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1 – 10 of 408Nini Xia, Sichao Ding, Tao Ling and Yuchun Tang
Safety climate plays an important role in the high-risk construction industry. Advances have been made in the understanding of construction safety climate in terms of four…
Abstract
Purpose
Safety climate plays an important role in the high-risk construction industry. Advances have been made in the understanding of construction safety climate in terms of four interrelated themes, specifically, its definition, measurement, antecedents and consequences. However, knowledge remains fragmented as the studies are scattered, and a systematic review covering these four themes is lacking. To address this research gap, this study aims to perform a systematic literature review of construction safety climate literature regarding the four themes.
Design/methodology/approach
Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocol guidelines, 178 eligible articles were obtained. This study provided thematic analysis of the 178 papers to identify what is known and what is not yet fully known regarding the four themes of construction safety climate. This study also conducted a descriptive analysis to identify the influential scholars, keywords, theories and research methods used by the literature, and finally presented an integrative framework directing future research.
Findings
The literature has not reached a consensus on the definition and measurement of construction safety climate. While it has identified the impact of safety climate on both behavioral and accident consequences, it has paid less attention to the antecedents and their underlying mechanisms regarding safety climate. Fang D. and Lingard H. are identified as the most influential authors in this field. “Questionnaire” and “safety behavior” are the keywords most closely related to safety climate. Unfortunately, the existing evidence for the causal relationships between safety climate and its antecedents and consequences is weak, as many studies lack clear theoretical substance, use a concurrent research design and focus only on individual-level climate perceptions. Finally, to support the development of construction safety climate around the four themes, potential research directions and research methods supporting them are illustrated.
Originality/value
This review makes contributions by integrating existing construction studies covering its definition, measurement, antecedents and consequences. This review also makes contributions to specific themes: no review exists on the antecedents of construction safety climate, and this review fills that gap; with regard to consequences, the existing reviews focus either on safety outcomes or safety behavior, but this review included both of them and further elaborated the different theories underpinning the relationships between safety climate and them. It is hoped that this systematic review will be helpful to the research community toward developing a nomologic network and promoting knowledge integration with respect to construction safety climate.
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Xiping Liu, Ya Li, Zhangqi Liu, Tao Ling and Zhenhua Luo
The purpose of this paper is to propose a permanent magnet-assisted synchronous reluctance machine (PMASynRM) using ferrite magnets with the same power density as rare-earth PM…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to propose a permanent magnet-assisted synchronous reluctance machine (PMASynRM) using ferrite magnets with the same power density as rare-earth PM synchronous motors used in Toyota Prius 2010.
Design/methodology/approach
A novel rotor structure with rectangular PMs is discussed with respect to the demagnetization of ferrite magnets and mechanical strength. Some electromagnetic characteristics including torque, output power, loss and efficiency are calculated by 2D finite element analysis.
Findings
The results of the analysis show that a high power density and high efficiency for PMASynRM can be achieved using ferrite magnets.
Originality/value
This paper proposes a novel rotor structure of PMASynRM with low-cost ferrite magnets that achieves high power density as permanent machines with rare-earth PMs.
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Xingwen Wu, Zhenxian Zhang, Wubin Cai, Ningrui Yang, Xuesong Jin, Ping Wang, Zefeng Wen, Maoru Chi, Shuling Liang and Yunhua Huang
This review aims to give a critical view of the wheel/rail high frequency vibration-induced vibration fatigue in railway bogie.
Abstract
Purpose
This review aims to give a critical view of the wheel/rail high frequency vibration-induced vibration fatigue in railway bogie.
Design/methodology/approach
Vibration fatigue of railway bogie arising from the wheel/rail high frequency vibration has become the main concern of railway operators. Previous reviews usually focused on the formation mechanism of wheel/rail high frequency vibration. This paper thus gives a critical review of the vibration fatigue of railway bogie owing to the short-pitch irregularities-induced high frequency vibration, including a brief introduction of short-pitch irregularities, associated high frequency vibration in railway bogie, typical vibration fatigue failure cases of railway bogie and methodologies used for the assessment of vibration fatigue and research gaps.
