An economic evaluation model of supply chain flexibility

With the advent of the supply chain management concepts, business communities have been realizing that being competitive as a single company is no longer adequate; instead, competitiveness requires consideration of all channels in the supply chain. Despite its importance, the availability of the literature addressing supply chain flexibility is still limited to date. Although relationships between various types of flexibilities have been established, the degree to which one type of flexibility affects the other types and the system performance remains to be investigated. In particular, there is a lack of rigorous analytical models elucidating the relationships between the degree of flexibility in a system and the system level of performance. In this paper, a supply chain flexibility model is developed comprising labor flexibility, machine flexibility, routing flexibility, and information technology, with total system flexibility measured by an economic index. Outputs from the model can assist in making suitable production decisions to produce multiple products under an uncertain environment. Example solutions are given. This paper can help economic evaluation when supply chain flexibility and the factors affecting flexibility are to be improved. It can also assist in making supply chain flexibility-promotion decisions.     

Pressure jumps due to flow interruptions as source of system peaks in liquid chromatography with mixed eluents

Summary Brief pressure changes take often place within a liquid chromatography column, e.g., during sample injection. It is shown that pressure jumps may cause local changes in the composition of a mixed effluent and the rise of system peaks in the chromatogram. This is a consequence of the dependence of sorption equilibrium on pressure.     

Another complete invariant for Steiner triple systems of order 15

In this note, the 80 non‐isomorphic triple systems on 15 points are revisited from the viewpoint of the convex hull of the characteristic vectors of their blocks. The main observation is that the numbers, of facets of these 80 polyhedra are all different, thus producing a new proof of the non‐isomorphism of these triple systems. The space dimension of these polyhedra is also discussed. Finally, we observe the large number of facets of some of these polyhedra with few vertices, in relation with the upper bound problem for combinatorial polyhedra. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Combin Designs.     

A novel proof of the existence of solutions for a new system of generalized mixed quasi-variational-like inclusions involving (<Emphasis Type="Italic">A</Emphasis>, <Emphasis Type="Italic">η</Emphasis>, <Emphasis Type="Italic">m</Emphasis>)-accretive operators

In this paper, we introduce a new system of generalized mixed quasi-variational-like inclusions with (A, η, m)-accretive operators and relaxed cocoercive mappings. By using the fixed point theorem of Nadler, we prove the existence of solutions for this general system of generalized mixed quasi-variational-like inclusions and its special cases. The results in this paper unify, extend and improve some known results in the literature. The novel proof method is simpler than those iterative algorithm approach for proving the existence of solutions of all classes of system of set-valued variational inclusions in the literature.     

Simulation with system dynamics and fuzzy reasoning of a tax policy to reduce CO2 emissions in the residential sector

This methodological paper presents a planning and control methodology illustrated by a simplified case study on the carbon-tax design in the residential sector. The first objective is to show how to simulate with system dynamics the consumers’ behaviour and the continuous tax-control mechanism depending on few important feedbacks, often ignored in static macroeconomic modelling. A second objective is to show how to aggregate external data driving this model and stemming from different sources with various credibility levels. This is realised by means of fuzzy-reasoning techniques incorporated into the system-dynamics model.     

Identification and control of nonlinear systems by a dissimilation particle swarm optimization-based Elman neural network

In this paper, we first present a learning algorithm for dynamic recurrent Elman neural networks based on a dissimilation particle swarm optimization. The proposed algorithm computes concurrently both the evolution of network structure, weights, initial inputs of the context units, and self-feedback coefficient of the modified Elman network. Thereafter, we introduce and discuss a novel control method based on the proposed algorithm. More specifically, a dynamic identifier is constructed to perform speed identification and a controller is designed to perform speed control for Ultrasonic Motors (USM). Numerical experiments show that the novel identifier and controller based on the proposed algorithm can both achieve higher convergence precision and speed than other state-of-the-art algorithms. In particular, our experiments show that the identifier can approximate the USM's nonlinear input–output mapping accurately. The effectiveness of the controller is verified using different kinds of speeds of constant, step, and sinusoidal types. Besides, a preliminary examination on a randomly perturbation also shows the robust characteristics of the two proposed models.     

HL-2M 装置初始等离子体放电阶段的直流辉光放电清洗系统研制

基于 HL-2M 托卡马克初始等离子体放电的工程需求,设计并研制了直流辉光放电清洗系统,包括电 极、馈线、电源、控制以及监测等关键部件和辅助子系统。研制完成后开展了系统装配和工程调试,并投入到首 次等离子体放电。实验结果表明,该直流辉光放电系统运行稳定、可靠,且此辉光放电清洗显著降低了真空室本 底杂质浓度,能满足 HL-2M 装置初始等离子体放电的壁条件需求。     

红外图像法鉴别打印机种类

采用红外图像系统对收集到的针式、激光、喷墨3种类型打印机的打印字迹样本各4份分别进行检验,依据3类打印机打印字迹的可见图像、化学图像和红外谱图,可以鉴别3种类型的打印机。可见图像鉴别可根据字迹的清晰程度及有无虚边等特点加以鉴别,化学图像鉴别可根据在不同的波程范围上化学图像清晰程度不同为依据。红外谱图部分主要是在相同的波程上吸收峰数目不同作为鉴别的主要依据。通过红外图像法鉴别打印机种类与其他方法相比,具有不破坏检材、检测范围广、检测速度快等优点。     

The fluctuating phase error analysis in the digital grating phase-shifting profilometry

The nonlinear response of the experimental system and the saturation of fringe patterns can induce the fluctuating phase error in the projection grating phase-shifting profilometry. Two major factors of the fluctuating phase error are discussed by simulation. The fluctuating phase error caused by the nonlinear response of the system is four times the frequency of the fringe pattern when the conventional four-frame phase extracting algorithm is used. However, such error can be decreased by five-frame algorithm. On the other hand, the fluctuating phase error caused by the fringe saturation is five times the frequency of the fringe pattern by using conventional five-frame phase extracting algorithm. A novel phase recovering algorithm is used to decrease the phase error caused by the saturation. Furthermore, the applicability range of the proposed phase recovering algorithm is analyzed by simulation and experiments with different saturation degree of the fringe pattern and nonlinearity of the measurement system.     

Recursive computational formulas of the least squares criterion functions for scalar system identification

The paper discusses recursive computation problems of the criterion functions of several least squares type parameter estimation methods for linear regression models, including the well-known recursive least squares (RLS) algorithm, the weighted RLS algorithm, the forgetting factor RLS algorithm and the finite-data-window RLS algorithm without or with a forgetting factor. The recursive computation formulas of the criterion functions are derived by using the recursive parameter estimation equations. The proposed recursive computation formulas can be extended to the estimation algorithms of the pseudo-linear regression models for equation error systems and output error systems. Finally, the simulation example is provided.