Analyzing Product Lifecycle Costs for a Better Understanding of Cost Drivers in Additive Manufacturing

The costs of additive manufactured parts often seem too high in comparison to those of traditionally manufactured parts, as the information about major cost drivers, especially for additive manufactured metal parts, is weak. Therefore, a lifecycle analysis of additive manufactured parts is needed to understand and rate the cost drivers that act as the largest contributors to unit costs, and to provide a focus for future cost reduction activities for the Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology. A better understanding of the cost structure will help to compare the AM costs with the opportunity costs of the classical manufacturing technologies and will make it easier to justify the use of AM manufactured parts. This paper will present work in progress and methodology based on a sample investigated with business process analysis / simulation and activity based costing. In addition, cost drivers associated with metal AM process will be rated.Mechanical Engineerin

Impact and Influence Factors of Additive Manufacturing on Product Lifecycle Costs

At first sight the direct costs of Additive Manufacturing (AM) seem too high in comparison to traditional manufacturing. Considering the whole lifecycle costs of parts changes the point of view. Due to the modification of the new production process and new supply chains during a parts lifecycle, producing companies can strongly benefit from AM. Therefore, a costing model for assessing lifecycle costs with regard to specific applications and branches has been developed. The costing model represents the advantages of AM monetary. For the evaluation of this model and the influence factors, different case studies have been performed including different approaches in part redesign. Deeper research is and will be carried out with respect to the AM building rates and the comparability of various AM machines, as these facts are hardly comparable for end users. This paper will present the methodology as well as the results of the case studies conducted over the whole product lifecycle.Mechanical Engineerin

Protection Measures against Product Piracy and Application by the Use of AM

Presently the implications Additive Manufacturing (AM) on intellectual properties are discussed in public. Here AM is often mentioned as a driver for product piracy as it allows to produce and to copy objects with any geometries. Imitators need a lot of information to copy an object accurately. As reverse engineering has been identified as the most important information source for product imitators, AM can also help to reduce the threat of product piracy when correctly applied in the product development. Due to the layer wise production process that allows the manufacturing of very complex shapes and geometries, the reverse-engineering process can be complicated by far. By this, quite contrary to the public opinion, AM can increase the needed effort of imitators and strongly reduce the economic efficiency of product piracy. This paper will show different protection measures and a methodological approach of how to apply these measures to a product. Beside the protective effect some measures allow a traceability of parts over the product’s lifecycle and thus support the quality management of AM processes and additively produced parts.Mechanical Engineerin

Sustainability in astroparticle physics

The topic of sustainability is becoming increasingly important in research activities in astroparticle physics, both in existing and also in future instrument. At this year\u27s International cosmic ray conference (ICRC 2021) one session was dedicated to this topic. This publication will summarise the findings of this well-attended online session

SpikingLab: modelling agents controlled by Spiking Neural Networks in Netlogo

The scientific interest attracted by Spiking Neural Networks (SNN) has lead to the development of tools for the simulation and study of neuronal dynamics ranging from phenomenological models to the more sophisticated and biologically accurate Hodgkin-and-Huxley-based and multi-compartmental models. However, despite the multiple features offered by neural modelling tools, their integration with environments for the simulation of robots and agents can be challenging and time consuming. The implementation of artificial neural circuits to control robots generally involves the following tasks: (1) understanding the simulation tools, (2) creating the neural circuit in the neural simulator, (3) linking the simulated neural circuit with the environment of the agent and (4) programming the appropriate interface in the robot or agent to use the neural controller. The accomplishment of the above-mentioned tasks can be challenging, especially for undergraduate students or novice researchers. This paper presents an alternative tool which facilitates the simulation of simple SNN circuits using the multi-agent simulation and the programming environment Netlogo (educational software that simplifies the study and experimentation of complex systems). The engine proposed and implemented in Netlogo for the simulation of a functional model of SNN is a simplification of integrate and fire (I&F) models. The characteristics of the engine (including neuronal dynamics, STDP learning and synaptic delay) are demonstrated through the implementation of an agent representing an artificial insect controlled by a simple neural circuit. The setup of the experiment and its outcomes are described in this work

TEMPERATURE AND LEVEL DENSITY PARAMETER OF EVAPORATION RESIDUES PRODUCED IN THE REACTION 165Ho + 600 MeV 20Ne

Evaporative and preequilibrium neutrons emitted from evaporation residues in the reaction Ho + 600 MeV neon are exploited to deduce the thermal excitation energy E* and temperature T of the residues. From these quantities the level density parameter is deduced at a temperature of 4.1 MeV

Two-Center Integrals for r_{ij}^{n} Polynomial Correlated Wave Functions

All integrals needed to evaluate the correlated wave functions with polynomial terms of inter-electronic distance are included. For this form of the wave function, the integrals needed can be expressed as a product of integrals involving at most four electrons

Energetics, forces, and quantized conductance in jellium modeled metallic nanowires

Energetics and quantized conductance in jellium modeled nanowires are investigated using the local density functional based shell correction method, extending our previous study of uniform in shape wires [C. Yannouleas and U. Landman, J. Phys. Chem. B 101, 5780 (1997)] to wires containing a variable shaped constricted region. The energetics of the wire (sodium) as a function of the length of the volume conserving, adiabatically shaped constriction leads to formation of self selecting magic wire configurations. The variations in the energy result in oscillations in the force required to elongate the wire and are directly correlated with the stepwise variations of the conductance of the nanowire in units of 2e^2/h. The oscillatory patterns in the energetics and forces, and the correlated stepwise variation in the conductance are shown, numerically and through a semiclassical analysis, to be dominated by the quantized spectrum of the transverse states at the narrowmost part of the constriction in the wire.Comment: Latex/Revtex, 11 pages with 5 Postscript figure

Theory and simulation of quantum photovoltaic devices based on the non-equilibrium Green's function formalism

This article reviews the application of the non-equilibrium Green's function formalism to the simulation of novel photovoltaic devices utilizing quantum confinement effects in low dimensional absorber structures. It covers well-known aspects of the fundamental NEGF theory for a system of interacting electrons, photons and phonons with relevance for the simulation of optoelectronic devices and introduces at the same time new approaches to the theoretical description of the elementary processes of photovoltaic device operation, such as photogeneration via coherent excitonic absorption, phonon-mediated indirect optical transitions or non-radiative recombination via defect states. While the description of the theoretical framework is kept as general as possible, two specific prototypical quantum photovoltaic devices, a single quantum well photodiode and a silicon-oxide based superlattice absorber, are used to illustrated the kind of unique insight that numerical simulations based on the theory are able to provide.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figures; invited review pape

Quantum correlation of electron and ion energy in the dissociative strong-field ionization of H2

We report on the strong field ionization of H2 by a corotating two-color laser field. We measure the electron momentum distribution in coincidence with the kinetic energy release (KER) of dissociating hydrogen molecules. In addition to a characteristic half-moon structure, we observe a low-energy structure in the electron momentum distribution at a KER of about 3.5 eV. We speculate that the outgoing electron interacts with the molecular ion, despite the absence of classical recollisions under these conditions. Time-dependent density functional theory simulations support our conclusions