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The purpose of this paper is to provide a thin tactile force sensor array based on conductive rubber and to offer descriptions of the sensor design, fabrication and test.

The sensor array consists of a sandwich structure. Sensing elements are distributed discretely in the sensor. Each sensing element has two electrodes and a piece of conductive rubber with piezoresistive property. The electrodes, as well as the conductive trace for signal transmission, are printed on the substrate layer by the screen printing technique. A scanning circuit based on zero potential method and an experimental set‐up based on balance to characterize the sensor array are designed and implemented in the test of the sensor array.

Experimental results verify the validity of the sensor array in measuring the vertical tactile force between the sensing elements and the object.

In this paper, all the sensors are tested without calibration procedures and the procedure of the dynamic test is implemented by manual operation.

The sensor array could be applied to measure the plantar force for gait detection in clinical applications.

The paper presents a tactile force sensor array with discrete sensing elements to essentially restrict the cross‐talk among sensing elements. This paper will provide many practical details that can help others in the field.

Based on the socio-emotional wealth and agency theories, this study empirically investigates the impact of family ownership and management on green innovation (GI) in family businesses, as well as the moderating effects of institutional environmental support factors, namely, the technological achievement marketisation index and the market-rule-of law index.

This study empirically tests the hypotheses based on a sample of listed Chinese family companies with A-shares in 14 heavily polluting industries from 2009 to 2019.

There is a U-shaped relationship between the percentage of family ownership and GI, and an inverted U-shaped relationship between the degree of family management and GI. Additionally, different institutional environmental support factors affect these relationships in different ways. As the technological achievement marketisation index increases, the U-shaped relationship between the percentage of family ownership and GI becomes steeper, while the inverted U-shaped relationship between the degree of family management and GI becomes smoother. The market rule-of-law index weakens the U-shaped relationship between family ownership and GI.

First, the authors enrich the research on the driving factors of GI from the perspective of the most essential heterogeneity of family businesses. This study shows nonlinear and opposite effects of family ownership and management on GI in family firms. Second, this study contributes to the literature on family firm innovation. GI, not considered by researchers, is regarded as an important deficiency in research on innovation in family businesses. Therefore, this study fills that gap. Third, the study expands research on moderating effects in the literature on GI from the perspective of institutional environmental support factors.

The purpose of this paper is to reduce the drag loss and study the effects of operating conditions and groove parameters such as flow rate and temperature of automatic transmission fluid, clearance between plates, groove depth and groove ratio on the drag torque of a wet clutch for vehicles, parametric analysis of the drag torque model of wet multi-plate friction clutch with groove consideration.

Both experimental and numerical research was carried out in this work. Parametric groove models, full film lubrication flow model and pressure distribution model are established to investigate the effects of the grooves on drag torque of a wet clutch. Multigrid method is used to simplify the solution.

In this paper, a drag torque model of a wet multi-plate friction clutch based on the basic theory of viscous fluid dynamics is examined through experimental and numerical methods that take grooves into account, and the change trend of drag torque with operating conditions and groove parameters is analyzed.

Multigrid method is used to solve the governing equations, which simplifies the solution process because of the restrictions and interpolation operations between the adjacent layers of coarser and fine grids. These works provide insight into the effect regularity of operating conditions and groove parameters on drag torque of a wet multi-plate friction clutch. Furthermore, variable test conditions and sufficient experimental data are the main functions in the experimental research.

This study aims to validate a direct method to measure relational capital through the estimation of corporate brands. Considering the influence of relational capital management in leading performance and brand development, we consider brand value as a proxy for relational capital. The main research goal is to extend the previous literature on intellectual capital, financial performance and brand management by elaborating and testing an original approach for valuating corporate brands using regression analysis on multiples based on firm-specific accounting data and market information.

The authors propose two econometric models, for both listed and non-listed companies, which consider brand valuations made by primary consulting entities (Interbrand, Brand Finance, BrandZ, European Brand Institute) and multiples derived from accounting and market data of firms. Models were tested on a sample of nonfinancial firms for the period from 2006 to 2019, distinguishing between IAS/IFRS-based and US GAAP-based reporting standards.

The empirical results show that the identified set of market and accounting multiples proved to be significant information for estimating the value of brands within the IAS/IFRS framework, while a lower explanatory power was assessed for US GAAP firms. Furthermore, the empirical evidence confirm that the direct, relative approach based on multiples is more accurate for valuating listed firms than non-listed firms. Robustness analysis demonstrates that findings do not change significantly when the reference datasets and the main assumptions of the models are altered.

The statistical significance of the analysis is limited by the non-objective nature of brand value estimates. The use of additional sources for brand valuations might allow for the further assessment of the robustness of the relationships identified.

Due to their efficacy and ease of use, the proposed models represent valid practical tools for managers, investors, analysts and professional evaluators.

This work contributes to the existing literature through the identification of significant, stable relationships between brand values and the main economic, financial and asset characteristics of firms; the identification of those relationships would allow for the extension of the multiples approach also to the evaluation of brands.

The operation safety of the high-speed railway has been widely concerned. Due to the joint influence of the environment, equipment, personnel and other factors, accidents are inevitable in the operation process. However, few studies focused on identifying contributing factors affecting the severity of high-speed railway accidents because of the difficulty in obtaining field data. This study aims to investigate the impact factors affecting the severity of the general high-speed railway.

A total of 14 potential factors were examined from 475 data. The severity level is categorized into four levels by delay time and the number of subsequent trains that are affected by the accident. The partial proportional odds model was constructed to relax the constraint of the parallel line assumption.

The results show that 10 factors are found to significantly affect accident severity. Moreover, the factors including automation train protection (ATP) system fault, platform screen door and train door fault, traction converter fault and railway clearance intrusion by objects have an effect on reducing the severity level. On the contrary, the accidents caused by objects hanging on the catenary, pantograph fault, passenger misconducting or sudden illness, personnel intrusion of railway clearance, driving on heavy rain or snow and train collision against objects tend to be more severe.

The research results are very useful for mitigating the consequences of high-speed rail accidents.