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There are limited studies addressing how choosing a maintenance strategy can contribute towards maximising outputs from given inputs, thereby minimising costs and improving a company’s competitiveness. The analytic hierarchy constant sum method (AHCSM) is used to access the appropriateness of maintenance strategies for improving the overall efficiency of a structural steel fabrication construction company.

A semi-structured interview was formulated with the stakeholders of the quality department to understand the company’s maintenance portfolio and its current functional capability. The information from this case study was then dissected to represent the factors that the company deemed appropriate for evaluating their maintenance strategy. The AHCSM approach provided a framework, which ranked the importance of factors that are sensitive to the construction industry and rank the suitability of maintenance strategies.

Factors affecting the selection of maintenance strategies to improve business efficiency are productivity, quality, reliability, cost, safety and work environment, morale, inventory and flexibility. Total productive maintenance strategy produces the most desirable outcome; however, the predictive or condition-based maintenance strategy provides an optimum solution for the case study company while considering the equipment usage, frequency of production and the current economic climate.

The approach presented allows practitioners to consider ways to increase the level of production and improve the efficiency of construction businesses without a high increase in investment. The findings can inform gaps in existing maintenance approaches in achieving business objectives.

This paper aims to reveal the tribochemical reaction mechanism on the nano-cutting interface between HMX crystal and diamond tool.

Molecular dynamics simulation of HMX crystal nano-cutting by the reactive force field is carried out in this paper. The affinity of activated atoms and friction damage at the different interface have been well identified by comparing two cutting systems with diamond tool or indenter. The analyses of reaction kinetics, decomposition products and reaction pathways are performed to reveal the underlying atomistic origins of tribocatalytic reaction on the nano-cutting interface.

The HMX crystals only undergo damage and removal in the indenter cutting, while they appear to accelerate thermal decomposition in the diamond cutting. the C-O affinity is proved to be the intrinsic reason of the tribocatalytic reaction of the HMX-diamond cutting system. The reaction activation energy of the HMX crystals in the diamond cutting system is lower, resulting in a rapid increase in the decomposition degree. The free O atoms can induce the asymmetric ring-opening mode and change the decomposition pathways, which is the underlying atomistic origins of the thermal stability of the HMX-diamond cutting system.

This paper describes a method for analyzing the tribochemical behavior of HMX and diamond, which is beneficial to study the thermal stability in the nano-cutting of HMX.

This purpose of this paper is to find the approximate analytical solutions of a multidimensional partial differential equation such as Helmholtz equation with space fractional derivatives α,β,γ (1<α,β,γ≤2). The fractional derivatives are described in the Caputo sense.

By using initial values, the explicit solutions of the equation are solved with powerful mathematical tools such as He's homotopy perturbation method (HPM).

This result reveals that the HPM demonstrates the effectiveness, validity, potentiality and reliability of the method in reality and gives the exact solution.

The most important part of this method is to introduce a homotopy parameter (p), which takes values from [0,1]. When p=0, the equation usually reduces to a sufficiently initial form, which normally admits a rather simple solution. When p→1, the system goes through a sequence of deformations, the solution for each of which is close to that at the previous stage of deformation. Here, we also discuss the approximate analytical solution of multidimensional fractional Helmholtz equation.

Renal failure is an end-stage consequence after persistent hyperglycemia during diabetic nephropathy (DN), and the etiology of DN has been linked to oxidative stress. The purpose of this research was to determine the beneficial synergistic effects of S-Allyl Cysteine (SAC) and Taurine (TAU) on oxidative damage in the kidneys of type 2 diabetic rats induced by hyperglycemia.

Experimental diabetes was developed by administering intraperitoneal single dose of streptozotocin (STZ; 65 mg/kg) with nicotinamide (NA; 230 mg/kg) in adult rats. Diabetic and control rats were treated with SAC (150 mg/kg), TAU (200 mg/kg) or SAC and TAU combination (75 + 100 mg/kg) for four weeks. The estimation of body weight, fasting blood glucose (FBG), oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT), oxidative stress markers along with kidney histopathology was done to investigate the antidiabetic potential of SAC/TAU in the NA/STZ diabetic group.

The following results were obtained for the therapeutic efficacy of SAC/TAU: decrease in blood glucose level, decreased level of thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) and increased levels of GSH, glutathione-s-transferase (GST) and catalase (CAT). SAC/TAU significantly modulated diabetes-induced histological changes in the kidney of rats.

SAC/TAU combination therapy modulated the oxidative stress markers in the kidney in diabetic rat model and also prevented oxidative damage as observed through histopathological findings.

In this paper, temperature distribution and fin efficiency in a moving porous fin have been discussed. The heat transfer equation is formulated by using Darcy's model. Heat transfer coefficient and thermal conductivity vary with temperature. The surface emissivity of the fin varies with temperature as well as with wavelength. Thermal conductivity is taken as a linear and quadratic form of temperature. The entire analysis of the paper is presented in non-dimensional form.

In this study, a new mathematical model is investigated. The novelty of this model is surface emissivity which is considered temperature and wavelength dependent. Another interesting point is the addition of porous material. The Legendre wavelet collocation method has been used to solve the nonlinear heat transfer equation. Numerical simulations are carried out in MATLAB software.

An attempt has been made to discuss temperature distribution in the presence of porosity and wavelength-temperature-dependent surface emissivity. The effect of various parameters on temperature has been discussed, including thermal conductivity, emissivity, convection-radiation, Peclet number, sink temperature, exponent “n” and porosity. Fin efficiency is also calculated for some parameters. According to the study, heat transfer rate increases with higher radiation-convection, emissivity, wavelength and porosity parameters.

