Incorporating ergonomic risks into assembly line balancing

In manufacturing, control of ergonomic risks at manual workplaces is a necessity commanded by legislation, care for health of workers and economic considerations. Methods for estimating ergonomic risks of workplaces are integrated into production routines at most firms that use the assembly-type of production. Assembly line re-balancing, i.e., re-assignment of tasks to workers, is an effective and, in case that no additional workstations are required, inexpensive method to reduce ergonomic risks. In our article, we show that even though most ergonomic risk estimation methods involve nonlinear functions, they can be integrated into assembly line balancing techniques at low additional computational cost. Our computational experiments indicate that re-balancing often leads to a substantial mitigation of ergonomic risks.     

Quantum annealing of the graph coloring problem

Quantum annealing extends simulated annealing by introducing artificial quantum fluctuations. The path-integral Monte Carlo version chosen is population-based and designed to be implemented on a classical computer. Its first application to the graph coloring problem is presented in this paper. It is shown by experiments that quantum annealing can outperform classical thermal simulated annealing for this particular problem. Moreover, quantum annealing proved competitive when compared with the best algorithms on most of the difficult instances from the DIMACS benchmarks. The quantum annealing algorithm has even found that the well-known benchmark graph dsjc1000.9 has a chromatic number of at most 222. This is an improvement on its best upper-bound from a large body of literature.     

Is it worthwhile to go beyond the local-density approximation in subsystem density functional theory?

Frozen density embedding (FDE) theory is one of the major techniques aiming to bring modeling of extended chemical systems into the realm of high accuracy calculations. To improve its accuracy it is of interest to develop kinetic energy density functional approximations specifically for FDE applications. In the study reported here we focused on optimizing parameters of a generalized gradient approximation-like kinetic energy functional with the purpose of better describing electron excitation energies. We found that our optimized parametrizations, named excPBE and excPBE-3 (as these are derived from a Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof-like parametrization), could not yield improvements over available functionals when applied on a test set of systems designed to probe solvatochromic shifts. Moreover, as several different functionals yielded very similar errors to the simple local-density approximation (LDA), it is questionable whether it is worthwhile to go beyond the LDA in this context.     

Generalized Newton methods for crack problems with nonpenetration condition

A class of semismooth Newton methods for unilaterally constrained variational problems modeling cracks under a nonpenetration condition is introduced and investigated. On the continuous level, a penalization technique is applied that allows to argue generalized differentiability of the nonlinear mapping associated to its first‐order optimality characterization. It is shown that the corresponding semismooth Newton method converges locally superlinearly. For the discrete version of the problem, fast local as well as global and monotonous convergence of a discrete semismooth Newton method are proved. A comprehensive report on numerical tests for the two‐dimensional Lamé problem with three collinear cracks under the nonpenetration condition ends the article. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2005     

A perturbation-based super-CI approach for the orbital optimization of a CASSCF wave function

A perturbation theory-based algorithm for the iterative orbital update in complete active space self-consistent-field (CASSCF) calculations is presented. Following Angeli et al. (J. Chem. Phys. 2002, 117, 10525), the first-order contribution of singly excited configurations to the CASSCF wave function is evaluated using the Dyall Hamiltonian for the determination of a zeroth-order Hamiltonian. These authors employ an iterative diagonalization of the first-order density matrix including the first-order correction arising from single excitations, whereas the present approach uses the single-excitation amplitudes directly for the construction of the exponential of an anti-Hermitian matrix resulting in a unitary matrix which can be used for the orbital update. At convergence, the single-excitation amplitudes vanish as a consequence of the generalized Brillouin's theorem. It is shown that this approach in combination with direct inversion of the iterative subspace (DIIS) leads to very rapid convergence of the CASSCF iteration procedure. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Characterization of cuttlebone for a biomimetic design of cellular structures

Cuttlebone is a natural material possessing the multifunctional properties of high porosity, high flexural stiffness and compressive strength, making it a fine example of design optimization of cellular structures created by nature. Examination of cuttlebone using scanning electron micros- copy （SEM） reveals an approximately periodic microstruc- ture, appropriate for computational characterization using direct homogenization techniques. In this paper, volume fractions and stiffness tensors were determined based on two different unit cell models that were extracted from two different cuttlefish samples. These characterized results were then used as the target values in an inverse homogenization procedure aiming to re-generate microstructures with the same properties as cuttlebone. Unit cells with similar topologies to the original cuttlebone unit cells were achieved, attaining the same volume fraction （i.e. bulk density） and the same （or very close） stiffness tensor. In addition, a range of alternate unit cell topologies were achieved also attaining the target properties, revealing the non-unique nature of this inverse homogenization problem.     

