Contribution of simulation and gaming to natural resource management issues: An introduction

Nowadays, computer-mediated simulations and games are widely used in the field of natural resource management (NRM). They have proved to be useful for various purposes such as supporting decisionmaking processes and training. First, the specificities of the NRM research field are highlighted. Then, based on the analysis of the articles presented in this special issue of Simulation & Gaming, some key features related to the implementation of gaming in such a context are introduced. Finally, after reviewing the benefits of using simulation games in NRM, the authors stress the ethical issue of changing social relationships among stakeholders by playing a game with some of themGESTION DE L'ENVIRONNEMENT;RESSOURCE NATURELLE;SIMULATION;SOCIOLOGIE;JEU DE ROLE;BENEFITS;CONTEXT;COLLECTIVE POLICY DESIGN;DECISION MAKING;ETHICAL ISSUES;IMPLEMENTATION;NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT (NRM);SIMULATION GAMES;SOCIAL EMPOWERMENT;SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS;SOCIOECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS;STAKEHOLDERS

Advanced Approaches Applied to Materials Development and Design Predictions

This thematic issue on advanced simulation tools applied to materials development and design predictions gathers selected extended papers related to power generation systems, presented at the XIX International Colloquium on Mechanical Fatigue of Metals (ICMFM XIX), organized at University of Porto, Portugal, in 2018. In this issue, the limits of the current generation of materials are explored, which are continuously being reached according to the frontier of hostile environments, whether in the aerospace, nuclear, or petrochemistry industry, or in the design of gas turbines where efficiency of energy production and transformation demands increased temperatures and pressures. Thus, advanced methods and applications for theoretical, numerical, and experimental contributions that address these issues on failure mechanism modeling and simulation of materials are covered. As the Guest Editors, we would like to thank all the authors who submitted papers to this Special Issue. All the papers published were peer-reviewed by experts in the field whose comments helped to improve the quality of the edition. We also would like to thank the Editorial Board of Materials for their assistance in managing this Special Issue

Systems Engineering: Availability and Reliability

Current trends in Industry 4.0 are largely related to issues of reliability and availability. As a result of these trends and the complexity of engineering systems, research and development in this area needs to focus on new solutions in the integration of intelligent machines or systems, with an emphasis on changes in production processes aimed at increasing production efficiency or equipment reliability. The emergence of innovative technologies and new business models based on innovation, cooperation networks, and the enhancement of endogenous resources is assumed to be a strong contribution to the development of competitive economies all around the world. Innovation and engineering, focused on sustainability, reliability, and availability of resources, have a key role in this context. The scope of this Special Issue is closely associated to that of the ICIE’2020 conference. This conference and journal’s Special Issue is to present current innovations and engineering achievements of top world scientists and industrial practitioners in the thematic areas related to reliability and risk assessment, innovations in maintenance strategies, production process scheduling, management and maintenance or systems analysis, simulation, design and modelling

Modeling, Simulation and Data Processing for Additive Manufacturing

Additive manufacturing (AM) or, more commonly, 3D printing is one of the fundamental elements of Industry 4.0. and the fourth industrial revolution. It has shown its potential example in the medical, automotive, aerospace, and spare part sectors. Personal manufacturing, complex and optimized parts, short series manufacturing and local on-demand manufacturing are some of the current benefits. Businesses based on AM have experienced double-digit growth in recent years. Accordingly, we have witnessed considerable efforts in developing processes and materials in terms of speed, costs, and availability. These open up new applications and business case possibilities all the time, which were not previously in existence. Most research has focused on material and AM process development or effort to utilize existing materials and processes for industrial applications. However, improving the understanding and simulation of materials and AM process and understanding the effect of different steps in the AM workflow can increase the performance even more. The best way of benefit of AM is to understand all the steps related to that—from the design and simulation to additive manufacturing and post-processing ending the actual application.The objective of this Special Issue was to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners to exchange their latest achievements and identify critical issues and challenges for future investigations on “Modeling, Simulation and Data Processing for Additive Manufacturing”. The Special Issue consists of 10 original full-length articles on the topic

Interface Circuits for Microsensor Integrated Systems

ca. 200 words; this text will present the book in all promotional forms (e.g. flyers). Please describe the book in straightforward and consumer-friendly terms. [Recent advances in sensing technologies, especially those for Microsensor Integrated Systems, have led to several new commercial applications. Among these, low voltage and low power circuit architectures have gained growing attention, being suitable for portable long battery life devices. The aim is to improve the performances of actual interface circuits and systems, both in terms of voltage mode and current mode, in order to overcome the potential problems due to technology scaling and different technology integrations. Related problems, especially those concerning parasitics, lead to a severe interface design attention, especially concerning the analog front-end and novel and smart architecture must be explored and tested, both at simulation and prototype level. Moreover, the growing demand for autonomous systems gets even harder the interface design due to the need of energy-aware cost-effective circuit interfaces integrating, where possible, energy harvesting solutions. The objective of this Special Issue is to explore the potential solutions to overcome actual limitations in sensor interface circuits and systems, especially those for low voltage and low power Microsensor Integrated Systems. The present Special Issue aims to present and highlight the advances and the latest novel and emergent results on this topic, showing best practices, implementations and applications. The Guest Editors invite to submit original research contributions dealing with sensor interfacing related to this specific topic. Additionally, application oriented and review papers are encouraged.

Industrial Chemistry Reactions: Kinetics, Mass Transfer and Industrial Reactor Design

Nowadays, the impressive progress of commercially available computers allows us to solve complicated mathematical problems in many scientific and technical fields. This revolution has reinvigorated all aspects of chemical engineering science. More sophisticated approaches to catalysis, kinetics, reactor design, and simulation have been developed thanks to the powerful calculation methods that have recently become available. It is well known that many chemical reactions are of great interest for industrial processes and must be conducted on a large scale in order to obtain needed information in thermodynamics, kinetics, and transport phenomena related to mass, energy, and momentum. For a reliable industrial-scale reactor design, all of this information must be employed in appropriate equations and mathematical models that allow for accurate and reliable simulations for scaling up purposes. The aim of this proposed Special Issue was to collect worldwide contributions from experts in the field of industrial reactor design based on kinetic and mass transfer studies. The following areas/sections were covered by the call for original papers: Kinetic studies on complex reaction schemes (multiphase systems); Kinetics and mass transfer in multifunctional reactors; Reactions in mass transfer-dominated regimes (fluid–solid and intraparticle diffusive limitations); Kinetic and mass transfer modeling using alternative approaches (ex. stochastic modeling); Simulations in pilot plants and industrial-sized reactors and scale-up studies based on kinetic studies (lab-to-plant approach)

High Efficient Buildings in Mediterranean Area

The Building sector requires a conspicuous considerable amount of energy for services related to annual air-conditioning and the thermal comfort of indoor spaces. The design of highly efficient low-energy buildings is often a challenging task, especially in the mediterranean area, where the balanced requirement for heating and cooling energy does not usually permit a high level of envelope insulation in order to avoid summer overheating. This topical Special Issue of Energies is dedicated to “High Efficient Buildings in Mediterranean Area: Challenges and Perspectives” and collects studies related to the assessment and evaluation of systems and technologies for building energy management and control in the Mediterranean climate, with the aim of optimizing the building–plant system and reducing energy use. This collection of papers presents the latest research results related to the topic; these articles offer valuable insights into the energy simulation of highly efficient buildings, propose innovative envelope solutions, such as green roofs, Trombe walls, and PCM, and investigate the use of renewable sources such as photovoltaic systems. The topics also include the innovative use and control of Venetian blinds and fixed solar shades in order to reduce energy consumption and preserve visual comfort, as well as an interesting economic analysis based on the cost-optimal approach

Small-Scale Energy Systems with Gas Turbines and Heat Pumps

A heat pump system can produce an amount of heat energy that is greater than the amount of energy used to run the heat pump system. Thus, a heat pump system is considered to be a machine system that can use energies efficiently, as is the load leveling air-conditioning system utilizing unutilized energies at high levels. Adaptations of gas turbines for industrial, utility, and marine-propulsion applications have long been accepted as means for generating power with high efficiency and ease of maintenance. Cogeneration with gas turbine is frequently defined as the sequential production of useful thermal energy and shaft power from a single energy source. For applications that generate electricity, the power can either be used internally or supplied to the utility grid. This Special Issue intends to provide an overviews of the existing knowledge related with various aspects of “Small-Scale Energy Systems with Gas Turbines and Heat Pumps”, and contributions on, but not limited to the following subjects were encouraged: wake of stator vane to improve sealing effectiveness; gas turbine cycle with external combustion chamber for prosumer and distributed energy systems; computational simulation of gas turbine engine operating with different blends of biodiesel; experimental methodology and facility for the engine performance and emissions evaluation using jet and biodiesel blends; experimental analysis of an air heat pump for heating service; hybrid fuel cell-Brayton cycle for combined heat and power; design analysis of micro gas turbines in closed cycles. Seven papers were published in the Special Issue out of a total of 12 submitted

A metamodel based optimisation algorithm for metal forming processes

Cost saving and product improvement have always been important goals in the metal\ud forming industry. To achieve these goals, metal forming processes need to be optimised. During\ud the last decades, simulation software based on the Finite Element Method (FEM) has significantly\ud contributed to designing feasible processes more easily. More recently, the possibility of\ud coupling FEM to mathematical optimisation algorithms is offering a very promising opportunity\ud to design optimal metal forming processes instead of only feasible ones. However, which\ud optimisation algorithm to use is still not clear.\ud In this paper, an optimisation algorithm based on metamodelling techniques is proposed\ud for optimising metal forming processes. The algorithm incorporates nonlinear FEM simulations\ud which can be very time consuming to execute. As an illustration of its capabilities, the\ud proposed algorithm is applied to optimise the internal pressure and axial feeding load paths\ud of a hydroforming process. The product formed by the optimised process outperforms products\ud produced by other, arbitrarily selected load paths. These results indicate the high potential of\ud the proposed algorithm for optimising metal forming processes using time consuming FEM\ud simulations

Model-based groupware solution for distributed real-time collaborative 4D planning via teamwork

Construction planning plays a fundamental role in construction project management that requires team working among planners from a diverse range of disciplines and in geographically dispersed working situations. Model-based four-dimensional (4D) computer-aided design (CAD) groupware, though considered a possible approach to supporting collaborative planning, is still short of effective collaborative mechanisms for teamwork due to methodological, technological and social challenges. Targeting this problem, this paper proposes a model-based groupware solution to enable a group of multidisciplinary planners to perform real-time collaborative 4D planning across the Internet. In the light of the interactive definition method, and its computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW) design analysis, the paper discusses the realization of interactive collaborative mechanisms from software architecture, application mode, and data exchange protocol. These mechanisms have been integrated into a groupware solution, which was validated by a planning team in a truly geographically dispersed condition. Analysis of the validation results revealed that the proposed solution is feasible for real-time collaborative 4D planning to gain a robust construction plan through collaborative teamwork. The realization of this solution triggers further considerations about its enhancement for wider groupware applications