Findings
The results showed that the resulting excitation frequencies of short-pitch irregularity vary substantially due to different track types and formation mechanisms. The axle box-mounted components are much more vulnerable to vibration fatigue compared with other components. The wheel polygonal wear and rail corrugation-induced high frequency vibration is the main driving force of fatigue failure, and the fatigue crack usually initiates from the defect of the weld seam. Vibration spectrum for attachments of railway bogie defined in the standard underestimates the vibration level arising from the short-pitch irregularities. The current investigations on vibration fatigue mainly focus on the methods to improve the accuracy of fatigue damage assessment, and a systematical design method for vibration fatigue remains a huge gap to improve the survival probability when the rail vehicle is subjected to vibration fatigue.
Originality/value
The research can facilitate the development of a new methodology to improve the fatigue life of railway vehicles when subjected to wheel/rail high frequency vibration.
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Jelena Stankevičienė and Dovilė Valtoraitė
Purpose: This chapter identifies performance factors that have the strongest impact on companies’ sustainable outcomes and compares the obtained results across different sectors…
Abstract
Purpose: This chapter identifies performance factors that have the strongest impact on companies’ sustainable outcomes and compares the obtained results across different sectors.
Methodology: About 3,384 observations were gathered from 2015 to 2022 from companies in communication services, energy, financials, real estate, and utilities sectors that comprise the ‘STOXX Global ESG Leaders Select 50’ index. The multiple regression model is constructed with companies’ ESG scores as dependent variables and independent variables representing operational, financial, and market performance.
Findings: Companies that tend to have higher operational and financial performance in the financial sector are more likely to have higher ESG performance. The financial performance results of companies showed the strongest statistically significant relationship with environmental and the weakest with governance scores.
Implications: Results benefit private and institutional investors aiming to create more sustainable portfolios. The obtained results indicate that these investors should focus on companies operating in the financial and energy sectors with higher performance results. Better ROE, ROA, and Tobin’s Q may have a negative impact on sustainable outcomes for companies operating in the real estate and utility sectors.
Limitations: Firstly, not all ESG index providers disclose information about their index constituents. Secondly, within the chosen ‘STOXX Global ESG Leaders Select 50’ index, not all constituents had complete ESG data available on the Bloomberg platform. When selecting the analysis period, it was observed that the accessible ESG data on Bloomberg covers a relatively short time span, only from 2015 onwards.
Future research: A larger number of companies by choosing a more comprehensive available ESG index.
Ling Weng, Ting Wang, Pei-Hai Ju and Li-Zhu Liu
This paper aims to develope the electromagnetic interference shielding materials with high performance. To develop advanced polymer-based electromagnetic interference shielding…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to develope the electromagnetic interference shielding materials with high performance. To develop advanced polymer-based electromagnetic interference shielding materials with rather high temperature stability, good processability and moderate mechanical properties, the authors chose the polyimide (PI) foam as matrix and ferriferrous oxide (Fe3O4) as fillers to prepare the composite foams with lightweight and rather good electromagnetic interference shielding performance.
Design/methodology/approach
Some polyimide nanocomposite foams with Fe3O4 as fillers have been prepared by in situ dispersion and foaming with pyromellitic dianhydride (PMDA) and isocyanate (PAPI) as raw materials and water as foaming agent. By varying the Fe3O4 contents, a series of PI/Fe3O4 nanocomposite foams with fine microstructures and high thermal stability were obtained. The structure and performances of nanocomposite foams were examined, and the effects of Fe3O4 on the microstructure and properties of composite foams were investigated.
Findings
This work demonstrates that PI/Fe3O4 foams could be fabricated by thermally treating the polyimide foam intermediates with Fe3O4 nanoparticles through a blending reaction of precursors. The final PI/Fe3O4 composite foams maintained the excellent thermal property and showed a super paramagnetic behaviour, which has a positive effect on the improvement of electromagnetic shielding performance.
Research limitations/implications
In this paper, the effects of Fe3O4 on the performances of PI/Fe3O4 composite foam were reported. It provided an effective methodology for the preparation of polymer/Fe3O4 nanocomposite foams, which hold great promise towards the potential application in the areas of electromagnetic shielding materials.
