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Owing to new legal requirements, essential changes in the field of treatment of electronic products in Germany are expected. However, consequences in terms of changes of organisation and material flows of the German treatment system are currently unknown. Thus, the objective of this contribution is to predict relevant changes occurring in this context. This lays the framework for a deduction of recommendations for political decision makers and actors of the treatment system.

Within this contribution, a linear, activity‐based model is presented, optimising the allocation of discarded products, disassembly activities and disassembly fractions to actors of the treatment system. Parameter and model modifications allow forecasting of future developments. In a case study, the model is then applied to Lower Saxony, a federal state of Germany. This allows a validation of the model as well as an evaluation of future scenarios.

Based on this analysis, impacts of new legal and economic developments on the treatment of discarded electronic products are predicted. Conclusions and recommendations for political decision makers as well as for existing disassembly companies are drawn.

The findings of this paper allow an estimation of the impacts of new legal regulations on the existing infrastructure for treatment of electrical devices in Germany. The applied methodology can be assigned to additional product categories and can be enhanced regarding the system boundary.

Metabrasive hosts foundry executives The Bilston based steel shot and grit manufacturers, Metabrasive Ltd, played host to a party of senior foundry executives from the Southern England and West Midlands Branches of the British Foundry Association (BFA) last month. The party was led by Mr. Norman Gledhill, the newly appointed director of the Association, and included Mr. W. M. Sutherland, chief executive of METCON which represents a group of trade associations including BFA, in areas of trade affairs, labour relations and training.

The aim of this study is to calculate the coefficient of friction of wheel/rail interface in both water lubrication and dry friction conditions.

Specimens taken from wheel and rail used in railway transport were exposed to pin‐on‐disc wear testing with 10, 20, 30 and 40 N loads. The disc took the place of the rail and the pin that of the wheel in wear tests, and rain water was fed to the disc/pin interface with a three drops/min speed in wet friction conditions. The coefficient of friction and weight loss values of specimens were determined and types of wear mechanism were characterized.

It was observed that the friction coefficient decreased in wet sliding experiments, so smaller values were calculated in wet friction conditions than those of dry friction conditions for wheel specimens. However, this decrease was more drastic for rail specimens. Weight and volumetric loss values of rail materials were lower than those of wheel samples.

This study investigates the wet and dry sliding wear characteristics of train wheel‐rail materials.

The purpose of this paper is to uncover career-related issues that high-skilled female immigrants face and their strategies for rebuilding their careers upon migration for a diverse range of reasons including following a spouse, furthering education and self-initiated expatriation.

Using grounded theory to explore this topic, the authors performed 14 in-depth interviews with female immigrants that fit pre-determined inclusion criteria for high-skilled (e.g. educated, gainfully and professionally employed). The study context of immigration is the USA, and the authors performed interviews with high-skilled immigrants from Turkey – an underrepresented nation in the US migrant population.

Content analysis of in-depth interviews revealed five primary theoretical themes that captured the career experiences of these individuals: non-linear career entry, career orientation, strong commitment and will to succeed, socialization patterns at work and support network. Integrating these findings with theories on adult learning, the authors developed an experiential learning model of career reconstruction among high-skilled immigrants.

This study contributes to the global mobility literature by developing an experiential learning theory of careers and taking a gendered perspective to the career experiences of high-skilled female immigrants. It answers the questions: what are the individual and situation factors associated with career success among high-skilled female immigrants? and what is the process that high-skilled immigrants go through to rebuild their careers?

Global virtual teams (GVTs), also known as transnational or distributed teams, are increasingly common as organizations strive to maintain a global presence, find top and diverse talent, and cope with economic constraints. Despite increasing adoption of GVTs, there is a dearth of research addressing whether GVTs are an effective coping strategy for dealing with the world economic crisis and if there are unintended negative consequences on employee well-being as a result of their use. Thus, a focal question guiding the development of this chapter is whether or not GVTs are a sustainable solution for organizations? In this chapter we present a generic framework depicting the cycle by which macroeconomic demands impose changes on organization's structures, which trickle down to the level of the individual who has to cope with the demands the new structure has imposed. We discuss GVTs as an intervention (or cure) for organizations’ dealing with the current world economic crisis and how this organizational intervention inevitably becomes the context (or cause) for the kinds of stressors or demands employees face.

This paper aims to establish the microstructures and the process-structure relationships in duplex stainless steel powders consolidated by selective laser melting (SLM).

A priori data on energy density levels most appropriate to consolidation of duplex stainless steel powders through SLM served as the basis to converge on the laser settings. Experimental designs with varying laser power and scan speeds and test pieces generated allowed metallographic evaluations based on optical and scanning electron microscopy and electro backscatter diffraction analyses.

Duplex stainless steel powders are established for processing by SLM. However, the dynamic point heat source and associated transient thermal fields affect the microstructures to be predominantly ferritic, with grains elongated in the build direction. Austenite precipitated either at the grain boundaries or as Widmanstätten laths, whereas the crystallographic orientations and the grain growth are affected around the cavities. Considerable CrN precipitation is also evidenced.

Duplex stainless steels are relatively new candidates to be brought into the additive manufacturing realm. Considering the poor machinability and other difficulties, the overarching result indicating suitability of duplex powders by SLM is of considerable value to the industry. More significantly, the metallographic evaluation and results of the current research allowed further understanding of the material consolidation aspects and pave ways for fine tuning and establishment of the process-structure-property relationships for this important process-material combination.

The present paper aims to systematically investigate the influence of building orientations (0°, 15°, 30°, 45°, 60°, 75°) and heat treatment processes on the macro-/micro-structural, mechanical and electrochemical behaviors of selective laser melting (SLM) prepared AlSi10Mg alloy parts.

AlSi10Mg samples were produced by the SLM method using standard processing parameters at 0°, 15°, 30°, 45°, 60° and 75° building angles. The effects of building orientations on the physical, mechanical and electrochemical properties of the alloy were investigated.

With the increase in the building orientation from 15° to 75°, the structural defects were found reducing. The effect of step size of inclined geometries was found to significantly influence the mechanical and electrochemical properties of the AlSi10Mg samples. Tensile strength for samples fabricated at lower angles (0°, 15°, 30°) reported a drop of approximately 11% than SLM 0° samples. Moreover, the tensile strength was found to decrease from 412.35 ± 9.568 MPa for the as-built samples to 290.48 ± 12.658 MPa, whereas the fracture strain increases from 3.32 ± 0.56% to 5.6 ± 0.6% when the as-built sample was treated with T6 treatment. This study indicates that the microstructure and mechanical properties of SLM-processed AlSi10Mg alloy can be tailored by a suitable heat treatment or building angle.

Microstructural and mechanical behavior of horizontal or vertically built SLM components have already been demonstrated several times. However, the influence of different building orientations, such as 0°, 15°, 30°, 45°, 60°, 75°, has not been explored in-depth, particularly on corrosion and general mechanical performance. As a result, this work may be of significant relevance to academics and designers, given the varying orientation of internal component of SLM structures.