Surface integrity evaluation and the effect of machining-induced surface integrity characteristics on part's performance

Surface integrity (SI) is the integrated surface behavior and condition of a material after being modified by a manufacturing process; it describes the influence of surface properties and characteristics upon material functional performance. As the leading-edge field of manufacturing research, SI finishing/machining and the consequent machining-induced complex combination of surface roughness, residual stress, work-hardening, macro and microstructure transformation, strongly affect the fatigue and stress behavior of machined parts. This kind of influence is particularly sensitive and pronounced in the difficult-to-machine materials, which are typically chosen for the most critical applications in the automobile, aerospace and nuclear industry. Thus, well-designed SI processing requirement and accurate SI evaluation model are essential to control and ensure the surface quality and functional performance for these key parts. In this thesis, an SI descriptive model for quantitative characterization and evaluation of surface integrity is proposed based on five principal SI characteristics. Considering the nature of surface integrity, a conceptual framework of an SI model for machined parts is established, in which the SI model is constructed based on the correlations between SI manufacturing processes, SI characteristics and final functionality. This model offers a theoretical basis and guideline for controlling SI characteristics and improving fatigue properties for machined parts. An empirical model for estimating the SI-characteristics-caused effective stress concentration factor (SCF) is established with fatigue life as the evaluating indicator. For a typical difficult-to-machine material, GH4169 superalloy, usually used in internal combustion engines, its grindability and the influence of processing parameters on the five principal SI characteristics are investigated in detail. The correlations between the processing parameters and the SI characteristics, between the processing parameters and the fatigue properties, and between the SI characteristics and the fatigue properties, are analyzed based on an orthogonally-designed grinding experiment and corresponding rotary bending fatigue testing for GH4169 samples within the selective range of grinding processing parameters. The feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed model for estimating the SI effective SCF are also validated by the experimental results, and this has actually offered an equivalent and convenient means for evaluation of SI and fatigue properties. Finally, the conclusions and contribution of the research are discussed, and potential future work to build on this research is identified

Assessing Internal Control Effectiveness in Credit Unions: A Coso-Based Study

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the internal control process in organizations, specifically focusing on savings and credit unions in the Tambo canton. The aim was to assess the fulfillment of actions, activities, plans, policies, standards, records, procedures, and methods within these organizations. The study sought to provide insights into the reliability of internal controls and their impact on the achievement of objectives in public, private, and mixed companies.   Theoretical framework: The study is grounded in the COSO (Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission) model, which provides a comprehensive framework for internal control systems. The research draws upon concepts and principles from this model to assess the reliability of internal control components within savings and credit unions in the Tambo canton.   Design/Methodology/Approach: This investigation employed two main approaches: quantitative and bibliographic. The quantitative approach involved using an internal control questionnaire specifically designed for savings and credit unions in the Tambo canton. The questionnaire was structured based on the COSO model components. The bibliographic approach involved an extensive review of existing literature and relevant sources to establish a theoretical foundation for the study. These methods were used to assess the reliability of internal controls in the organizations under investigation.   Findings: The study found that the savings and credit unions in the Tambo canton demonstrated high levels of reliability in the components of the COSO I methodology. The internal control processes within these organizations were effective, indicating commitment, responsibility, integrity, common objectives, communication, and evaluation among the workers. The findings suggest that the internal control systems in place contribute significantly to the organizations' overall reliability and low levels of risk.   Research, Practical & Social implications: From a research perspective, this study contributes valuable insights into the effectiveness of internal control processes within savings and credit unions, particularly when assessed through the lens of the COSO model. Practically, the findings have implications for organizations seeking to enhance their internal control systems, emphasizing the importance of commitment, communication, and evaluation in ensuring reliability. Socially, the study underscores the significance of trustworthy and reliable internal control mechanisms, which can foster integrity and responsibility within organizations and, by extension, contribute to the community's overall trust in these institutions. Originality/Value: The originality of this study lies in its specific focus on savings and credit unions in the Tambo canton, providing a detailed evaluation of their internal control processes using the COSO model. The research adds value by offering practical insights for organizations aiming to improve their internal control systems, making it a valuable resource for practitioners and policymakers. Additionally, the study contributes to the broader academic discourse on internal control processes, reaffirming the importance of commitment and communication within organizations for achieving reliability and low risk levels

