Abstract
Purpose
Ti-Si-N coating with nanocomposite structure is a promising protective coating for cutting tools which will be subject to high temperature oxidation during service. This study aims to investigate the thermal stability of Ti-Si-N coatings and lays the foundation for its application in high speed dry cutting.
Design/methodology/approach
Nanocomposite Ti-Si-N coating was deposited on stainless substrate and silicon wafer (100) by Ti90Si10 alloy target by using cathodic arc ion plating. The microstructure of Ti-Si-N coating had been detected by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS).
Findings
The results suggested that the coating was TiN nanocrystals with a diameter of 6.3 nm surrounded by amorphous Si3N4. The oxidation test was conducted under 550, 650, 750, 800, 850, 900 and 950°C for 2 h. The structure evolution was observed by Scanning electron microscope (SEM), energy dispersive spectrum (EDS), XRD and XPS. The results indicated that rutile has been formed at 650°C, while Si3N4 began to oxidized at 800°C. The grain size of TiN increased from 6.3 to 13 nm as the samples oxidized from 550 to 800. Micro-crack also formed in samples oxidized over 900°C.
Originality/value
Ti-Si-N coating, in this study, was deposited by cathodic arc ion plating using alloy target at high-bias voltage. The oxidation temperature ranged from 500 to 950°C with TiN coating as reference.
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He Wan, Jialiang Fu and Xi Zhong
Although the impact of environmental, social and governance (ESG) on firms' innovation has attracted attention, the existing research findings diverge. The authors believe that…
Abstract
Purpose
Although the impact of environmental, social and governance (ESG) on firms' innovation has attracted attention, the existing research findings diverge. The authors believe that failure to consider both innovation input and output is an important reason for the divergence of conclusions in the extant literature when discussing the impact of ESG and firm innovation. Thus, based on signaling theory, this study aims to reconcile these divergent findings by examining the impact of ESG performance on firms' innovation efficiency.
Design/methodology/approach
To seek empirical evidence to support the authors’ theoretical view, the authors conduct an empirical test based on the Tobit model using 8 years of data from Chinese listed companies.
Findings
Although ESG performance effectively improves firms' innovation efficiency, the institutional-level signaling environment (including state-owned firms and regional market development) weakens the positive effect of ESG performance on firms' innovation efficiency. Further tests suggest that financing constraints partially mediate the relationship between ESG performance and firms' innovation efficiency.
Originality/value
By systematically revealing whether, how and under what circumstances ESG performance improves firms' innovation advantages, this study bridges the gap in the existing literature and highlights important implications to suggest how firms can better capture the value associated with ESG.
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The purpose of this paper is to develop a multi-attribute group decision-making (MAGDM) method under the q-rung orthopair trapezoidal fuzzy environment, which calculates the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop a multi-attribute group decision-making (MAGDM) method under the q-rung orthopair trapezoidal fuzzy environment, which calculates the interaction between the criteria depending on the proposed q-rung orthopair trapezoidal fuzzy aggregation Choquet integral (q-ROTrFACI) and employ TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese of Interactive and Multi-criteria Decision Making) to consider the risk psychology of decision-makers, to determine the optimal ranking of alternatives.
Design/methodology/approach
In MAGDM, q-rung orthopair trapezoidal fuzzy numbers (q-ROTrFNs) are efficient to indicate the quantitative vagueness of decision-makers. The q-ROTrFACI operator is defined and some properties are proved. Then, a novel similarity measure is developed by fusing the area and coordinates of the q-rung orthopair trapezoidal fuzzy function. Based on the above, a Choquet integral-based TODIM (CI-TODIM) method to consider the risk psychology of decision-makers is proposed and two cases are provided to prove superiority of the method.
Findings
The paper investigates q-ROTrFACI operator to productively solve problems with interdependent criteria. Then, an approach is proposed to determine the center point of q--ROTrFNs and a q-rung orthopair trapezoidal fuzzy similarity is constructed. Furthermore, CI-TODIM method is devised based on the proposed q-ROTrFACI operator and similarity in q-rung orthopair trapezoidal fuzzy context. The illustration example of business models' solutions and hypertension health management are given to demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of proposed method.
Originality/value
The paper develops a novel CI-TODIM method that effectively solves the MAGDM problems under the premise of fully considering the priority of criteria and the risk preference of decision-makers, which provides guiding advantages for practical decision-making and enriches the application of decision-making theory.
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Gopal Kumar, Felix T.S. Chan and Mohit Goswami
The coronavirus (COVID-19) is the worst pandemic in recent memory in terms of its economic and social impacts. Deadly second wave of COVID-19 in India shook the country and…
Abstract
Purpose
The coronavirus (COVID-19) is the worst pandemic in recent memory in terms of its economic and social impacts. Deadly second wave of COVID-19 in India shook the country and reshaped the ways organizations functions and societies behave. Medical infrastructure was unaffordable and unsupportive which created high distress in the Indian society, especially for poor. At this juncture, some pharmaceutical firms made a unique social investment when they reduced price of drugs used to treat COVID-19 patients. This study aims to examine how the market and the society respond to the price reduction announcement during the psychological distress of COVID-19.
Design/methodology/approach
Market reactions have been analyzed by conducting an event study on stock market data and visual analytics-based sentiment analysis on Twitter data.
Findings
Overall, this study finds positive abnormal returns on the day and around the day of event. Interestingly, this study finds that returns during the time of high distress are significantly higher. Sentiment analysis conveys that net sentiment is favorable to the pharmaceutical firms around the day of event and it sustains more during the time of high distress.
Originality/value
This study is unique in contributing to the business and industrial management literature by highlighting market reactions to social responsibility of business during the time of psychological distress in emerging economies.
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Yiqun Kuang, Hong Cheng, Yali Zheng, Fang Cui and Rui Huang
This paper aims to present a one-shot gesture recognition approach which can be a high-efficient communication channel in human–robot collaboration systems.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present a one-shot gesture recognition approach which can be a high-efficient communication channel in human–robot collaboration systems.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper applies dynamic time warping (DTW) to align two gesture sequences in temporal domain with a novel frame-wise distance measure which matches local features in spatial domain. Furthermore, a novel and robust bidirectional attention region extraction method is proposed to retain information in both movement and hold phase of a gesture.
Findings
The proposed approach is capable of providing efficient one-shot gesture recognition without elaborately designed features. The experiments on a social robot (JiaJia) demonstrate that the proposed approach can be used in a human–robot collaboration system flexibly.
Originality/value
According to previous literature, there are no similar solutions that can achieve an efficient gesture recognition with simple local feature descriptor and combine the advantages of local features with DTW.
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Quanli Deng, Chunhua Wang, Yazheng Wu and Hairong Lin
The purpose of this paper is to construct a multiwing chaotic system that has hidden attractors with multiple stable equilibrium points. Because the multiwing hidden attractors…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to construct a multiwing chaotic system that has hidden attractors with multiple stable equilibrium points. Because the multiwing hidden attractors chaotic systems are safer and have more dynamic behaviors, it is necessary to construct such a system to meet the needs of developing engineering.
Design/methodology/approach
By introducing a multilevel pulse function into a three-dimensional chaotic system with two stable node–foci equilibrium points, a hidden multiwing attractor with multiple stable equilibrium points can be generated. The switching behavior of a hidden four-wing attractor is studied by phase portraits and time series. The dynamical properties of the multiwing attractor are analyzed via the Poincaré map, Lyapunov exponent spectrum and bifurcation diagram. Furthermore, the hardware experiment of the proposed four-wing hidden attractors was carried out.
Findings
Not only unstable equilibrium points can produce multiwing attractors but stable node–foci equilibrium points can also produce multiwing attractors. And this system can obtain 2N + 2-wing attractors as the stage pulse of the multilevel pulse function is N. Moreover, the hardware experiment matches the simulation results well.
