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Gives a bibliographical review of the finite element methods (FEMs) applied for the linear and nonlinear, static and dynamic analyses of basic structural elements from the theoretical as well as practical points of view. The range of applications of FEMs in this area is wide and cannot be presented in a single paper; therefore aims to give the reader an encyclopaedic view on the subject. The bibliography at the end of the paper contains 2,025 references to papers, conference proceedings and theses/dissertations dealing with the analysis of beams, columns, rods, bars, cables, discs, blades, shafts, membranes, plates and shells that were published in 1992‐1995.

This paper aims to introduce a knowledge‐based managemental prototype entitled E+ for environmental‐conscious construction relied on an integration of current environmental management tools in construction area. The overall objective of developing the E+ prototype is to facilitate selectively reusing the retrievable knowledge in construction engineering and management areas assembled from previous projects for the best practice in environmental‐conscious construction. The methodologies adopted in previous and ongoing research related to the development of the E+ belong to the operations research area and the information technology area, including literature review, questionnaire survey and interview, statistical analysis, system analysis and development, experimental research and simulation, and so on. The content presented in this paper includes an advanced E+ prototype, a comprehensive review of environmental management tools integrated to the E+ prototype, and an experimental case study of the implementation of the E+ prototype. It is expected that the adoption and implementation of the E+ prototype can effectively facilitate contractors to improve their environmental performance in the lifecycle of projectbased construction and to reduce adverse environmental impacts due to the deployment of various engineering and management processes at each construction stage.

The purpose of this paper is to further extend the work of Weng and Chen (2009) by considering heat generation/absorption nature of fluid.

Exact solution of momentum equation is derived separately in terms of Bessel’s function of first and second kind for heat-generating fluid and modified Bessel’s function of first and second kind for heat absorbing fluid.

During the course of numerical computations, it is found that skin friction and rate of heat transfer at outer surface of inner cylinder and inner surface of outer cylinder increases with the increase in heat generation parameter while the reverse trend is found in the case of heat absorption parameter.

In view of the amount of works done on natural convection with internal heat generation/absorption, it becomes interesting to investigate the effect of this important activity on natural convection flow in a vertical annular micro-channel. The purpose of this paper is to further extend the work of Weng and Chen (2009) by considering heat generation/absorption nature of fluid.

The purpose of this paper is to detect the degenerate scale of a 2D bending plate analytically and numerically.

To avoid the time-consuming scheme, the influence matrix of the boundary element method (BEM) is reformulated to an eigenproblem of the 4 by 4 matrix by using the scaling transform instead of the direct-searching scheme to find degenerate scales. Analytical degenerate scales are derived from the boundary integral equation (BIE) by using the degenerate kernel only for the circular case. Numerical results of the direct-searching scheme and the eigen system for the arbitrary shape are also considered.

Results using three methods, namely, analytical derivation, the direct-searching scheme and the 4 by 4 eigen system, are also given for the circular case and arbitrary shapes. Finally, addition of a constant for the kernel function makes original eigenvalues (2 real roots and 2 complex roots) of the 4 by 4 matrix to be all real. This indicates that a degenerate scale depends on the kernel function.

The analytical derivation for the degenerate scale of a 2D bending plate in the BIE is first studied by using the degenerate kernel. Through the reformed eigenproblem of a 4 by 4 matrix, the numerical solution for the plate of an arbitrary shape can be used in the plate analysis using the BEM.

A real-time production scheduling method for semiconductor back-end manufacturing process becomes increasingly important in industry 4.0. Semiconductor back-end manufacturing process is always accompanied by order splitting and merging; besides, in each stage of the process, there are always multiple machine groups that have different production capabilities and capacities. This paper studies a multi-agent based scheduling architecture for the radio frequency identification (RFID)-enabled semiconductor back-end shopfloor, which integrates not only manufacturing resources but also human factors.

The architecture includes a task management (TM) agent, a staff instruction (SI) agent, a task scheduling (TS) agent, an information management center (IMC), machine group (MG) agent and a production monitoring (PM) agent. Then, based on the architecture, the authors developed a scheduling method consisting of capability & capacity planning and machine configuration modules in the TS agent.

The authors used greedy policy to assign each order to the appropriate machine groups based on the real-time utilization ration of each MG in the capability & capacity (C&C) planning module, and used a partial swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to schedule each splitting job to the identified machine based on the C&C planning results. At last, we conducted a case study to demonstrate the proposed multi-agent based real-time production scheduling models and methods.

This paper proposes a multi-agent based real-time scheduling framework for semiconductor back-end industry. A C&C planning and a machine configuration algorithm are developed, respectively. The paper provides a feasible solution for semiconductor back-end manufacturing process to realize real-time scheduling.

This study aims to investigate whether auditors compromise their independence for economically important clients in family business settings.

The authors empirically examine the research question based on China for the years 2011 to 2020. The dependent variable is the auditors’ propensity to issue modified audit opinions, which is a proxy for auditor independence. The authors use relative client audit fees as a proxy for client importance. To address endogeneity issues in the selection of family firms, the authors use the two-stage least squares regression model and, subsequently, the propensity score matching and Hausman firm fixed effect modeling.

This study reveals that the propensity to issue modified audit opinions is positively correlated with client importance. Big-N auditors are more likely to issue modified audit opinions for their economically important family firm clients, whereas such evidence is not found for non-Big-N auditors. Results are consistent and robust to endogeneity test and sensitivity analysis.