Doing Good Today and Better Tomorrow: A Roadmap to High Impact Philanthropy Through Outcome-Focused Grantmaking

Describes Hewlett's experience with implementing the outcome-focused grantmaking (OFG) process in its environment program as a guide for identifying a portfolio of grants with maximum impact. Outlines trials and errors, recent innovations, and challenges

A synthesis of logic and bio-inspired techniques in the design of dependable systems

Much of the development of model-based design and dependability analysis in the design of dependable systems, including software intensive systems, can be attributed to the application of advances in formal logic and its application to fault forecasting and verification of systems. In parallel, work on bio-inspired technologies has shown potential for the evolutionary design of engineering systems via automated exploration of potentially large design spaces. We have not yet seen the emergence of a design paradigm that effectively combines these two techniques, schematically founded on the two pillars of formal logic and biology, from the early stages of, and throughout, the design lifecycle. Such a design paradigm would apply these techniques synergistically and systematically to enable optimal refinement of new designs which can be driven effectively by dependability requirements. The paper sketches such a model-centric paradigm for the design of dependable systems, presented in the scope of the HiP-HOPS tool and technique, that brings these technologies together to realise their combined potential benefits. The paper begins by identifying current challenges in model-based safety assessment and then overviews the use of meta-heuristics at various stages of the design lifecycle covering topics that span from allocation of dependability requirements, through dependability analysis, to multi-objective optimisation of system architectures and maintenance schedules

Assessment of zonal isolation risk to changes in design parameters

The Well Containment Screening Tool (WCST) focuses on well integrity evaluation after well control incident. The WCST favors a greater wall thickness and, hence, a narrower cementing annulus, potentially increasing the risk of cement loss. We develop a structured and systematic physical model to simulate and track formation damage. A simulation process is conducted to assess the sensitivity of zonal isolation risk as design parameters are changed. In this paper, a physical model involving wellbore, casing and cement fluid is developed to understand the interaction between cement fluid and the formation. Two failure metrics are defined that provide a comprehensive understanding of the zonal isolation risk. Quantitative risk assessment is implemented with Monte Carlo simulation to assess the risk of zonal isolation problems when design parameters are changed. Models of production casing and intermediate casing are studied to verify the generality of this analysis. Taking both failure metrics into consideration, sensitivity analysis for models of production casing and intermediate casing present common observations regarding changes of design parameters. Our analysis suggests that minor increases (within 0.05”) in casing thickness, due to increased outer diameter, has little influence on the risk of cement loss, as does slight decreases in mean open hole diameter (within 0.05”). To verify the generality of this approach, in addition to casing and wellbore parameters, the sensitivity to cement fluid flow rate is analyzed. We find that risk is not significantly affected by small increase of flowrate (e.g. from 40 to 100 gpm). This paper applies a novel quantitative risk analysis to assess the influence of different design parameters on zonal isolation problems. This approach, if well implemented, can help to assess the impact of changes in design parameters (e.g., casing length and depth, mud density and cement fluid density, etc.) on drilling safety. It can also help to inform drilling decisions by providing forecasts of zonal isolation risk for particular geological condition.Mechanical Engineerin

An empirical learning-based validation procedure for simulation workflow

Simulation workflow is a top-level model for the design and control of simulation process. It connects multiple simulation components with time and interaction restrictions to form a complete simulation system. Before the construction and evaluation of the component models, the validation of upper-layer simulation workflow is of the most importance in a simulation system. However, the methods especially for validating simulation workflow is very limit. Many of the existing validation techniques are domain-dependent with cumbersome questionnaire design and expert scoring. Therefore, this paper present an empirical learning-based validation procedure to implement a semi-automated evaluation for simulation workflow. First, representative features of general simulation workflow and their relations with validation indices are proposed. The calculation process of workflow credibility based on Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is then introduced. In order to make full use of the historical data and implement more efficient validation, four learning algorithms, including back propagation neural network (BPNN), extreme learning machine (ELM), evolving new-neuron (eNFN) and fast incremental gaussian mixture model (FIGMN), are introduced for constructing the empirical relation between the workflow credibility and its features. A case study on a landing-process simulation workflow is established to test the feasibility of the proposed procedure. The experimental results also provide some useful overview of the state-of-the-art learning algorithms on the credibility evaluation of simulation models

