizing for features, interoperability, and the price-performance ratio. The results of our user study show that our assistance app can ease the problem of selecting useful devices and at the same time users become aware of new features resulting from the interoperation of selected devices. Furthermore, the assistance app can counteract the inherent interoperability problem between devices of different vendors or platforms. Finally, users are not only interested in individual device prices. They want to learn the cost of a certain feature set, including the cost of all devices necessary to realize this feature. Interestingly, none of the current smart home systems on the market offer a comparable assistance mechanism. Third-party solutions are not available either, because an assistance app requires meta data about features, interoperability, and usage of devices. This meta data is currently not available via APIs in state-of-the-art smart home systems and marketplaces. Therefore, we present a smart home architecture resulting from our research that can, among other benefits, provide the necessary meta data. Our research indicates that commercial smart home systems should invest more effort in user assistance to gain widespread adoption among technically inexperienced users. This in turn requires substantial changes to the meta data management in smart homes, because otherwise these assistance systems cannot be realized.

A Dynamic Multi-Attribute Resource Bidding Mechanism with Privacy Protection in Edge Computing

In edge computing, a reasonable edge resource bidding mechanism can enable edge providers and users to obtain benefits in a relatively fair fashion. To maximize such benefits, this paper proposes a dynamic multi-attribute resource bidding mechanism (DMRBM). Most of the previous work mainly relies on a third-party agent to exchange information to gain optimal benefits. It is worth noting that when edge providers and users trade with third-party agents which are not entirely reliable and trustworthy, their sensitive information is prone to be leaked. Moreover, the privacy protection of edge providers and users must be considered in the dynamic pricing/transaction process, which is also very challenging. Therefore, this paper first adopts a privacy protection algorithm to prevent sensitive information from leakage. On the premise that the sensitive data of both edge providers and users are protected, the prices of providers fluctuate within a certain range. Then, users can choose appropriate edge providers by the price-performance ratio (PPR) standard and the reward of lower price (LPR) standard according to their demands. The two standards can be evolved by two evaluation functions. Furthermore, this paper employs an approximate computing method to get an approximate solution of DMRBM in polynomial time. Specifically, this paper models the bidding process as a non-cooperative game and obtains the approximate optimal solution based on two standards according to the game theory. Through the extensive experiments, this paper demonstrates that the DMRBM satisfies the individual rationality, budget balance, and privacy protection and it can also increase the task offloading rate and the system benefits.

Circuit Design of Counting Electronic Scale Based on STC89C51 Single Chip Microcomputer

The main purpose of electronic scales is to measure, which can also be said to be for trading. Electronic scales have their relevant numerical measurement value restrictions when they are used. Therefore, they can only be used effectively within the measurement value range when they are used. As long as the weight does not exceed the measurement limit, they can be used at will. This measurement method greatly improves the measurement speed and the user's trading speed. STC89C51 single chip microcomputer as an 8-bit single chip microcomputer, first of all, the price is relatively low. The number of pins of 51 single chip microcomputer is up to 40. After subtracting some power supplies and special pins, 32 pins can be used, and all 32 pins can be used as input and output pins. Therefore, the performance price ratio of 51 single chip microcomputer is relatively high. At the same time, the application circuit of 51 single chip microcomputer is relatively simple, and only the crystal oscillator circuit and reset circuit are needed to achieve work. Besides, 51 single chip microcomputer also has serial communication, timer, external interrupt and other on-chip resources, which can meet the special requirements of some systems. Finally, in terms of programming, the 51 single-chip microcomputer can be used only after loading the header file, without configuring the input and output ports, and is also very convenient in programming. Therefore, STC89C51 single chip microcomputer is used as the basis and Proteus and KILL software are used to realize the design of electronic scales.

The Influence of Competency-Based VR Learning Materials on Students’ Problem-Solving Behavioral Intentions—Taking Environmental Issues in Junior High Schools as an Example

With the increasing price–performance ratio of virtual reality equipment, there has been an increase in research on the use of VR in education. The learning content of biology courses for junior high schools often introduces the interaction between organisms and their surroundings. Through the interactive design of VR learning materials, students can enhance their understandings of the impact of human behaviors on the environment. They can become immersed in the virtual world using a virtual camera to explore environmental pollution and record pollution sources, which exist in their surrounding environment. In this study, one-group pre- and post-test designs were adopted to collect and analyze data on students’ reactions before and after implementation of the VR learning course for environmental issues in a junior high school. The questionnaires were analyzed to evaluate the impact on course identity and behavioral intentions of students regarding problem-solving. The results reveal the VR interactive learning course has positive effects on both the course identity and the students’ behavioral intentions for problem-solving.

Gaviss : Boosting the Performance of GPU-Accelerated NFV Systems via Data Sharing

GPUs have demonstrated the capability of significantly improving the performance of network functions (NF). In an Network Function Virtualization (NFV) system, multiple NFs form a service chain to provide services. However, NFs in state-of-the-art GPU-accelerated NFV systems still utilize a GPU independently where each NF needs to transfer data to the GPU memory for acceleration. As a result, a packet might be transferred into the GPU memory by each NF when it passes through the service chain. We find these expensive and repetitive transfers are the main factor that limits the overall performance of an NFV system. We propose Gaviss, a GPU-accelerated NFV system with effective data sharing. By sharing packets in the GPU memory among network functions, a packet needs to be transferred to the GPU only once, eliminating the performance overhead caused by repetitive transfers. Extensive experimental results show that Gaviss can improve the overall throughput by 2.6-13.2× and reduce the latency by up to 37.9%, when compared with state-of-the-art approaches. Moreover, Gaviss also demonstrates up to 2.5× higher price-performance ratio than CPU-based implementations, making GPUs competitive for building NFV systems.

Optimum design of nonlinear semi-rigid steel frame based on performance-price ratio via genetic algorithm

In this study, a two-stage structural optimization method is presented for multistory steel frames with semi-rigid connections. Based on the traditional optimization result in the first stage, the performance-price ratio (PPR) is introduced in the second stage to provide an idea to modify the unreasonable structural design that might occur in the price (or weight) only oriented optimization of first stage. The efficient advanced analysis (EAA) method accounting for the flexibility of beam-to-column connections, second-order effect, initial imperfection and plasticity development in members is applied in structural calculation, which is also used to acquire the ultimate capacity of structures. All schemes satisfying traditional optimization constraints in a simple design problem were obtained by exhaustive search. The price-performance relation of schemes showed that the structural ultimate capacity depends only on the rationality of members’ combination and has low correlation with the total cost. Design examples showed that the two-stage optimization considering PPR enables much more robust structural design at a slightly higher cost than the traditional optimum one.

Thermal and Mechanical Characterization of Coir Fibre–Reinforced Polypropylene Biocomposites

In recent years, the growth of environmental awareness has increased the interest in the development of biocomposites which are sustainable materials with an excellent price–performance ratio and low weight. The current study aimed to obtain and characterize the biocomposites prepared by thermoforming using coir fibres as reinforcing material and polypropylene as matrix. The biocomposites were produced with different coir fibres/polypropylene ratios and were characterized by physical–mechanical indices, thermal analysis, crystallinity, attenuated total reflection-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy analysis (ATR-FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and chromatic measurements. Both tensile and bending strength of biocomposites decreased when the coir fibre content increased. The melting temperature of biocomposite materials has decreased with the increase of the coir fibre loading. Regarding the thermal stability, the weight loss and degradation temperature increased with decreasing coir fibre content. The ATR-FTIR and SEM analyses underlined the modifications that took place in the structure of the biocomposites by modifying the coir fibres/matrix ratio.