This study enriches the literature on auditor independence and the effect of family firms’ ownership structure factors on audit reporting behavior for their economically important clients. Findings may prove useful for managers and practitioners interested in family business.

This paper aims to introduce a systematic computing and analytical procedure that is applied to the co-author network to identify the temporal evolution and growth of research collaborations in the area of e-governance. The empirical analysis of the temporal co-author network can trace the emerging authors and knowledge bursts over time.

The study applied social network theory to trace the author collaboration patterns in the domain of e-governance. Analysis of the co-author network using micro and macro parameters was done to trace the temporal evolution of the author collaborations.

E-governance is a multi-disciplinary research domain split over streams of management, politics, information technology and electronics. Hence, research collaborations play a significant role in its advancement. The knowledge sharing between individual authors, institutions and groups through research collaborations, resulting in extensive sharing of data, equipment and research methods, has boosted research activities and development in e-governance. In this paper, the authors systematically analyse the current scenario of research collaborations in the area of e-governance using co-author network to estimate its impact on the advancement of the field. The authors also analysed the temporal evolution of the co-author networks, which show remarkable growth of research collaborations in the domain of e-governance from the year 2000.

The co-author network analysis is only a proxy measure for the analysis of research collaborations. The names of the authors and the university affiliations used in the article are as retrieved from the research repository of Scopus. The degree, citations and other parameters related with authors have scope only within the environment of the co-author network used in the analysis. The criteria used in the study is limited to the degree of research collaborations and the number of co-authored publications in the giant component of the co-author network.

Institutions, authors and governments can trace and select suitable topics and choose research groups of co-authors over the world for future research collaborations in e-governance. The knowledge about the emerging and most discussed topics gives an overview of the global research trends of e-governance.

The study identified the evolution of creative collaborations in e-governance in the global perspective. The methodology introduced here is helpful to detect the proficient and productive author collaborations and the spectrum of related e-governance research topics associated with them. As the author collaborations can be mapped to the institutional and country-level collaborations, the information is helpful for researchers, institutions and governments to establish the best collaborations in e-governance research based on the author proficiency, collaboration patterns and research topics as per the requirements.

The paper introduces a novel research methodology using temporal analysis of co-author network to identify the evolution of research patterns and the associated research topics.

The purpose of this paper is to present a visual servo tracking strategy for the wheeled mobile robot, where the unknown feature depth information can be identified simultaneously in the visual servoing process.

By using reference, desired and current images, system errors are constructed by measurable signals that are obtained by decomposing Euclidean homographies. Subsequently, by taking the advantage of the concurrent learning framework, both historical and current system data are used to construct an adaptive updating mechanism for recovering the unknown feature depth. Then, the kinematic controller is designed for the mobile robot to achieve the visual servo trajectory tracking task. Lyapunov techniques and LaSalle’s invariance principle are used to prove that system errors and the depth estimation error converge to zero synchronously.

The concurrent learning-based visual servo tracking and identification technology is found to be reliable, accurate and efficient with both simulation and comparative experimental results. Both trajectory tracking and depth estimation errors converge to zero successfully.

On the basis of the concurrent learning framework, an adaptive control strategy is developed for the mobile robot to successfully identify the unknown scene depth while accomplishing the visual servo trajectory tracking task.

In the tide of the sharing economy, food and beverage sharing services (FBSS) are gradually drawing public attention. Many comments about FBSS are posted and discussed online, and this information may suggest the key factors in the operation of FBSS. This study aims to identify the key success factors (KSFs) of FBSS from online communities and media, potential consumers, customers and experts.

This study utilizes Internet big data analytics (IBDA) to identify the key FBSS factors and then examines the KSFs of FBSS through conducting an analysis of the importance of key factors for potential consumers, confirmatory factor analysis of customer satisfaction of key factors, multiple regression analysis of customer satisfaction of key factors influencing the customers' intentions to continue participating in FBSS and a decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory of experts' opinions.

The results showed that the 15 key FBSS factors through IBDA were screened out. Among them, four KSFs that influence the operation of FBSS were identified. These four KSFs are discussed in detail in the text.

The findings of this study provide references for FBSS providers in the future to enhance customer value, service quality and business competitive advantages of FBSS.

Based on the aerodynamic loads and dynamic performances of trains, this study aims to investigate the effect of crosswinds and raindrops on intercity trains operating on viaducts to ensure the safe operation of intercity railways in metropolitan areas.

An approach coupled with the Euler multiphase model as well as the standard k-ɛ turbulence model is used to investigate the coupled flow feature surrounding trains and viaducts, including airflow and raindrops, and the numerical results are validated with those of the wind tunnel test. Additionally, the train’s dynamic response and the operating safety region in different crosswind speeds and rainfall is investigated based on train’s aerodynamic loads and the train wheel–rail dynamics simulation.

The aerodynamic loads of trains at varying running speeds exhibit an increasing trend as the increase of wind speed and rainfall intensity. The motion of raindrop particles demonstrates a significant similarity with the airflow in wind and rain environments, as a result of the dominance of airflow and the supplementary impacts of droplets. As the train’s operating speed ranged between 120 and 200 km/h and within a rainfall range of 20–100 mm/h, the safe operating region of trains decreased by 0.56%–7.03%, compared with the no-rain condition (0 mm/h).

The impact of crosswind speeds and rainfall on the train’s aerodynamic safety is studied, including the flow feature of crosswind and different particle-sized raindrops around the train and viaduct, aerodynamic loads coefficients suffered by the intercity train as well as the operating safety region of intercity trains on the viaduct.