An agent-based dynamic information network for supply chain management

One of the main research issues in supply chain management is to improve the global efficiency of supply chains. However, the improvement efforts often fail because supply chains are complex, are subject to frequent changes, and collaboration and information sharing in the supply chains are often infeasible. This paper presents a practical collaboration framework for supply chain management wherein multi-agent systems form dynamic information networks and coordinate their production and order planning according to synchronized estimation of market demands. In the framework, agents employ an iterative relaxation contract net protocol to find the most desirable suppliers by using data envelopment analysis. Furthermore, the chain of buyers and suppliers, from the end markets to raw material suppliers, form dynamic information networks for synchronized planning. This paper presents an agent-based dynamic information network for supply chain management and discusses the associated pros and cons

Channel flows of granular materials and their rheological implications

While the flow of a dry granular material down an inclined channel may seem at first sight to be a relatively simple flow, the experiments which have been conducted up to now suggest sufficient complexity which may be present in all but the very simplest granular material flows; consequently it is important to our general understanding of granular material rheology that these experimental observations be fully understood. This review of the current knowledge of channel flows will focus on the basic mechanics of these flows and the contributions the observations have made to an understanding of the rheology. In order to make progress in this objective, it is necessary to avoid some of the complications which can occur in practice. Thus we shall focus only on those flows in which the interstitial fluid plays very little role in determining the rheology. In his classic paper, Bagnold (1954) was able to show that the regime in which the rheology was dominated by particle/particle or particle/wall interactions and in which the viscous stresses in the interstitial fluid played a negligible role could be defined by a single, Reynolds-number-like parameter. It transpires that the important component in this parameter is a number which we shall call the Bagnold number, Ba, defined by Ba = p₈d²δ/µF where p₈,µF are the particle density and interstitial fluid viscosity, d is the particle diameter and δ is the principal velocity gradient in the flow. In the shear flows explored by Bagnold δ is the shear rate. Bagnold (1954) found that when Ba was greater than about 450 the rheology was dominated by particle/particle and particle/wall collisions. On the other hand, for Ba < 40, the viscosity of the interstitial fluid played the dominant role. More recently Zeininger and Brennen (1985) showed that the same criteria were applicable to the extensional flows in hoppers provided the extensional velocity gradient was used for δ. This review will focus on the simpler flows at large Ba where the interstitial fluid effects are small. Other important ancillary effects can be caused by electrical charge separation between the particles or between the particles and the boundary walls. Such effects can be essential in some flows such as those in electrostatic copying machines. Most experimenters have observed electrical effects in granular material flows, particularly when metal components of the structure are not properly grounded. The effect of such electrical forces on the rheology of the flow is a largely unexplored area of research. The lack of discussion of these effects in this review should not be interpreted as a dismissal of their importance. Apart from electrical and interstitial fluid effects, this review will also neglect the effects caused by non-uniformities in the size and shape of the particles. Thus, for the most part, we focus on flows of particles of spherical shape and uniform size. It is clear that while an understanding of all of these effects will be necessary in the long term, there remain some important issues which need to be resolved for even the simplest granular material flows

Experiments on Chute Flows of Granular Materials

Experiments on continuous, steady flows of granular materials down an inclined channel or chute were made with the object of acquiring information on the rheological properties of the granular material flow and the nature of the boundary condition on the base of the channel. Specifically measurements were made of the mean material velocities and velocity profiles on all boundaries of the flow using cross-correlation of two neighboring fibre-optic displacement probes. The output from these probes was used to obtain (1) the unsteady or random component of the particle velocity in the longitudinal direction and (2) a measure of the volume fraction of the flow in contact with the base by counting the frequency of passage of the particles. Measurement was also made of the depth of the flow, the mass flow rate and the shear stress on the base. The latter employed a strain-gauged shear force plate built into the base. The experiments are currently in progress and so further data will be presented at a later date. Nevertheless the preliminary data have yielded a number of interesting features

Klein tunneling through an oblique barrier in graphene ribbons

We study a transmission coefficient of graphene nanoribbons with a top gate which acts as an oblique barrier. Using a Green function method based on the Dirac-like equation, scattering among transverse modes due to the oblique barrier is taken into account numerically. In contrast to the 2-dimensional graphene sheet, we find that the pattern of transmission in graphene ribbons depends strongly on the electronic structure in the region of the barrier. Consequently, irregular structures in the transmission coefficient are predicted while perfect transmission is still calculated in the case of metallic graphene independently of angle and length of the oblique barrier