Originality/value
This paper constructs a new multiwing chaotic system by enlarging the number of stable node–foci equilibrium points. In addition, it is a nonautonomous system that is more suitable for practical projects. And the hardware experiment is also given in this article which has not been seen before. So, this paper promotes the development of hidden multiwing chaotic attractors in nonautonomous systems and makes sense for applications.
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Wei Cao, Jiaxu Wang, Wei Pu, Ying Zhang, Jiqiang Wu, Si Ren and Jianbing Long
Previous studies were mainly focused on profile designation of bearing rollers and lubrication performance without considering roller-races skidding. However, the width of round…
Abstract
Purpose
Previous studies were mainly focused on profile designation of bearing rollers and lubrication performance without considering roller-races skidding. However, the width of round corner, load, rotational speed and some other parameters have significant effects on the roller-races sliding speed. This paper aims to investigate the effect of round corner on lubricating characteristics between the heavily loaded roller and inner race considering skidding and roughness.
Design/methodology/approach
A mixed elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) model which is capable of handling practical cases with 3D machined roughness is combined with the skidding model to investigate the effect of round corner on lubricating characteristics between the heavily loaded roller and inner race.
Findings
The width of round corner and round corner radius have a desirable range under certain operating condition, within which the maximum pressure, stress and maximum flash temperature remain low. The optimized range is sensitive to the operating condition. Roughness and skidding narrow the optimized range of round corner radius. Roughness increases the pressure peak, Mises stress and friction coefficient. At the same time, skidding and roughness have obvious effects on film thickness at the contact center area if the round radius is small.
Research limitations/implications
This paper uses the Harris skidding model that has a relatively bigger error, which is not accurate if the bearing load is less.
Practical implications
This paper unifies the skidding model and mixed EHL model which can be used as a tool for optimization design and lubricating performance analysis of cylindrical roller bearing.
Originality/value
Lubrication analyses for roller bearing are assumed to be pure rolling contact between roller and races in a previous study, which could not reflect the real contact characteristics. The skidding model is merged into a mixed EHL model which can be used as a dynamic tool to analyze the lubricating performance considering the round corner, skidding and roughness.
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Simin An, Bo Li, Minxue Wang and Wei Zheng
This paper explores the effectiveness of using blockchain technology to solve financial constraints faced by small- and medium-sized suppliers in a capital-constrained supply…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper explores the effectiveness of using blockchain technology to solve financial constraints faced by small- and medium-sized suppliers in a capital-constrained supply chain.
Design/methodology/approach
To characterize the impact of blockchain on credit period and enterprise credit level, the study formulates a newsvendor model to analyze a supply chain in which a financially constrained supplier sells products to a financially sound manufacturer, subject to uncertain demand. The study investigates three repayment methods: the benchmark case without blockchain and two blockchain-enabled cases with the hybrid repayment mode and single repayment mode (SRM), respectively. The study derives and compares the equilibria under each repayment method to characterize their impact.
Findings
When the bank interest rate is low and the carbon cap is also low, choosing to implement blockchain technology leads to higher profitability for the manufacturer than not utilizing it. Within the framework of blockchain technology, when comparing the two repayment models, the manufacturer exhibits a preference for SRM. Furthermore, under specific conditions of the bank interest rate, blockchain technology can effectively facilitate consensus among supply chain members in terms of channel selection.
Practical implications
The results derived in this paper provide novel managerial implications to the capital-constrained members in terms of pricing decisions and order quantity under demand uncertainty considering blockchain technology, which transfers the creditor's rights to the bank and shortens the collection time. In addition, blockchain technology enables efficient and intelligent collaborative development of supply chains, which can reduce carbon emissions during the transportation of goods.
Originality/value
Few studies incorporate blockchain technology into supply chain finance, and this paper considers the credit period and capital's time value for a capital-constrained supplier facing the adoption of blockchain technology within a stochastic demand environment.