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

The merging/AGN connection: A case for 3D spectroscopy

We discuss an ongoing study of the connection between galaxy merging/interaction and AGN activity, based on integral field spectroscopy. We focus on the search for AGN ionization in the central regions of mergers, previously not classified as AGNs. We present here the science case, the current status of the project, and plans for future observations.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure, Euro3D Science Workshop, Cambridge, May 2003, AN, accepte

The VLA-COSMOS Survey. II. Source Catalog of the Large Project

The VLA-COSMOS Large Project is described and its scientific objective is discussed. We present a catalog of ~3600 radio sources found in the 2 deg^2 COSMOS field at 1.4 GHz. The observations in the VLA A and C configuration resulted in a resolution of 1.5" × 1.4" and a mean rms noise of ~10.5 (15) μJy beam^(-1) in the central 1 (2) deg^2. Eighty radio sources are clearly extended consisting of multiple components, and most of them appear to be double-lobed radio galaxies. The astrometry of the catalog has been thoroughly tested, and the uncertainty in the relative and absolute astrometry are 130 and <55 mas, respectively

Vibrationally Resolved Decay Width of Interatomic Coulombic Decay in HeNe

We investigate the ionization of HeNe from below the He 1s3p excitation to the He ionization threshold. We observe HeNe$^+$ ions with an enhancement by more than a factor of 60 when the He side couples resonantly to the radiation field. These ions are an experimental proof of a two-center resonant photoionization mechanism predicted by Najjari et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 153002 (2010)]. Furthermore, our data provide electronic and vibrational state resolved decay widths of interatomic Coulombic decay (ICD) in HeNe dimers. We find that the ICD lifetime strongly increases with increasing vibrational state.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

Interatomic-Coulombic-decay-induced recapture of photoelectrons in helium dimers

We investigate the onset of photoionization shakeup induced interatomic Coulombic decay (ICD) in He2 at the He+*(n = 2) threshold by detecting two He+ ions in coincidence. We find this threshold to be shifted towards higher energies compared to the same threshold in the monomer. The shifted onset of ion pairs created by ICD is attributed to a recapture of the threshold photoelectron after the emission of the faster ICD electron.Comment: 5 Pages, 2 Figure

A measurement of the evolution of Interatomic Coulombic Decay in the time domain

During the last 15 years a novel decay mechanism of excited atoms has been discovered and investigated. This so called ''Interatomic Coulombic Decay'' (ICD) involves the chemical environment of the electronically excited atom: the excitation energy is transferred (in many cases over long distances) to a neighbor of the initially excited particle usually ionizing that neighbor. It turned out that ICD is a very common decay route in nature as it occurs across van-der-Waals and hydrogen bonds. The time evolution of ICD is predicted to be highly complex, as its efficiency strongly depends on the distance of the atoms involved and this distance typically changes during the decay. Here we present the first direct measurement of the temporal evolution of ICD using a novel experimental approach.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, submitted to PR

Systematic study of carrier correlations in the electron-hole recombination dynamics of quantum dots

The ground state carrier dynamics in self-assembled (In,Ga)As/GaAs quantum dots has been studied using time-resolved photoluminescence and transmission. By varying the dot design with respect to confinement and doping, the dynamics is shown to follow in general a non-exponential decay. Only for specific conditions in regard to optical excitation and carrier population, for example, the decay can be well described by a mono-exponential form. For resonant excitation of the ground state transition a strong shortening of the luminescence decay time is observed as compared to the non-resonant case. The results are consistent with a microscopic theory that accounts for deviations from a simple two-level picture.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure