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It is quite universal for high-speed turnouts to be exposed to the wear of the stock rail of the switch rail during the service process. The wear will cause the change of railhead profile and the relative positions of the switch rail and the stock rail, which will directly affect the wheel–rail contact state and wheel load transition when a train passes the turnout and will further impose serious impacts on the safety and stability of train operation. The purpose of this paper is to provide suggestions for wear management of high-speed turnout.

The actual wear characteristics of switch rails of high-speed turnouts in different guiding directions were studied based on the monitoring results on site; the authorized wear limits for the switch rails of high-speed turnout were studied through derailment risk analysis and switch rail strength analysis.

The results show that: the major factor for the service life of a curved switch rail is the lateral wear. The wear characteristics of the curved switch rail of a facing turnout are significantly different from those of a trailing turnout. To be specific, the lateral wear of the curved switch rail mainly occurs in the narrower section at its front end for a trailing turnout, but in the wider section at its rear end when for a facing turnout. The maximum lateral wear of a dismounted switch rail from a trailing turnout is found on the 15-mm wide section and is 3.9 mm, which does not reach the specified limit of 6 mm. For comparison, the lateral wear of a dismounted switch rail from a facing turnout is found from the 35-mm wide section to the full-width section and is greater than 7.5 mm, which exceeds the specified limit. Based on this, in addition to meeting the requirements of maintenance rules, the allowed wear of switch rails of high-speed turnout shall be so that the dangerous area with a tangent angle of wheel profile smaller than 43.6° will not contact the switch rail when the wheel is lifted by 2 mm. Accordingly, the lateral wear limit at the 5-mm wide section of the curved switch rail shall be reduced from 6 mm (as specified) to 3.5 mm.

The work in this paper is of reference significance to the research on the development law of rail wear in high-speed turnout area and the formulation of relevant standards.

As opposed to conventional promotional methods, Word-of-Mouth (WOM) communication, especially when negative, significantly shapes customers’ repurchase decisions and preferences. Therefore, this study aims to examine the interplay between negative WOM and bank service failures, with a focus on the mediating role of customer switching intentions and the moderating role of switching costs in this relationship.

Using an online semi-structured questionnaire survey, a dataset comprising 411 responses was gathered from retail bank customers in China. This dataset was subsequently analyzed using SPSS PROCESS.

Consistent with the social exchange theory, our study revealed a significant relationship between service failure and both bank customers’ intention to switch and negative WOM communication. Additionally, we observed that switching intentions significantly influence negative WOM communications, acting as a mediator between service failures and negative WOM. Furthermore, our findings indicated that switching costs moderate the direct effect of service failures on negative WOM and moderate the indirect effect of service failures on negative WOM through switching intentions.

This study provides significant policy implications aimed at minimizing bank service failures and subsequent negative WOM communications among bank customers.

This study empirically investigates the role of service failures in promoting negative WOM communication, demonstrating a partial mediation effect of switching intentions in this relationship. Moreover, the study highlights that switching costs moderate service failures’ impact on customers’ switching intentions.

This study aims to examine the influence of dimensions of the psychological contract on strengthening customers' switching barriers through the mediating role of service brand love.

The study used a cross-sectional survey research design to collect data from 406 respondents from commercial banks in the banking industry. A quantitative approach using structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data collected through structured questionnaires.

The findings revealed that dimensions of the psychological contract, namely, ideological, transactional and relational psychological contract, significantly influence the strengthening of customers' switching barriers when mediated by service brand love.

Managers should consider adopting high-intensity relationship approaches that go beyond mere customer satisfaction to ensure customer retention.

While customer retention remains the primary avenue for establishing competitive advantages, there remain unresolved issues regarding what determines customers’ intentions to stay or switch. This study represents one of the initial endeavors to explore the psychological contract within the context of the service industry. It contributes to the existing knowledge by enhancing the understanding of the mechanisms that can impact customers' switching barriers and complements the literature on customer retention in the service domain.

Using surveys of Amazon and Tmall Global users, this paper aims to empirically investigate the issue of platform technological selection. We explore the impact of switching costs on users’ intentions to use an app-enabled cross-border e-commerce (CBEC) platform based on an extended technology acceptance model (TAM). The results suggest that the higher the switching cost of a platform is, the greater the users’ satisfaction and intention to use this platform. Therefore, for the platform, a moderate switching cost will be beneficial for retaining users.

Based on the TAM, this paper takes the switching costs as the starting point and focuses on exploring the relationships among switching costs, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, perceived reliability, satisfaction and intention to use. Online surveys of users of Amazon and Tmall Global are adopted as the main instruments of this research. We collected a total of 408 valid responses from Amazon users and 490 from Tmall Global users. For the data analysis, this study conducts frequency analysis, a test analysis of the reliability and validity of the measures, correlation analysis, and path analysis using a structural equation model.

The results show that switching costs positively affect the users’ satisfaction and intentions to use a CBEC platform through perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and perceived reliability.

The questionnaire respondents were predominantly Chinese due to the constraints of the survey conditions. In fact, China has a high penetration rate in CBEC, and Chinese users have rich experience using the Amazon and Tmall Global platforms.

The development of CBEC has ups and downs, and users frequently switch platforms. Considering how platforms can stand out from the crowd and retain users, we believe that a moderate increase in the switching cost of the platform is helpful for companies to address these problems, and the implications of the results are particularly valid for decision-makers of CBEC platforms and companies.

Amazon and Tmall Global are the two largest CBEC platforms in the world. Using these two companies as examples for comparison can effectively identify the differences between the platforms and the conclusions are representative. We suggest that platforms can improve user satisfaction and willingness to use by establishing VIP communities, issuing coupons, providing shipping services as well as convenient after-sale complaint channels, and improving the platform’s easy-to-use interface, as ways to further enable the platform to retain more users and stand out in fierce competition.

This paper addresses an interesting and practical issue related to the effects of introducing switching costs in an extended TAM applied to CBEC platforms.

There have been mixed results regarding the impacts of satisfaction, service quality and service value on consumer loyalty. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the moderating effects of switching costs between the three antecedents and consumer loyalty via four loyalty dimensions, i.e. repurchase intentions, appreciating behavior, complaining behavior, and price‐increase tolerance.

A conceptual framework is developed where the canonical correlations among the antecedents and components of consumer loyalty are analyzed. Three hypothesis sets are proposed and tested based on 12 service industries in Hong Kong markets.

The findings provide strong evidence of the moderating effects on repurchase preference, but only partial support on the other three loyalty dimensions.

The above findings enable managers to adjust their strategies in response to varying levels of switching costs among services, which affect the relationships between the three primary antecedents and repurchase preference.

Consumer loyalty is considered as an important source of competitive advantages for service firms. Although potential antecedents of loyalty, including satisfaction, service quality and service value, have been identified, their influences on loyalty vary among different service industries. This research highlights the moderating effects of switching costs on the four consumer loyalty dimensions.

This paper aims to propose a new unified and non-ideal switch model for analysis of switching circuits.

The model has a single unified structure that includes all possible states (on, off) of the switches. The analysis with the proposed switch model requires only one topology and uses the single system equation regardless of states of switches. Moreover, to improve accuracy, the model contains the on-state resistance and capacitive effect of switches. The system equations and the states of switches are updated by control variables, used in the model.

There are no restrictions on circuit topology and switch connections. Switches can be internally and externally controlled. The non-ideal nature of the model allows the switch to be modeled more realistically and eliminates the drawbacks of the ideal switch concept. After modeling with the proposed switch model, a linear circuit is obtained. Two examples related to switching circuits are included into the study. The results confirm the accuracy of the model.