基于线路“异质性”假设的轴辐式公共交通网络优化研究

特大城市公共交通局部静态拥堵问题日益成为制约公共交通网络运行效率提高的关键。针对这一问题改变线路“同质性”假设,在线路“异质性”假设的基础上,提出了将轴辐式网络设计运用到公共交通领域中来,综合考虑居民采用公共交通方式出行的单位运输可变成本、不变成本、枢纽换乘成本等要素,将枢纽间大型客车干线运输所带来的规模经济效应进行量化,构建了基于单分配、多枢纽、混合式网络结构特征的轴辐式公共交通网络优化模型,旨在多重约束下通过枢纽布局降低网络运输成本,提高公共交通网络站点的可达性。最后根据模拟退火算法对模型进行求解,并通过算例分析与讨论的方式验证了模型的有效性。     

Optimal bounds and extremal trajectories for time averages in nonlinear dynamical systems

For any quantity of interest in a system governed by ordinary differential equations, it is natural to seek the largest (or smallest) long-time average among solution trajectories, as well as the extremal trajectories themselves. Upper bounds on time averages can be proved a priori using auxiliary functions, the optimal choice of which is a convex optimization problem. We prove that the problems of finding maximal trajectories and minimal auxiliary functions are strongly dual. Thus, auxiliary functions provide arbitrarily sharp upper bounds on time averages. Moreover, any nearly minimal auxiliary function provides phase space volumes in which all nearly maximal trajectories are guaranteed to lie. For polynomial equations, auxiliary functions can be constructed by semidefinite programming, which we illustrate using the Lorenz system.     

制造企业成品出入库两级排队协同服务模型

优化企业成品出入库协同服务水平、平衡工作负荷,从而提高企业仓储服务效率、降低物流成本,是现代制造企业亟待解决的一个重要的管理细节问题。针对这个问题,本研究以仓储入库和出库两个排队过程为研究对象,建立出入库等待时间溢出情景下的两级排队协同服务模型,分析了在排队等待时间控制目标下,出入库员工优化配置方案。该模型引入溢出和串联两个协同服务机制,分三种情景即前方与后方服务台都有空闲,前方繁忙与后方空闲,前方空闲(或繁忙)与后方繁忙,建立了各情景下的系统状态转移方程,求解系统状态的概率,并进而推算出反映系统表现的各项指标,如员工使用率,队列长度,等待时间,以及等待时间超过溢出界值的概率。用制造企业成品出入库管理案例进行验证分析,对企业目前采用的M/M/S出入库排队系统与两级排队协同服务系统进行了数值计算对比。结果表明后者能有效提升出入库服务效率,减少出入库排队系统平均等待时间,降低由于入库和出库两个服务过程效率不均衡而产生的企业内部物流成本,是提升企业内部物流协同管理水平的一个重要方法。其应用可以服务于仓储出入库协同管理的信息化与自动化水平的提高。     

Inference of gene regulatory networks with multi-objective cellular genetic algorithm

Reverse engineering of biochemical networks remains an important open challenge in computational systems biology. The goal of model inference is to, based on time-series gene expression data, obtain the sparse topological structure and parameters that quantitatively understand and reproduce the dynamics of biological systems. In this paper, we propose a multi-objective approach for the inference of S-System structures for Gene Regulatory Networks (GRNs) based on Pareto dominance and Pareto optimality theoretical concepts instead of the conventional single-objective evaluation of Mean Squared Error (MSE). Our motivation is that, using a multi-objective formulation for the GRN, it is possible to optimize the sparse topology of a given GRN as well as the kinetic order and rate constant parameters in a decoupled S-System, yet avoiding the use of additional penalty weights. A flexible and robust Multi-Objective Cellular Evolutionary Algorithm is adapted to perform the tasks of parameter learning and network topology inference for the proposed approach. The resulting software, called MONET, is evaluated on real-based academic and synthetic time-series of gene expression taken from the DREAM3 challenge and the IRMA in vivo datasets. The ability to reproduce biological behavior and robustness to noise is assessed and compared. The results obtained are competitive and indicate that the proposed approach offers advantages over previously used methods. In addition, MONET is able to provide experts with a set of trade-off solutions involving GRNs with different typologies and MSEs.