The numerical results are carried out by using the Legendre wavelet collocation method, which has been compared with exact results in a particular case and found to be in good agreement. The percent error is calculated to find the error between the current method and the exact result. A comparison of the obtained results with the previous data is presented to validate the numerical results.

Pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum) is a rich source of nutrients as compared to the major cultivated cereal crops. However, major factors which limit its utilization are the presence of anti-nutritional factors (phytate, tannins and polyphenols) which lower availability of minerals and poor keeping quality because of higher lipase activity. Therefore, this paper aims to focus on the impact of different processing methods on the nutrient composition and anti-nutritional components of pearl millet.

This is a literature review study from 1983 to 2017, focusing on studies related to pearl millet processing and their effectiveness in the enrichment of nutritional value through reduction of anti-nutritional compounds.

From the literature reviewed, pearl millet processing through various methods including milling, malting, fermentation, blanching and acid as well as heat treatments were found to be effective in achieving the higher mineral digestibility, retardation of off flavor, bitterness as well as rancidity problems found during storage of flour.

Through this review paper, possible processing methods and their impact on the nutrient and anti-nutrient profile of pearl millet are discussed after detailed studied of literature from journal articles and thesis.

The purpose of the paper was to assess the functional properties vegetable gourds & the validated health claims so as to help the future researchers to locate the gaps. However, emphasizing on the scientifically available reports was required to make information available in a nutshell to the health-conscious consumers, as well as the researcher from the area of functional foods and nutrition.

The paper is a mini-review of scientific findings in different studies on gourd vegetables. The approach to information collection was finding the research gaps and potential areas for future work with a nutritional perspective.

Ash gourd, bitter gourd and bottle gourd have been extensively studied, and several health benefits and functional components have been reported, while ridge gourd, snake gourd and pointed gourd have been sparsely studied for their therapeutic benefits and the validation thereof; hence, there lies a scope for researchers.

The scarcity of scientific reports compared to the traditional usage and folkloric beliefs was a limitation.

Understanding the nutritional potential of gourd vegetables from scientific reports may influence both the work areas and consumers in the appropriate direction.

The purpose of the paper is to report an emulation configuration of a three pinch-off memristor (TPM), whose transient characteristics consist three cross-over points on the voltage-current plane, which is dissimilar to a conventional memristor. These characteristics can be very useful in memristor-based multi-bit memory devices and hyperchaotic oscillators.

The work describes the Mathematical framework for TPM and a circuit emulator based on the derived conditions. The configuration is based on five operational transconductance amplifier (OTAs) and four grounded passive elements. After which, we have verified its operation using personal simulation program with integrated circuit emphasis simulation environment. Finally, the implementation of OTA-based TPM using commercial integrated circuit (IC) LM13700 has also been presented.

It has been shown that a flux-dependent memductance expression of cubic order can show three intersections on the VI contour under certain parameter related constraints. Moreover, the OTA-based emulator reported in the work is very compact in nature because of the no use of external multiplier IC/circuitry, which has been popular in previous emulators.

For the first time, a multiple cross-over memristor emulator has been reported which can operate under practical operating conditions such as at practical operating frequencies and sinusoidal excitation.

The purpose of this paper is the application of the finite difference method (FDM) for numerical modeling of the microscale heat transfer processes occurring in the domain of thin metal film subjected to a laser pulse. The problem discussed is described by the different variants of the second-order dual-phase-lag equation (DPLE). The laser action is taken into account by the introduction of internal volumetric heat source to the governing equation. The capacity of the source is dependent on the geometrical co-ordinates and duration of the laser beam. The modified forms of DPLE presented in the paper, resulting from the certain substitutions introduced to the basic equation.

At the stage of numerical computations, the different variants of the FDM are applied. Both the explicit and implicit FDM schemes are used. The formula determining the capacity of the internal heat source suggests the formulation of the task discussed using the cylindrical co-ordinate system. The in-house programs realizing the numerical computations concern the axially-symmetrical tasks. In this paper, the metal films made of the nickel and gold are considered.

The algorithms presented make possible to analyze the heating/cooling processes occurring in the domain of metal film having a thickness Z for the different laser parameters (laser intensity, characteristic time of laser pulse and laser beam radius) and the different materials (optical penetration depth, reflectivity of irradiated surface, lag times, thermal conductivity and volumetric specific heat).

Not for all metals, one can find information on lag times. In the literature, analytical formulas can be found to calculate these values, but they are strongly approximated. It should be pointed out that there are some limitations concerning the delay times of material considered, which assure the physical correctness of the second-order DPLE.

The FDM algorithm concerns the three-dimensional cylindrical domain while a large majority of the second-order DPLE numerical solutions have been obtained for the one-dimensional tasks. Both the implicit and explicit numerical schemes are proposed and the testing computations confirm the correctness and effectiveness of the algorithms presented.

In the present paper, the new concept of “memory dependent derivative” in the Pennes’ bioheat transfer and heat-induced mechanical response in human living tissue with variable thermal conductivity and rheological properties of the volume is considered.

A problem of cancerous layered with arbitrary thickness is considered and solved analytically by Kirchhoff and Laplace transformation. The analytical expressions for temperature, displacement and stress are obtained in the Laplace transform domain. The inversion technique for Laplace transforms is carried out using a numerical technique based on Fourier series expansions.

Comparisons are made with the results anticipated through the coupled and generalized theories. The influence of variable thermal, volume materials properties and time-delay parameters for all the regarded fields for different forms of kernel functions is examined.

The results indicate that the thermal conductivity and volume relaxation parameters and MDD parameter play a major role in all considered distributions. This dissertation is an attempt to provide a theoretical thermo-viscoelastic structure to help researchers understand the complex thermo-mechanical processes present in thermal therapies.