This paper contributes a different switch model for analysis of switching converters to the literature. The main advantage of the model is that it has a unified and non-ideal property. With the proposed switch model, the transient events, like voltage spikes and high-frequency noises, caused by inductor and capacitor elements at switching instants can be observed properly.

This paper presents a novel design method for keyboard circuits. The purpose of this study is to enable a single-board computer with fewer pins to recognize a keyboard system consisting of a large number of switches. Through the study of different kinds of keyboard circuits, a general circuit schematic design method is abstracted. Several experiments are conducted to prove the feasibility of the proposed circuit design method.

Conventional circuit schematic diagrams are often limited to two-dimensional planes. Through investigating higher dimensional alternatives, this paper proposes to place components in high-dimensional geometry before connecting all components. A multi-pin switch construction method is proposed to allow the switches to be arranged on the vertices of high-dimensional geometry and be connected sequentially to form the keyboard system. This proposed system can allow a keyboard system consisting of a large number of switches to be recognized by a single-board computer with less available pins.

The design scheme proposed in this paper can read more switch states with limited Input/Output pins. With the increase of the number of Input/Output ports and pins, the number of simultaneously identifiable switches increases exponentially, which is suitable for sensor design of array type.

Compared with the classical keyboard circuits, the circuit designed using the proposed method will lead to a slightly longer recognition time for each key. This can be compensated by a single-board computer with a modestly higher clock speed.

The circuit schematic design method based on high-dimensional geometry is introduced for the first time. The feasibility of the proposed method is verified by the original experiments. The proposed approach is of importance in guiding the design of new analog and digital sensor circuit systems.

This paper aims to discuss a comprehensive analysis of the effects of torque and flux hysteresis bands on the inverter average switching frequency considering an induction machine drive under the control of the Takahashi DTC strategy.

The analysis of the effects of torque and flux hysteresis bands on the inverter average switching frequency is carried out taking into account the speed range and the sampling period.

It has been found that the inverter average switching frequency could be more or less taken down according to the speed range and the sampling period by selecting suitable flux and torque hysteresis bands.

This work should be extended by an experimental validation of the established results.

The reduction of the inverter switching frequency is of great importance in direct torque controlled induction motor drive as far as it leads to a decrease of the torque ripple and an increase of the efficiency.

For given torque and flux hysteresis bands, the inverter average switching frequency presents nonlinear shape. Given the fact that the flux switching frequency is a linear function of the speed, one can conclude that the nonlinearity of the inverter average switching frequency is due to the torque switching frequency. This statement has been proven by the introduction of the so‐called focal speeds for the torque switching frequency turns to be null.

This paper aims to propose a novel model to forecast regime switches in a time series to assist decision making.

The authors apply the clustering technique to group the data into five states. Then, a model is proposed to formulate the relationships from in‐sample observations, including regime switch relationships. Afterwards, the model uses the relationships to forecast the regime switches in out‐sample observations.

The study uses daily Taiwan Stock Exchange Capitalization Weighted Stock Index as the forecasting target. Regime switches in in‐sample observations are identified. And a regime switch is successfully forecasted by the proposed model.

The proposed model identifies a regime switch which matches the real event. It implies that the proposed model can be applied to other time series, such as Dow Jones or NASDAQ.

Previous studies contribute to the forecasting of regime switches. The forecasting results are validated with the real event. One of the forecasted regime switches matches the event of Lehman Brothers' declaring of bankruptcy.

The purpose of this paper is to review the advancements in development of high aspect ratio microfabrication (HARM) type of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) reed switch sensors for much improved performance in a much more compact package.

The paper presents an in-depth review of a number of applications of HARM built MEMS reed switches and consultation with a manufacturer.

One manufacturer has introduced a totally new way to fabricate reed switches which brings numerous benefits such as reliability, higher voltage capability, lower contact resistance and other features in a new tiny package.

Manufacturers of devices needing the benefits of the reed switch concept but who need a much smaller and compact switch now have a new option to explore.

An expert insight into how to solve reed switching problems where space is at a premium.