Analysis of residual plastic deformation of blanked sheets out of automotive aluminium alloys through hardness map

Reducing overall vehicle weight is essential to reduce fuel consumption and pollutant emission and to improve noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) performances. The substitution with lighter alloys can involve the grand majority of vehicle components, depending on the market sector. In several applications, e.g., chassis, pulleys, and viscodampers, metal sheets are formed in several steps, each of whom work-hardens the material reducing the available residual plasticity. Typically, the process is designed via FEM, whose results are affected by the initial conditions, often neglected, and is performed on pre-processed materials from suppliers. In this regard, correctly simulating the first step of the process is critical. However, the related initial conditions, in terms of residual stress and strain induced by former preliminary operations, are often neglected. This work proposes a quick and economical experimental procedure based on a hardness map to estimate initial conditions and to validate FEM results. The procedure allows evaluating the material's residual plasticity, which is necessary to process engineers to design following manufacturing steps. The approach is demonstrated on an industrially relevant case study, i.e., the blanking of an AA 5754, in use for water pump pulleys

Minimization of defects generation in laser welding process of steel alloy for automotive application

Laser welding (LW) thanks to its flexibility, limited energy consumption and simple realization has a prominent role in several industrial sectors. LW process requires careful parameters' tuning to avoid generating internal defects in the microstructure or a poor weld depth, which reduce the joining mechanical strength and result in waste. This work exploits a supervised machine learning algorithm to optimize the process parameters to minimize the generated defects, while catering for design specifications and tolerances to predict defect generation probability. The work outputs a predictive quality control model to reduce non-destructive controls in the LW of aluminum for automotive applications

Analysing uncertainty contributions in dimensional measurements of large-size objects by ultrasound sensors

According to the ever-increasing interest in metrological systems for dimensional measurements of large-size objects in a wide range of industrial sectors, several solutions based on different technologies, working principles, architectures and functionalities have been recently designed. Among these, a distributed flexible system based on a network of low-cost ultrasound (US) sensors - the Mobile Spatial coordinate Measuring System (MScMS) - has been developed. This article presents a possible approach to assess the system uncertainty referring to the measured point coordinates in the 3D space, focusing on the sources of measurement uncertainty and the related propagation la

PTEN deficiency and mutant p53 confer glucose-addiction to thyroid cancer cells: impact of glucose depletion on cell proliferation, cell survival, autophagy and cell migration.

Proliferating cancer cells oxidize glucose through the glycolytic pathway. Since this metabolism is less profitable in terms of ATP production, cancer cells consume large quantity of glucose, and those that experience insufficient blood supply become glucose-addicted. We have analyzed the response to glucose depletion in WRO and FTC133 follicular thyroid cancer cells, which differ in the expression of two key regulators of the glucose metabolism. WRO cells, which express wild type p53 and PTEN, showed a higher rate of cell proliferation and were much less sensitive to glucose-depletion than FTC133 cells, which are PTEN null and express mutant p53. Glucose depletion slowed-down the autophagy flux in FTC133 cells, not in WRO cells. In a wound-healing assay, WRO cells were shown to migrate faster than FTC133 cells. Glucose depletion slowed down the cell migration rate, and these effects were more evident in FTC133 cells. Genetic silencing of either wild-type PTEN or p53 in WRO cells resulted in increased uptake of glucose, whereas the ectopic expression of PTEN in FTC133 cells resulted in diminished glucose uptake. In conclusion, compared to WRO, FTC133 cells were higher glucose up-taker and consumer. These data do not support the general contention that cancer cells lacking PTEN or expressing the mutant p53R273H are more aggressive and prone to better face glucose depletion. We propose that concurrent PTEN deficiency and mutant p53 leads to a glucose-addiction state that renders the cancer cell more sensitive to glucose restriction. The present observation substantiates the view that glucose-restriction may be an adjuvant strategy to combat these tumours

Design and analysis of fractional factorial experiments from the viewpoint of computational algebraic statistics

We give an expository review of applications of computational algebraic statistics to design and analysis of fractional factorial experiments based on our recent works. For the purpose of design, the techniques of Gr\"obner bases and indicator functions allow us to treat fractional factorial designs without distinction between regular designs and non-regular designs. For the purpose of analysis of data from fractional factorial designs, the techniques of Markov bases allow us to handle discrete observations. Thus the approach of computational algebraic statistics greatly enlarges the scope of fractional factorial designs.Comment: 16 page

Ten policies for pollinators

Earlier this year, the first global thematic assessment from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) evaluated the state of knowledge about pollinators and pollination (1, 2). It confirmed evidence of large-scale wild pollinator declines in northwest Europe and North America and identified data shortfalls and an urgent need for monitoring elsewhere in the world. With high-level political commitments to support pollinators in the United States (3), the United Kingdom (4), and France (5); encouragement from the Convention on Biological Diversity's (CBD's) scientific advice body (6); and the issue on the agenda for next month's Conference of the Parties to the CBD, we see a chance for global-scale policy change. We extend beyond the IPBES report, which we helped to write, and suggest 10 policies that governments should seriously consider to protect pollinators and secure pollination services. Our suggestions are not the only available responses but are those we consider most likely to succeed, because of synergy with international policy objectives and strategies or formulation of international policy creating opportunities for change. We make these suggestions as independent scientists and not on behalf of IPBES

A wireless sensor network-based approach to large-scale dimensional metrology

In many branches of industry, dimensional measurements have become an important part of the production cycle, in order to check product compliance with specifications. This task is not trivial especially when dealing with largescale dimensional measurements: the bigger the measurement dimensions are, the harder is to achieve high accuracies. Nowadays, the problem can be handled using many metrological systems, based on different technologies (e.g. optical, mechanical, electromagnetic). Each of these systems is more or less adequate, depending upon measuring conditions, user's experience and skill, or other factors such as time, cost, accuracy and portability. This article focuses on a new possible approach to large-scale dimensional metrology based on wireless sensor networks. Advantages and drawbacks of such approach are analysed and deeply discussed. Then, the article briefly presents a recent prototype system - the Mobile Spatial Coordinate-Measuring System (MScMS-II) - which has been developed at the Industrial Metrology and Quality Laboratory of DISPEA - Politecnico di Torino. The system seems to be suitable for performing dimensional measurements of large-size objects (sizes on the order of several meters). Owing to its distributed nature, the system - based on a wireless network of optical devices - is portable, fully scalable with respect to dimensions and shapes and easily adaptable to different working environments. Preliminary results of experimental tests, aimed at evaluating system performance as well as research perspectives for further improvements, are discusse

The success-index: an alternative approach to the h-index for evaluating an individual's research output

Among the most recent bibliometric indicators for normalizing the differences among fields of science in terms of citation behaviour, Kosmulski (J Informetr 5(3):481-485, 2011) proposed the NSP (number of successful paper) index. According to the authors, NSP deserves much attention for its great simplicity and immediate meaning— equivalent to those of the h-index—while it has the disadvantage of being prone to manipulation and not very efficient in terms of statistical significance. In the first part of the paper, we introduce the success-index, aimed at reducing the NSP-index's limitations, although requiring more computing effort. Next, we present a detailed analysis of the success-index from the point of view of its operational properties and a comparison with the h-index's ones. Particularly interesting is the examination of the success-index scale of measurement, which is much richer than the h-index's. This makes success-index much more versatile for different types of analysis—e.g., (cross-field) comparisons of the scientific output of (1) individual researchers, (2) researchers with different seniority, (3) research institutions of different size, (4) scientific journals, etc