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The purpose of this paper deals with a capacitated multi-item dynamic lot-sizing problem with the simultaneous sequence-dependent setup scheduling of the parallel resource under complex uncertainty.

An improved chance-constrained method is developed, in which confidence level of uncertain parameters is used to process uncertainty, and based on this, the reliability of the constraints is measured. Then, this study proposes a robust reconstruction method to transform the chance-constrained model into a deterministic model that is easy to solve, in which the robust transformation methods are used to deal with constraints with uncertainty on the right/left. Then, experimental studies using a real-world production data set provided by a gearbox synchronizer factory of an automobile supplier is carried out.

This study has demonstrated the merits of the proposed approach where the inventory of products tends to increase with the increase of confidence level. Due to a larger confidence level may result in a more strict constraint, which means that the decision-maker becomes more conservative, and thus tends to satisfy more external demands at the cost of an increase of production and stocks.

Joint decisions of production lot-sizing and scheduling widely applied in industries can effectively avert the infeasibility of lot-size decisions, caused by capacity of lot-sing alone decision and complex uncertainty such as product demand and production cost. is also challenging.

This study provides more choices for the decision-makers and can also help production planners find bottleneck resources in the production system, thus developing a more feasible and reasonable production plan in a complex uncertain environment.

Fretting wear exists widely in the field of matching mechanical parts whereas previous research studies mostly focus on the point contact through a ball-plate tribometer. This paper aims to study the influence of wear debris on the fretting wear characteristics of the nitrided medium carbon steel under line contact condition at elevated temperature.

Fretting wear behavior of the nitrided medium carbon steel was experimentally investigated under line contact condition at elevated temperature and different normal loads without lubrication. Wear loss, worn surface and wear debris were studied to analyze the wear mechanism of nitrided steel.

The results showed that surface hardness of the medium carbon steel was notably improved because of the generation of a 230 µm nitrided case. Wear loss increased with the normal load, which was associated with the damage of a thin solid film formed by the wear debris, consisting of iron oxides and chromium oxide rather than only iron or iron oxides. The wear debris became partially amorphous and spherical because it was trapped within the contact interface and was ground, rolled, oxidized under line contact conditions. The spherical wear debris acted as a third body and formed a lubricating film between the contact faces. This lubricating film helped to stabilize the friction coefficient and reduced the wear rate, which further caused the acceleration of wear volume to gradually decrease. The wear mechanisms of the nitrided steel were oxidation wear, abrasive wear and fatigue spalling of the oxide layer.

The findings are helpful to understand the fretting wear behavior of the friction pair under line contact and enrich the fretting tribology theory.