Neutral Radius Value Determination by Numerical Simulation Method at Ring Upsetting Test

Ring upsetting represents a basic operation for bulk forming process and has particular significance since it is used for contact friction determination. At ring upsetting by flat dies, metal flow depends upon tribological conditions present at contact surface. Thereby, two variants of metal flow are possible: a) two-way flow from neutral radius that is present at lower friction coefficient values, followed by ring’s inner radius reduction and ring’s outer radius increase. In such circumstances, neutral radius is found between inner and outer radius. b) one-way flow that occurs at higher friction coefficient values, where neutral radius is lower than ring’s inner radius. This paper is presenting the results of determination of relation between neutral radius value and friction coefficient. Such relation is determined by numerical simulation, by using Simufact.Forming software. Experimental verification of neutral radius position is conducted by metallographic analysis, for two friction coefficient values. Friction coefficient values are determined by ring upsetting by using dies, where in one case of ring upsetting, contact surfaces were ion implanted with nitroge

Selection-free predictions in global games with endogenous information and multiple equilibria

Global games with endogenous information often exhibit multiple equilibria. In this paper, we show how one can nevertheless identify useful predictions that are robust across all equilibria and that cannot be delivered in the common-knowledge counterparts of these games. Our analysis is conducted within a flexible family of games of regime change, which have been used to model, inter alia, speculative currency attacks, debt crises, and political change. The endogeneity of information originates in the signaling role of policy choices. A novel procedure of iterated elimination of nonequilibrium strategies is used to deliver probabilistic predictions that an outside observer—an econometrician—can form under arbitrary equilibrium selections. The sharpness of these predictions improves as the noise gets smaller, but disappears in the complete-information version of the model

An Assessment of Students’ Satisfaction in Higher Education

Student’s Satisfaction (SS) with a particular subject may impact the learning process, being the figure of attentiveness of the utmost importance over time, and also a very difficult undertaking to accomplish. To go forward with such exercise, a workable methodology for problem solving had to be built and tested. It is based on a thermodynamic approach to Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, which is the ultimate goal of SS assessment when working on a particular topic

A Case-base Approach to Workforces’ Satisfaction Assessment

It is well known that human resources play a valuable role in a sustainable organizational development. Indeed, this work will focus on the development of a decision support system to assess workers’ satisfaction based on factors related to human resources management practices. The framework is built on top of a Logic Programming approach to Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, complemented with a Case Based approach to computing. The proposed solution is unique in itself, once it caters for the explicit treatment of incomplete, unknown, or even self-contradictory information, either in terms of a qualitative or quantitative setting. Furthermore, clustering methods based on similarity analysis among cases were used to distinguish and aggregate collections of historical data or knowledge in order to reduce the search space, therefore enhancing the cases retrieval and the overall computational process

Prediction of Length of Hospital Stay in Preterm Infants - A Case-Based Reasoning View

The length of stay of preterm infants in a neonatology service has become an issue of a growing concern, namely considering, on the one hand, the mothers and infants health conditions and, on the other hand, the scarce healthcare facilities own resources. Thus, a pro-active strategy for problem solving has to be put in place, either to improve the quality-of-service provided or to reduce the inherent financial costs. Therefore, this work will focus on the development of a diagnosis decision support system in terms of a formal agenda built on a Logic Programming approach to knowledge representation and reasoning, complemented with a case-based problem solving methodology to computing, that caters for the handling of incomplete, unknown, or even contradictory in-formation. The proposed model has been quite accurate in predicting the length of stay (overall accuracy of 84.9%) and by reducing the computational time with values around 21.3%

International Standard ISO 9001–A Soft Computing View

In order to add value to ISO 9001, a Quality Management Systems that assess, measure, documents, improves, and certify processes to increase productivity, i.e., that transforms business at any level. On the one hand, this work focuses on the development of a decision support system, which will allow companies to be able to meet the needs of customers by fulfilling requirements that reflect either the effectiveness or the non-effectiveness of an organization. On the other hand, many approaches for knowledge representation and reasoning have been proposed using Logic Programming (LP), namely in the area of Model Theory or Proof Theory. In this work it is followed the proof theoretical approach in terms of an extension to the LP language to knowledge representation and reasoning. The computational framework is centered on Artificial Neural Networks to evaluate customer’s satisfaction and the degree of confidence that one has on such a happening

Intelligent negotiation model for ubiquitous group decision scenarios

Supporting group decision-making in ubiquitous contexts is a complex task that must deal with a large amount of factors to succeed. Here we propose an approach for an intelligent negotiation model to support the group decision-making process specially designed for ubiquitous contexts. Our approach can be used by researchers that intend to include arguments, complex algorithms and agents' modelling in a negotiation model. It uses a social networking logic due to the type of communication employed by the agents and it intends to support the ubiquitous group decision-making process in a similar way to the real process, which simultaneously preserves the amount and quality of intelligence generated in face-to-face meetings. We propose a new look into this problematic by considering and defining strategies to deal with important points such as the type of attributes in the multicriteria problems, agents' reasoning and intelligent dialogues.This work has been supported by COMPETE Programme (operational programme for competitiveness) within project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043, by National Funds through the FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within the Projects UID/CEC/00319/2013, UID/EEA/00760/2013, and the João Carneiro PhD grant with the reference SFRH/BD/89697/2012 and by Project MANTIS - Cyber Physical System Based Proactive Collaborative Maintenance (ECSEL JU Grant nr. 662189).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio