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STEADY growth in the overseas membership of BHRA Fluid Engineering, coupled with a healthy increase in work associated with overseas projects, was reported by Dr E. T. Jagger at the Association's annual general meeting recently. Dr Jagger was presiding at his last AGM after three years in office, during which time BHRA's income has almost doubled.

This article surveys the present state of knowledge relating to the question of what goes on at the point of contact between the seal and the shaft in the case of the garter spring lip‐type seal. Whilst it is known that there is a thin film of oil present, little or nothing is known about the forces which prevent leakage of oil at the outer edge of the film. Current investigations are showing that the smooth contact area of the rubber is anything but smooth when looked at microscopically and the implications of this in relation to the sealing mechanism are being investigated.

THIS paper describes an investigation to establish the mechanism by which sealing is achieved in the conventional synthetic rubber oil seal when used on a rotating shaft.

A rotary shaft lip seal operates with a lubricant film separating the seal from the shaft. In this paper the authors present experimental measurements of under‐lip temperatures which show that there is an optimum shaft surface roughness, and present thermal solutions for various convective heat transfer conditions which illustrate that the shaft conductivity is the predominant factor which affects the under‐lip temperature.

Phosphating mild steel causes the surface to be etched into a network of microscopic channels 0.0004 to 0.0008 in. deep, the phosphate crystals being located on the intervening high spots. With this type of surface, running‐in is both rapid and safe and low friction conditions are soon established. The phosphate crystals do not act as a solid lubricant in the same sense as graphite or M0S2; initial friction is higher and final friction is much lower. Friction of MoS2, for example decreases with rubbing by a factor of 4, from 0.2 to 0.05, whereas the friction of phosphated steel decreased by a factor of 60, from 0.3 to 0.005. In addition, the final friction of the run‐in phosphated surface depended on temperature and pressure in a manner characteristic of ‘thin film’ fluid lubrication, not ‘boundary’ or ‘solid’ lubrication.

This study aims to investigate the sealing performance of reciprocating seals under the effect of rubber abrasion using ABAQUS simulation software, and to propose a prediction framework based on a hybrid algorithm (GA-PSO-BPNN) to predict the leakage of reciprocating seals of downhole gauging instrumentation under different working condition parameters.

The authors combined the UMESHMOTION user program with the improved Archard wear model to investigate reciprocating seal performance. GA and a PSO were proposed as ways to enhance the BPNN’s predictive model.

The results show that the impact of fluid pressure fluctuations on the wear of the seal lip is more pronounced during the rapid wear phase compared to the steady wear phase. Similarly, variations in compression rate have a greater impact on seal lip wear at different stages of wear. The GA-PSO-BPNN prediction model outperforms the single-prediction model in terms of prediction accuracy.

The authors investigated sealing performance through simulation software and propose a GA-PSO-BPNN-based fault diagnosis method for rotating machinery. To verify the accuracy of the prediction model, a reciprocating sealing test platform for gauge work cylinders is constructed.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-08-2024-0293/

FLUID SEALING research at BHRA Fluid Engineering has its roots in the early years following the 1939–45 war. In 1945 the then Ministry of Aircraft Production felt that the equipment designer needed sound, basic information on the way hydraulic jack seals functioned and the factors affecting their performance. D. F. Denny was therefore seconded to Imperial College, London, to undertaken programme of research on reciprocating oil seals, which resulted in the publication of a 120‐page volume: “The sealing mechanism of flexible packings”, recently reprinted to meet a continuing demand.

This study aims to show how cost savings can be achieved through optimizing the scheduling of e-commerce enablements. The University of California is one of the largest, most prestigious public education and research systems in the world, yet diminished state support is driving the search for system-wide cost savings.

This study documents the preparation for and rollout of an e-procurement system across a subset of campuses. A math programing tool was developed for prioritizing the gradual rollout to generate the greatest expected savings subject to resource constraints.

The authors conclude by summarizing the results of the rollout, discussing lessons learned and their benefit to decision-makers at other public institutions.

The pilot program comprising three campuses has been predicted to yield $1.2m in savings over a one-year period; additional sensitivity analysis with respect to savings, project timelines and other rollout decisions illustrate the robustness of these findings.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether business process integration is feasible.

This paper employs a single case study strategy to research the aforementioned research question. The case study is exploratory.

Based on the findings and within the context of the case organisation, it appears that enterprise application integration (EAI) technology can integrate business processes. However, since it is not possible to generalize from a single case study, further research is suggested to investigate this area. From the case study, it appears that EAI can easily integrate the business processes when it is combined with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

This is a single case study and thus the results cannot be generalized.

The empirical date suggest that organisations may combine ERP with EAI to integrate their business processes in a more flexible way.

The contribution of the paper is threefold: it describes the business process automation layer of EAI technology, it defines and presents a stage model for the business process integration and it examines the research question.

Considering the limitation of the single stage vendor selection model, this paper proposes a two‐stage vendor selection framework for IT outsourcing in microfinance banks.

The paper attempts to realize a complete analysis at company level using grey systems theory for shaping the relations among variables. With the social choice function – Dodgson function, the first stage is a trial phase that helps the decision‐maker find the potential vendors, then, the decision‐maker employs those chosen vendors for the final selection with modified grey relational analysis (GRA) integrated analytic network process (ANP), which emphasizes the interrelation among those selection criteria, and avoids the subjective estimation of experts and practitioners. The case of a microfinance bank IT outsourcing vendor selection is used to verify the proposed approach.

The results of the empirical study show that the proposed method is practical for ranking competing vendors in terms of their overall performance with respect to multiple interdependence criteria for the bank's IT outsourcing.

The method exposed in the paper can be used for other supplier selection by modifying some criteria and weight.

The paper provides a method for ranking competing vendors in terms of their overall performance with respect to multiple interdependence criteria for IT outsourcing.