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This study aims to develop a new analysis approach devised by incorporating a gradient-enhanced microplane damage model (GeMpDM) into isogeometric analysis (IGA), which shows computational stability and capability in accurately predicting crack propagations in structures with complex geometries.

For the non-local microplane damage modeling, the maximum modified von-Mises equivalent strain among all microplanes is regularized as a representative quantity. This characterization implies that only one additional governing equation is considered, which improves computational efficiency dramatically. By combined use of GeMpDM and IGA, quasi-static and dynamic numerical analyses are conducted to demonstrate the capability in predicting crack paths of complex geometries in comparison to FEM and experimental results.

The implicit scheme with the adopted damage model shows favorable numerical stability and the numerical results exhibit appropriate convergence characteristics concerning the mesh size. The damage evolution is successfully controlled by a tension-compression damage factor. Thanks to the advanced geometric design capability of IGA, the details of crack patterns can be predicted reliably, which are somewhat difficult to be acquired by FEM. Additionally, the damage distribution obtained in the dynamic analysis is in close agreement with experimental results.

The paper originally incorporates GeMpDM into IGA. Especially, only one non-local variable is considered besides the displacement field, which improves the computational efficiency and favorable convergence characteristics within the IGA framework. Also, enjoying the geometric design ability of IGA, the proposed analysis method is capable of accurately predicting crack paths reflecting the complex geometries of target structures.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the internal interaction mechanism of marine scientific research and education, industrial structure upgrading and marine economic growth from a systematic perspective, based on which this work forecasts their future development trends.

In this study, a multivariate grey model is applied to the prediction of marine scientific research and education, industrial structure upgrading and marine economic growth. Considering the impact of the COVID-19 on marine development, this paper introduces the weakening buffer operator into MGM(1,m) and constructs the AWBO-MGM(1,m) model. To verify the validity and accuracy of the new model, this paper uses AWBO-MGM(1,m), MGM(1,m), GM(1,N), GM(1,1), back propagation neural network and linear regression models for simulation and prediction based on the data from 2010 to 2021, respectively.

From the theoretical perspective, the development of marine scientific research and education can accelerate industrial upgrading and promote marine economic growth by providing high-quality talents, promoting marine science and technology progress and reducing transaction costs; while the upgrading of marine industrial structure and marine economic growth can promote the development of marine scientific research and education by guiding social capital, enhancing talent demand and stimulating market vitality. From the empirical analysis, the AWBO-MGM(1,m) model can effectively deal with epidemic shocks and has higher fitting and prediction accuracy than the other five comparative models.

The government should pay attention to the construction of marine scientific research and education, so as to provide high-quality talents and advanced scientific research results for the high-quality development of marine economy. On the basis of using science and technology to firmly build the primary and secondary marine industries, the government should actively guide the labor, capital and other factors of production to the tertiary industry, thereby promoting the optimization and upgrading of marine industrial structure.

On the one hand, the interplay mechanism of marine scientific research and education, industrial structure upgrading and marine economic growth is analyzed from a systematic perspective; on the other hand, the enhanced AWBO-MGM(1,m) possesses higher forecasting performance and is applicable to the systemic multivariate forecasting problem in the presence of outstanding external shocks.

Total quality management (TQM) has been a popular managerial topic since the 1980s. However, not too many organizations have successfully implemented it. This paper studies a successful TQM project implemented in a manufacturing company in the People's Republic of China. It reports the TQM implementation process, the benefits generated from the TQM project, the problems that arose from the adoption of TQM for the company, and the main factors for the eventual success of the project. This case study is a reference for managers and researchers who are interested in TQM or interested in the Chinese managerial environment in general.

The aim of this paper is to explore and empirically investigate the characteristics and contingencies of service delivery system design.

Informed by the service strategy triad, a single embedded case study was designed to explore empirical data on four target markets, four service concepts, and on the design characteristics of the corresponding four service delivery systems. Data were collected in a market‐leading organisation in the business‐to‐business sector within the power industry. The service delivery systems comprise processes that sell electricity contracts and processes that bill against those contracts.

First, the findings indicate what design characteristics are contingent upon the degree of customisation of the service concept. The authors show how this contingency has implications for the extents of employee skills, employee discretion, task routineness, automation, and for front office (FO)‐back office (BO) configurations. Second, the authors challenge the consensus that low customer‐contact processes are designed for the purpose of efficiency. Third, the findings contradict Metters and Vargas who state that it is not possible to have different FO‐BO configurations in a single organisation.

While there are major interactions between the four service delivery systems supporting each individual service concept, this paper does not examine the trade‐offs between the various possible designs of these service delivery systems.

The paper emphasises the importance of considering the complexity of the service offering, the customer relationship strategy, and of taking a process‐orientation to address service delivery system design.

This paper extends current understanding of service delivery system design characteristics and contingencies. The authors show how design characteristics are contingent on the service concept. Research propositions are formulated to emphasise this contingency. Additionally, we report findings which challenge existing FO‐BO design theory.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the role of contract design in overcoming critical demand management (DM) issues in the luxury jewellery industry. The goals are the identification of the main critical issues of the DM process and the analysis of the contribution of contract re‐design to solve them.

