Car-sharing relocation strategies: a state of the art

Traditional car sharing systems are round-trip and require advance reservations. The advances of ICT and vehicle automation allow to improve car sharing sys-tems and to provide users with greater flexibility. As it concerns reservation, new car sharing systems offer users open-ended reservation and/or instant access. As it concerns the trip typology, new car sharing systems are multiple station shared vehicle systems (MSSVS). Roundtrips still occur in this type of system, however there is a large number of one-way trips made between the multiple stations. Operating an MSSVS is much more difficult than operating a round-trip shared vehicle systems. The problem is that the system can quickly become imbalanced with respect to the number of vehicles at the multiple stations. These systems are called new (or second) generation car sharing systems. Third generation systems are the last being developed; in these systems vehicles can be accessed at any point of the area. An overview of all these car sharing systems is provided in this paper

Failure analysis of fiberglass cover used for photovoltaic plants

Cover boxes with inspection glass are generally used outdoors for photovoltaic systems.Sometimes these boxes break, during normal use. Hightemperature, thermal stress, cyclic stress, and cracking contribute to weakening the polymeric inspection “glass”. The study presents an interdisciplinary analysis to discover the mode of occurrence and causes of the failure. First, the material is accurately characterized. Then its mechanical behavior is characterized in a virtual scenario that reconstructs the real external environment. The goal is to build a new cover with inspection boxes that exhibits superior life cycle behavior when exposed to harsh weather conditions and atmospheric agents. The breaking phenomena of solar panels covering boxes in PMMA (Poly Methyl Methacrylate) are examined. Environmental stress is the main responsible for cracking. Styrene is employed in the polymerization process of Sheet Molding Compound (SMC); the diffusion of this material is the main responsible for cracking. Comprehensive engineering analysis shows how the thermoplastic component fails after being exposed to atmospheric agents. The PMMA “glass” is one of the polymers most sensible to the crazing phenomena

Manoeuvring simulations of the personal vehicle PICAV

The greening of surface transport, ensuring sustainable urban mobility and improving safety and security are the three main paradigms reflecting the present and future urban transport strategic and policy challenges. The PICAV unit is a one person vehicle that is meant to ensure accessibility for everybody and some of its features are specifically designed for people whose mobility is restricted for different reasons, particularly (but not only) elderly and disabled people. Ergonomics, comfort, stability, assisted driving, eco-sustainability, parking and mobility dexterity as well as vehicle/infrastructures and intelligent networking are the main drivers of the PICAV design. The PICAV case is considered, investigating the advantages of four independently powered wheels and exploring how actuation redundancy could be used to grant proper manoeuvrability, at least, within the expected operative conditions and transport modes. \ua9 2014 DIME Universita Di Genova

Space optimization in warehouses logistics (Conference Paper)

Industrial warehouses are typically composed by multi levels scaffolds holding pallets, each pallet carrying one or more manufacturing item. The paper introduces the problem of the wasted space in industrial warehouses and describes the algorithms implemented in a simulation software able to suggest how to organize the storage of the manufacturing items. The proposed software uses effective and efficient search algorithms to minimize the overall storage lost space. The general structure of the numeric platform and the logics of the solver algorithms are described together with the strategies adopted to reduce the computation time. Typical results obtained in an industrial environment working in the plastics sector are presented and discussed. \ua9 2014 DIME Universita Di Genova

Automation of a garment sewing department assessment by smart simulation

The textile-garment industry needs great production flexibility to adapt, in terms of sustainability, to the fickle fashion market. This study proposes a new simulation model of manufacturing and production processes, which can be used as design support, performance evaluation and plant management of highly flexible production systems such as those operating in the fashion sector. The proposed simulation model aims to support industries in increasing their reactive flexibility by adjusting the production set-up. It is a distributed discrete event simulator based on the easy re-composition of resources in the production layout and on the availability of intelligent process management and control modules. The simulator has been applied to optimise the production of children’s garments. The development was done together with the production manager of an important European industry; the manager enjoyed the intuitive use of the software and the significance and reliability of the information obtained