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An adaptive mesh refinement procedure that uses nodeless variables and quadratic interpolation functions is presented for analysing transient thermal problems. A temperature based finite element scheme with Crank‐Nicolson time marching is used to obtain the thermal solution. The strategies used for mesh adaptation, computing refinement indicators, and time marching are described. Examples in one and two dimensions are presented and comparisons are made with exact solutions. The effectiveness of this procedure for transient thermal analysis is reflected in good solution accuracy, reduction in number of elements used, and computational efficiency.

Additive manufacture (AM) such as selective laser melting (SLM) provides significant geometric design freedom in comparison with traditional manufacturing methods. Such freedom enables the construction of injection moulding tools with conformal cooling channels that optimize heat transfer while incorporating efficient internal lattice structures that can ground loads and provide thermal insulation. Despite the opportunities enabled by AM, there remain a number of design and processing uncertainties associated with the application of SLM to injection mould tool manufacture, in particular from H13/DIN 1.2344 steel as commonly used in injection moulds. This paper aims to address several associated uncertainties.

A number of physical and numerical experimental studies are conducted to quantify SLM-manufactured H13 material properties, part manufacturability and part characteristics.

Findings are presented which quantify the effect of SLM processing parameters on the density of H13 steel components; the manufacturability of standard and self-supporting conformal cooling channels, as well as structural lattices in H13; the surface roughness of SLM-manufactured cooling channels; the effect of cooling channel layout on the associated stress concentration factor and cooling uniformity; and the structural and thermal insulating properties of a number of structural lattices.

The contributions of this work with regards to SLM manufacture of H13 of injection mould tooling can be applied in the design of conformal cooling channels and lattice structures for increased thermal performance.

Composite materials are replacing the traditional materials because of their remarkable properties and the addition of nanoparticles making a new trend in material world. The nano addition effect on tribological properties is essential to be used in automotive and industrial applications. The current work investigates the sliding wear behavior of an aluminum alloy (AA) 6061-based hybrid metal matrix composites (HMMCs) reinforced with SiC and B₄C ceramic nanoparticles.

The hybrid composites are fabricated using stir casting process. Two different compositions were fabricated by varying the weight percentage of the ceramic reinforcements. An attempt has been made to study the wear and friction behavior of the composites using pin-on-disc tribometer to consider the effects of sliding speed, sliding distance and the normal load applied.

The tribological tests are carried out and the performances were compared. Increase in sliding speed to 500 rpm resulted in the rise of temperature of the contacting tribo-surface which intensified the wear rate at 30N load for the HMMC. The presence of the ceramic particles further reduced the contact region of the mating surface thus reducing the coefficient of friction at higher sliding speeds. Oxidation, adhesion, and abrasion were identified to be the main wear mechanisms which were further confirmed using energy dispersive spectroscopy and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) of the worn out samples.

The enhancement of wear properties is achieved because of the addition of the SiC and B₄C ceramic nanoparticles, in which these composites can be applied to automobile, aerospace and industrial products where the mating parts with less weight is required.

The influence of nanoparticles on the tribological performance is studied in detail comprising of two different ceramic particles which is almost new research. The sliding effect of hybrid composites with nano materials paves the way for using these materials in engineering and domestic applications.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the nature of the relationship between service quality and desired customer behaviours in the leasing market using an appropriate service quality measurement model. The authors take a step further by recognising the possible differences in influence of service quality in private and corporate customers, and those business dealings with low, medium and high lease values.

The authors use deduction method to test the SERVQUAL in the German leasing market and the relationship between customer satisfaction and desired behavioural outcomes. The developed questionnaire is based on the 22-item scale of the SERVQUAL approach. Samples are selected based on convenience sampling.

The authors found differences in the levels of influence by SERVQUAL dimensions on corporate and private customers as well as among those customers with different leasing contract values. From the regression analyses, it is clear that “assurance” from the leasing company is the most common SERVQUAL dimension that has significant impact on overall service quality perceptions and obtaining customers satisfaction and loyalty (behavioural outcomes).

