Aggregate production planning for process industries under oligopolistic competition

We consider a competitive version of the traditional aggregate production planning model with capacity constraints. In the general case, multiple products are produced by a few competing producers (oligopoly) with limited capacities. Production quantities, prices and consequently profits depend on production and allocation decisions of each producer. In addition, there is competition for the raw material whose supplies are limited, and where prices reflect these limitations. Such situations have recently occurred in several process industry settings including petro-refining, petrochemicals, basic chemicals, cement, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, rubber, paper, food processing and metals. We use a successive “Bertrand–Cournot” framework to address this problem and to determine optimal production quantities, prices and profits at the producers and at the raw material supplier. Our analysis allows a new way to understand and evaluate the marginal value of additional capacity when there is competition for the market and raw materials.     

A probabilistic quality of service constraint for a location model of switches in ATM communications networks

We formulate a model for the optimal location of switches in ATM communications networks. The networks are designed in such a way that, at their arrival to the switches, ATM cells find free space in a buffer of length b, with a probability α. The model avoids the impairment to the communication caused by both cell loss (because of shorter buffers) and cell-delay variations (because of longer buffers). It is also shown how to transform a non-linear, probabilistic, constraint into a linear form. Computational experience is provided for the model. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Astronomical function and date of the Taosi observatory

The Taosi site in Xiangfen County, Shanxi Province, may be the capital of the King Yao. Archeologists recently discovered a large semi-circular stamped-earth platform, II FJT1, which has a clear and definite pounded-earth central core together with a curved wall perforated by twelve gaps. The platform is said to be an ancient observatory used to determine the seasons by watching the sunrise. Each feature of II FJT1 was precisely measured and the data are reproduced in this paper. An astronomical analysis of slots E2 and E12 was carried out using the azimuths of the slots’ centerlines and the vertical angle of the mountain ridge opposite, above which the sun rises. The results show that at present the sun is close to the two slots but does not exactly enter them at summer and winter solstice sunrise. Using 14C analysis archeologists dated the site to about 2100 BC. Because of the secular change in the obliquity of the ecliptic, at that date on the summer solstice the half-risen sun would have appeared inside slot E12 just to the right of the centerline, and on the winter solstice the sun would have been exactly on the centerline of slot E2. This result provides compelling proof that II FJT1 is an ancient observatory.     

Mean value analysis for polling systems

The present paper deals with the problem of calculating mean delays in polling systems with either exhaustive or gated service. We develop a mean value analysis (MVA) to compute these delay figures. The merits of MVA are in its intrinsic simplicity and its intuitively appealing derivation. As a consequence, MVA may be applied, both in an exact and approximate manner, to a large variety of models.     

Sojourn time analysis for a cyclic-service tandem queueing model with general decrementing service

A sojourn time analysis is provided for a cyclic-service tandem queue with general decrementing service which operates as follows: starting once a service of queue 1 in the first stage, a single server continues serving messages in queue 1 until either queue 1 becomes empty, or the number of messages decreases to k less than that found upon the server's last arrival at queue 1, whichever occurs first, where 1 ≤ k ≤ ∞. After service completion in queue 1, the server switches over to queue 2 in the second stage and serves all messages in queue 2 until it becomes empty. It is assumed that an arrival stream is Poissonian, message service times at each stage are generally distributed and switch-over times are zero. This paper analyzes joint queue-length distributions and message sojourn time distributions.     

Industrial Applications of Mössbauer Spectroscopy

Hyperfine Interactions - The historical development of the use of Mössbauer spectroscopy in industrial applications is briefly outlined. The power of the technique for the study of...     

The shuttle dispatch problem with compound Poisson arrivals: Controls at two terminals

We consider the control of an infinite capacity shuttle which transports passengers between two terminals. The passengers arrive at each terminal according to a compound Poisson process and the travel time from one terminal to the other is a random variable following an arbitrary distribution. The following control limit policy is considered: dispatch the shuttle at terminali, at the instant that the total number of passengers waiting at terminali reaches or exceeds a predetermined control limitm _i . The objective of this paper is to obtain the mean waiting time of an arbitrary passenger at each terminal for given control valuesm ₁ andm ₂. We also discuss a search procedure to obtain the optimal control values which minimize the total expected cost per unit time under a linear cost structure.     

Markovian queues with Poisson control

We investigate Markovian queues that are examined by a controller at random times determined by a Poisson process. Upon examination, the controller sets the service speed to be equal to the minimum of the current number of customers in the queue and a certain maximum service speed; this service speed prevails until the next examination time. We study the resulting two-dimensional Markov process of queue length and server speed, in particular two regimes with time scale separation, specifically for infinitely frequent and infinitely long examination times. In the intermediate regime the analysis proves to be extremely challenging. To gain further insight into the model dynamics we then analyse two variants of the model in which the controller is just an observer and does not change the speed of the server.     

基于概率密度演化方法的随机结构可靠度分析

随机结构反应的概率密度演化方法能够给出随机荷载作用下随机结构反应的概率密度函数。在此基础上，根据给定的正常使用位移限值要求，直接进行积分给出了随机结构的正常使用可靠度及其失效概率。在实例分析中，与一类情况下的精确解答及基于反应正态分布假定的二阶矩方法分析结果进行了比较。研究表明：基于密度演化方法的随机结构可靠度分析具有很高的精度，而二阶矩方法的可靠度分析结果则往往具有一定的偏差，在失效概率较低时可能给出虚假的失效概率。     

耐磨环氧胶粘涂层冲蚀磨损特性的研究

本文对气固冲蚀和浆体冲蚀条件下耐磨环氧胶粘涂层的磨损特性进行了研究。结果表明,这种涂层的冲蚀磨损是由粘结剂的磨损和抗磨填料的磨损所组成;填料粒度和磨料粒度都对涂层的气固冲蚀磨损有影响,但在给定的试验条件下,填料粒度对涂层的浆体冲蚀磨损影响甚微。文章指出,耐磨环氧胶粘涂层在气固冲蚀和浆体冲蚀下的磨损机理相似,但磨损规律却有所不同;耐磨环氧胶粘涂层尤其适用于浆体冲蚀的场合,可以明显地提高机械过流部件的使用寿命。