The paper follows an exploratory approach using a case‐based methodology. Data are collected through a sample composed of four brand‐owning companies and 37 multi‐brand retailers in the luxury jewellery industry.

The paper offers insights into contract design in the luxury jewellery industry. In particular, the critical issues of the DM process determined by inadequate contract design are identified, thus highlighting their influence on the critical success factors of luxury companies. In addition to the characteristics the contract should have to overcome the critical issues have been proposed.

The research provides initial insights into the important role of contract management in jewellery luxury companies. To date, the analysis is predominantly qualitative and not sufficiently statistically significant to generalise the results.

This paper raises a number of important issues for jewellery brand owners who are reluctant to consider the retailer's perspective in a collaborative way during the DM process.

This paper is one of the first attempts to study contract design specifically applied to jewellery luxury companies, with a main focus on the DM process.

The purpose of this paper is to explore why innovative service ecosystems scale up, using a service-dominant logic lens. The focus is on identifying the key drivers of the scaling-up process as the basis for a new conceptual framework on the scaling up of service innovations.

An inductive research design is used to zoom in on two innovative service ecosystems, Eataly and KidZania, to identify the key drivers that can explain why innovations scale up. For both companies, the triangulation of semi-structured interviews, archival sources and in-store observations is used as complementary data sets. Multiple investigators and multiple coders have been involved in the data collection, coding process and analysis.

An extended conceptualization of service innovation is obtained, grounded in a framework of four drivers of scaling up: effectuation as the basis for creating the value proposition; sensing and adapting to local contexts; the reconfiguration and alignment of resources and forms for collaboration between actors; and values’ resonance.

This study represents one of the first empirical investigations of the key drivers of the scaling up process of service innovations. The paper contributes with a conceptualization of service innovation and why scaling-up processes emerge, emphasizing the existence of multiple constellations of four drivers.

As of December 2022, there were 119,000 gas stations, 10,800 gas stations and 4,488,000 charging piles nationwide, while the number of vehicles reached 312 million, including 11.49 million new energy vehicles. The imbalance between transportation energy supply and energy replenishment demand leads to crowded queues of vehicles at some stations and idle resources in others. How to reduce the phenomenon of large queues and improve the utilization rate of idle resources is the key to alleviating the imbalance between supply and demand.

Therefore, from the perspective of spatio-temporal equilibrium of urban transportation energy supply stations, multi-energy supply station cooperation is established in view of the phenomenon of large spatio-temporal differences among different energy supply stations, and corresponding inducing strategies are adopted for energy supplement vehicles in the road network, so that part of queued users go to energy supply stations with fewer vehicles, so as to balance the supply and demand of transportation energy in the region. On this basis, the income distribution of urban transportation energy supply station is discussed.

The total revenue after the cooperation was 13,095, an increase of 22.9%. Secondly, in terms of distribution rationality, three impact factors are selected and Shapley correction value is used to distribute the total income. Compared with independent operation, both sites have a certain degree of increase.

Traffic congestion at energy supply stations is closely related to the number, location and number of vehicles at energy supply stations. Therefore, using a cooperative approach of energy trading cannot solve the queuing problem. In addition, there are a few research results on the equalization of energy supply station services considering time-of-use pricing. However, these studies do not consider the vehicular grooming at congested stations. As far as the authors know, there are no relevant research results in the research on the service equilibrium of energy supply stations based on cooperative games.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the coupling mechanism of the roughness distribution characteristic and surface textures on the cylinder liner.

The cylinder liner-piston ring lubrication model with non-Gaussian roughness distribution surface was proposed in this paper to find the optimum cylinder liner surface. The motored engine tests were carried out to verify the simulation results.

The calculation and experiment results show that the large negative skewness surface has the optimal lubrication performance in the un-textured liner, while in the textured liner, the small negative skewness surface is more appropriate, which means surface textures couple with small negative skewness surface can improve the lubrication performance.

Although there are some works related to liner surface roughness and textures, the combine of roughness distribution and surface textures is not usually taken into account. Therefore, this research is different from others, as the present model considers with real non-Gaussian roughness distribution liners.

The purpose of this study is to prepare a polydopamine (PDA)–palygorskite (Pal) hybrid-reinforced epoxy coating with high adhesion strength on wet concrete surface.

One synthetic step was adopted to prepare novel PDA–Pal hybrid epoxy coating. The process and product were analyzed and confirmed by FIRT, thermogravimetric analysis and scanning electron microscopy. The mass fraction of PDA–Pal hybrid affecting the adhesion strength of epoxy coating was analyzed and confirmed by pull-off test.

PDA–Pal hybrid mass fractions of 0, 1, 3 and 5 were added to the coatings. For a 5 Wt.% PDA–Pal hybrid content, the adhesive strengths on the saturated or underwater concrete surfaces increased to 4.0 and 2.5 MPa, respectively. In addition, the tensile mechanical property of the epoxy coating improved significantly after PDA–Pal addition.

This new epoxy coating hybrid by PDA–Pal could be applied as a concrete protective layer near water or in wet or damp environments.

Introduction of PDA–Pal hybrid to prepare epoxy coating with high adhesion strength on wet concrete surface has not been systematically studied previously.