The authors recognised that all financial services are not created equally to meet customer demands. Hence, the customer expectations of service quality from these services will be different. The authors contributed to the marketing literature by studying customer perceptions of service quality by specifying financing aspects of financial services, i.e. leasing. The authors further contributed to the literature of SERVQUAL model in financial services by dividing customers into two different types of customers and those with diverse leasing contract values. The authors found that priorities given on service quality dimensions by them are different. These concepts were never considered in the literature. This also implies that future studies on financial services marketing need to recognise such differences in the research.

The information security policy document of an organization needs to be translated into controls and procedures at the implementation level. The technical and business personnel in‐charge of implementing the controls and procedures need to consider a large number of security‐related statements from a heterogeneous pool of security documentation and decide on the implementation plan. The purpose of this paper is to propose an approach to analyze a set of security statements to establish an implicit hierarchy and relative importance among them.

A set of statements relevant to e‐mail service security is chosen from the classified documentation of an IT firm. The authors contacted the technical person who was the owner of this service to obtain a one‐on‐one comparison between the policies. These policies and their inter‐relationships are represented as a graph. Centrality measures based on the in and out degrees of a node are used to calculate the relative importance of a policy. The authors present an improved approach based on DEMATEL, which considers the level of influence of one policy on another.

Security statements fall into different categories based on their relative intensity and nature. They could be of high importance or low on one axis and of driving or receiving nature on the other. The driver policies are the action items that could be implemented to satisfy a large number of other security requirements. The policies that are predominantly receiver in nature, for their fulfillment, need many other requirements to be satisfied.

The intense driver policies are the ones to be considered for immediate implementation so as to achieve maximum benefits. If such an action item cannot be implemented at the level of consideration, it needs to be communicated to the appropriate level where it could be addressed effectively. An orphaned policy statement can indicate to a high‐level requirement left without any action plan or an unnecessary control. Establishing clear linkages between the implemented controls and the organization's security policy document could be very effective in convincing the employees to adhere to security practices.

Analyzing a set of informal security statements to identify the linkages between them is a novel idea. While other works establish the need for translating the security policy to lower levels of implementation, the authors propose an approach to identify the existence or absence of an effective translation. The graph representation with associated centrality measures, and the application of DEMATEL technique to deduce the nature and intensity of security statements are not yet found in literature.

Allocation problems in accounting require joint costs to be allocated among participating agents. In this setting, however, unfair allocations can stifle cooperation and lead to inefficient group outcomes. Then, what qualifies as fair enough for individual agents to agree to cooperate and extract joint benefits? Building on prior analytical literature that has offered perspectives involving joint cost allocations, we experimentally evaluate two common notions of fairness that present competing predictions in the cost allocation context – proportionality and equality. We operationalize two notions of fairness using a behavioral approach and examine which fairness notion prevails in cost allocation problems. More specifically, we examine fairness considerations in the cost allocation context using a modified ultimatum game, where joint cost savings can only be acquired through cooperation between two agents and individual contributions are varied transparently. Our experimental evidence suggests that fairness considerations in cost allocations coincide more with the proportionality notion when individuals make different contributions to create joint benefits. These findings provide important insights on the key rationale underlying the prevalent cost allocation method in accounting practices and the design of fair cost allocations that promote cooperation among agents.

Reports that while overconsumption of the world’s natural resources is a problem in developed nations, it is population growth and biological resource depletion that are the bane of developing nations. Uses India as an example for discussing biodiversity, natural resource issues and ecosystem function in an Asian context. Examines the linkages between ecological and social processes when humans are integrated within the structural and functional attributes of the ecosystem. Suggests a holistic approach for the rehabilitation and sustainable development of rural systems, so conserving biodiversity and natural resources.

Tooling is a common component of an industrial product’s manufacture. Specific tooling is devised to serve the fabrication of a particular product, while generic tooling can be used in the manufacture of multiple products. In the latter case, companies are confronted with the problem of fairly allocating the indirect costs of the tooling. This article studies how to allocate costs of generic tooling to single production orders.

