Cognitive work analysis to comprehend operations and organizations in the mining industry

Complex industrial systems, including mining, have a prominent challenge in understanding the interrelationship among the cognitive processes, working environment and available equipment. The concept of cognitive work analysis(CWA) transcends the traditional analytic methods of evaluating human tasks solely based on perceptual and physical traits, and rather implements the notions of behavioral and cognitive awareness indispensable for the intricacy of modern technology. In the last few decades, academic and industrial settings employ this type of analysis to set a suitable standard for a system's safety feasibility, and as a result reduce human-based errors. This research paper analyzes current CWA methods and proposes a five-level quantification model portraying the overall cognitive quality of a mining operation.

Separation work analysis of cohesive law and consistently coupled cohesive law

An appropriate coupled cohesive law for predicting the mixed mode failure is established by combining normal separation and tangential separation of surfaces in the cohesive zone model （CZM） and the cohesive element method. The Xu-Needleman exponential cohesive law with the fully shear failure mechanism is one of the most popular models. Based on the proposed consistently coupled rule/principle, the Xu-Needleman law with the fully shear failure mechanism is proved to be a non-consistently coupled cohesive law by analyzing the surface separation work. It is shown that the Xu-Needleman law is only valid in the mixed mode fracture when the normal separation work equals the tangential separation work. Based on the consistently coupled principle and the modification of the Xu-Needleman law, a consistently coupled cohesive （CCC） law is given. It is shown that the proposed CCC law has already overcome the non-consistency defect of the Xu-Needleman law with great promise in mixed mode analyses.

Constraining Design:Applying the Insights of Cognitive Work Analysis to the Design of Novel In-Car Interfaces to Support Eco-Driving

The design with intent(DwI)toolkit assists designers in creating novel designs and interfaces.DwI,however,is not constrained to any degree,making it impossible to know whether the produced designs adequately account for users’needs.In contrast,cognitive work analysis(CWA)is a human factors research tool that seeks to map a system and account for users’needs,yet does not provide clear guidelines for progressing such analysis into workable designs with which users can interact.This paper seeks to present a proof-of-concept investigation to demonstrate that DwI can be suitably constrained and validated by insights gained from CWA.CWA,in turn,benefits by having a suitable toolkit for progressing insights.Two teams of individuals without design backgrounds were able to develop mock-up in-vehicle interfaces aimed at reducing fuel use.The teams were able to use DwI toolkit to articulate the genesis of their ideas,which in turn could be directly linked to system needs identified within CWA.

Step-wise synthesis of work exchange networks involving heat integration based on the transshipment model

Due to the deterioration of serious energy dilemma,energy-conservation and emission–reduction have been the strategic target in the past decades,thus people have identified the vital importance of higher energy efficiency and the influence of lower carbon development.Since work exchange network is a significant part of energy recovery system,its optima design will have dramatically significant effect on energy consumption reduction in chemical process system.With an extension of the developed transshipment model in isothermal process,a novel step-wise methodology for synthesis of direct work exchange network(WEN)in adiabatic process involving heat integration is first proposed in this paper,where a nonlinear programming(NLP)model is formulated by regarding the minimum utility consumption as objective function and optimizing the initial WEN in accordance with the presented matching rules to get the optimized WEN configuration at first.Furthermore,we focus on the work exchange network synthesis with heat integration to attain the minimal total annual cost(TAC)with the introduction of heat-exchange equipment that is achieved by the following strategies in sequence:introducing heat-exchange equipment directly,adjusting the work quantity of the adjacent utility compressors or expanders,and approximating upper/lower pressure limits consequently to obtain considerable cost savings of expanders or compressors and work utility.Finally,a case taken from the literature is studied to illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.

Microstructural Characterization and Mechanical Properties of Powder Metallurgy Dual Phase Steel Preforms

In order to improve the mechanical properties of powder metallurgy （P/M） ferrite-pearlite steel, a dual phase （DP） ferrite-martensite steel was produced through intercritical annealing of sintered P/M preforms. Mi-crostructures of the sintered and DP steels were examined with optical, scanning and transmission electron microscopes. Mechanical properties were evaluated through hardness measurements and compression tests. Microstructural studies revealed that sintered steel contained polygonal ferrite-pearlite while the DP steel contained polygonal, lath and acicular ferrite along with lath-type martensite as microstructural constituents. In DP steels, with increasing mean preform density, the microstructure contained fine and continuous network of martensite colonies with minimum porosity. The work hardening rate vs plastic strain plots （Jaoul-Crussard analysis） of both the steels revealed typical three stage deformation behaviour for low and high mean preform densities. Compression tests revealed that, DP P/M steel displayed higher strength-plasticity combination than the sintered steel.