Developing of thin chromium-free multifunctional treatments on hot dip galvanized steel: strategy, implementation and experience

Since the use of hexavalent chromium in automotive and electronic equipment is largely prohibited, manydifferent hexavalent chromium free conversion layers have been developed. In this work, different Crfreephosphate and polycarboxylate based conversion coatings were characterized (with electron microscopyand other surface analytical methods) for the usage of a multifunctional property layer for hot dipgalvanised steel strips. The different corrosion resistance of such conversion coatings on ZM [1](ZnAlMg) and Z (Zn) will be another topic of this paper [2]. The corrosion protection properties ofthese phosphate based conversion coatings on Z and ZM were characterized in a standardized salt spray test.Finally the conversion layers and the barrier protection effect on Cr-free treated zinc and zinc magnesium wasinvestigated by cyclovoltammetry

Automated Analysis in Feature Modelling and Product Configuration

The automated analysis of feature models is one of the thriving topics of research in the software product line and variability management communities that has attracted more attention in the last years. A recent literature review reported that more than 30 analysis operations have been identi ed and di erent analysis mechanisms have been proposed. Product con guration is a well established research eld with more than 30 years of successful applications in di erent industrial domains. Our hypothesis, that is not really new, is that these two independent areas of research have interesting synergies that have not been fully explored. To try to explore the potential synergies systematically, in this paper we provide a rapid review to bring together these previously disparate streams of work. We de ne a set of research questions and give a preliminary answer to some of them. We conclude that there are many research opportunities in the synergy of these independent areas.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2009- 07366Junta de Andalucía TIC-590

On Minimal Constraint Networks

In a minimal binary constraint network, every tuple of a constraint relation can be extended to a solution. The tractability or intractability of computing a solution to such a minimal network was a long standing open question. Dechter conjectured this computation problem to be NP-hard. We prove this conjecture. We also prove a conjecture by Dechter and Pearl stating that for k\geq2 it is NP-hard to decide whether a single constraint can be decomposed into an equivalent k-ary constraint network. We show that this holds even in case of bi-valued constraints where k\geq3, which proves another conjecture of Dechter and Pearl. Finally, we establish the tractability frontier for this problem with respect to the domain cardinality and the parameter k

Automotive Product Documentation

This paper discusses applications of AI methods in the context of electronic product data management in the automotive industry. It describes the main characteristics of the rule based legacy product documentation expert system currently employed by one of the major car and truck manufacturers in the world. As a basi