Implementation and Validation of the Roche Light Cycler 480 96-Well Plate Platform as a Real-Time PCR Assay for the Quantitative Detection of Cytomegalovirus (CMV) in Clinical Specimens Using the Luminex MultiCode ASRs System.

Allogenic stem-cell therapies benefit patients in the treatment of multiple diseases; however, the side effects of stem-cell therapies (SCT) derived from the concomitant use of immune suppression agents often include triggering infection diseases. Thus, analysis is required to improve the detection of pathogen infections in SCT. We develop a polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based methodology for the qualitative real-time DNA detection of cytomegalovirus (CMV), with reference to herpes simplex virus types 1 (HSVI), Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), and varicella-zoster virus (VZV) in blood, urine, solid tissues, and cerebrospinal fluid. This real-time PCR of 96-well plate format provides a rapid framework as required by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for clinical settings, including the processing of specimens, reagent handling, special safety precautions, quality control criteria and analytical accuracy, precisely reportable range (analyst measurement range), reference range, limit of detection (LOD), analytical specificity established by interference study, and analyte stability. Specifically, we determined the reportable range (analyst measurement range) with the following criteria: CMV copies ≥200 copies/mL; report copy/mL value; CMV copies ≤199 copies/mL; report detected but below quantitative range; CMV copies = 0 with report <200 copies/mL. That is, with reference range, copy numbers (CN) per milliliter (mL) of the LOD were determined by standard curves that correlated Ct value and calibrated standard DNA panels. The three repeats determined that the measuring range was 1E2~1E6 copies/mL. The standard curves show the slopes were within the range -2.99 to -3.65 with R2 ≥ 0.98. High copy (HC) controls were within 0.17-0.18 log differences of DNA copy numbers; (2) low copy (LC) controls were within 0.17-0.18 log differences; (3) LOD was within 0.14-0.15 log differences. As such, we set up a fast, simple, inexpensive, sensitive, and reliable molecular approach for the qualitative detection of CMV pathogens. Conclusion: This real-time PCR of the 96-well plate format provides a rapid framework as required by the FDA for clinical settings

Multimedia Semantic Integrity Assessment Using Joint Embedding Of Images And Text

Real world multimedia data is often composed of multiple modalities such as an image or a video with associated text (e.g. captions, user comments, etc.) and metadata. Such multimodal data packages are prone to manipulations, where a subset of these modalities can be altered to misrepresent or repurpose data packages, with possible malicious intent. It is, therefore, important to develop methods to assess or verify the integrity of these multimedia packages. Using computer vision and natural language processing methods to directly compare the image (or video) and the associated caption to verify the integrity of a media package is only possible for a limited set of objects and scenes. In this paper, we present a novel deep learning-based approach for assessing the semantic integrity of multimedia packages containing images and captions, using a reference set of multimedia packages. We construct a joint embedding of images and captions with deep multimodal representation learning on the reference dataset in a framework that also provides image-caption consistency scores (ICCSs). The integrity of query media packages is assessed as the inlierness of the query ICCSs with respect to the reference dataset. We present the MultimodAl Information Manipulation dataset (MAIM), a new dataset of media packages from Flickr, which we make available to the research community. We use both the newly created dataset as well as Flickr30K and MS COCO datasets to quantitatively evaluate our proposed approach. The reference dataset does not contain unmanipulated versions of tampered query packages. Our method is able to achieve F1 scores of 0.75, 0.89 and 0.94 on MAIM, Flickr30K and MS COCO, respectively, for detecting semantically incoherent media packages.Comment: *Ayush Jaiswal and Ekraam Sabir contributed equally to the work in this pape