Ten allocation methods (AMs) are described that are in principle suited to the distribution of generic tooling costs to production orders. Since the presented methods have for the most part been discussed in differing contexts, we apply them to a specified generic tooling problem for comparison. Evaluation of the various methods is based on 16 criteria. Reasoning is supported by a computational Monte Carlo simulation. Furthermore, we suggest using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to elaborate one final proposition concerning the most preferable allocation scheme.

The article reports the single allocation rules’ performances for different allocation scenarios. The described characteristics refer to fairness, efficiency, and simplicity as well as to empty-core performance. Using AHP analysis allows for the aggregation of the rules’ criteria ratings. Thus, especially suitable allocation schemes for the problem at hand are identified.

An allocation is required for budgeting reasons and also for the definition of projects’ bottom-up sales prices. Selecting the “right” AM is important, as a suboptimal AM can result in unfair allocation vectors, which will act as incentives to stop using the common resource, potentially leading to higher total costs.

Research on the comparison of AMs is typically performed for certain purposes, such as enterprise networks, horizontal cooperative purchasing scenarios, or municipal service units. This article will augment the research evaluating AMs by introducing a novel set of evaluation criteria and by providing an in-depth comparison of AMs suited for the allocation of generic tooling costs.

It has been six months from the time the first case was registered, and nations are still working on counter steering regulations. The proposed model in the paper encompasses a novel methodology to equip systems with artificial intelligence and computational audition techniques over voice recognition for detecting the symptoms. Regular and irregular speech/voice patterns are recognized using in-built tools and devices on a hand-held device. Phenomenal patterns can be contextually varied among normal and presence of asymptotic symptoms.

The lives of patients and healthy beings are seriously affected with various precautionary measures and social distancing. The spread of virus infection is mitigated with necessary actions by governments and nations. Resulting in increased death ratio, the novel coronavirus is certainly a serious pandemic which spreads with unhygienic practices and contact with air-borne droplets of infected patients. With minimal measures to detect the symptoms from the early onset and the rise of asymptotic outcomes, coronavirus becomes even difficult for detection and diagnosis.

A number of significant parameters are considered for the analysis, and they are dry cough, wet cough, sneezing, speech under a blocked nose or cold, sleeplessness, pain in chests, eating behaviours and other potential cases of the disease. Risk- and symptom-based measurements are imposed to deliver a symptom subsiding diagnosis plan. Monitoring and tracking down the symptoms inflicted areas, social distancing and its outcomes, treatments, planning and delivery of healthy food intake, immunity improvement measures are other areas of potential guidelines to mitigate the disease.

This paper also lists the challenges in actual scenarios for a solution to work satisfactorily. Emphasizing on the early detection of symptoms, this work highlights the importance of such a mechanism in the absence of medication or vaccine and demand for large-scale screening. A mobile and ubiquitous application is definitely a useful measure of alerting the officials to take necessary actions by eliminating the expensive modes of tests and medical investigations.

This study aims to review financial inclusion as a catalyst to reduce financial scams and frauds faced by women in the five largest US states by population and proposed measures encouraging women’s financial safety.

Recognizing the unique socioeconomic landscape, the study seeks responses through a survey questionnaire from 4,113 women respondents analyzed by using a basic mixed-methods approach, including quantitative surveys analyzed through SPSS and qualitative short interviews thematically analyzed by using Nvivo.

The review results show that 94% of women believe that financial inclusion can protect them from scams and fraud. Also, it has been observed that financial crimes disproportionately affect women, often stemming from a desire to conceal such activities from close family members and partners. Older women, housewives and those from financially depressed areas need more financial inclusion plans to curb financial fraud.

The proposed measures may have positive social and economic implications on the females residing in the financially depressed areas.

The study represents the authors’ original contribution, examining the role of financial inclusion in preventing women from engaging in financial crimes.