Originality/value
A series of PI/Fe3O4 composite foams with different contents of Fe3O4 were prepared by blending reaction of the precursors. The effects of Fe3O4 on the structures and properties of PI/Fe3O4 composite foam were discussed in detail.
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The purpose of constructing the technology/function matrix is to analyze the patents in the target domain. The extraction of technology words is an important part of the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of constructing the technology/function matrix is to analyze the patents in the target domain. The extraction of technology words is an important part of the construction of technology/function matrix. This algorithm is used to solve the problem of low efficiency of traditional Chinese process patents technology words extraction.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors propose a Chinese process patents technology words extraction method based on the improved term frequency–inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) algorithm to help technicians obtain the technology words in the target domain. According to the characteristics of Chinese process patents technology words, the TF value of candidate technology words is divided into four parts, and the corpus of IDF value calculation of candidate technology words is selected.
Findings
Through the test of Chinese process patents in the domain of path planning, this study shows that the method is feasible and practical. It can help users quickly and accurately obtain the technology words of Chinese process patents in the target domain.
Practical implications
With the increasing number of patents on the network-based patent information platform, patent analysis of massive Chinese process patents has become a research focus. The method proposed in this paper can facilitate users to extract technology words from massive Chinese process patents for patent analysis.
Originality/value
This paper aims to improve the efficiency of Chinese process patents technology words extraction. The authors hope that the proposed method can reduce the labor and time cost of Chinese process patents technology words extraction.
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Paul Brous, Marijn Janssen and Paulien Herder
Managers are increasingly looking to adopt the Internet of Things (IoT) to include the vast amount of big data generated in their decision-making processes. The use of IoT might…
Abstract
Purpose
Managers are increasingly looking to adopt the Internet of Things (IoT) to include the vast amount of big data generated in their decision-making processes. The use of IoT might yield many benefits for organizations engaged in civil infrastructure management, but these benefits might be difficult to realize as organizations are not equipped to handle and interpret this data. The purpose of this paper is to understand how IoT adoption affects decision-making processes.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper the changes in the business processes for managing civil infrastructure assets brought about by IoT adoption are analyzed by investigating two case studies within the water management domain. Propositions for effective IoT adoption in decision-making processes are derived.
Findings
The results show that decision processes in civil infrastructure asset management have been transformed to deal with the real-time nature of the data. The authors found the need to make organizational and business process changes, development of new capabilities, data provenance and governance and the need for standardization. IoT can have a transformative effect on business processes.
Research limitations/implications
Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the propositions further.
Practical implications
The paper shows that data provenance is necessary to be able to understand the value and the quality of the data often generated by various organizations. Managers need to adapt new capabilities to be able to interpret the data.
Originality/value
This paper fulfills an identified need to understand how IoT adoption affects decision-making processes in asset management in order to be able to achieve expected benefits and mitigate risk.
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Xu Yang, Xin Yue, Zhenhua Cai and Shengshi Zhong
This paper aims to present a set of processes for obtaining the global spraying trajectory of a cold spraying robot on a complex surface.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present a set of processes for obtaining the global spraying trajectory of a cold spraying robot on a complex surface.
Design/methodology/approach
The complex workpiece surfaces in the project are first divided by triangular meshing. Then, the geodesic curve method is applied for local path planning. Finally, the subsurface trajectory combination optimization problem is modeled as a GTSP problem and solved by the ant colony algorithm, where the evaluation scores and the uniform design method are used to determine the optimal parameter combination of the algorithm. A global optimized spraying trajectory is thus obtained.
Findings
The simulation results show that the proposed processes can achieve the shortest global spraying trajectory. Moreover, the cold spraying experiment on the IRB4600 six-joint robot verifies that the spraying trajectory obtained by the processes can ensure a uniform coating thickness.
Originality/value
The proposed processes address the issue of different parameter combinations, leading to different results when using the ant colony algorithm. The two methods for obtaining the optimal parameter combinations can solve this problem quickly and effectively, and guarantee that the processes obtain the optimal global spraying trajectory.
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In this chapter, the author explains the three components of Trilogy of Taoist Leadership – responsible business, responsible management and responsible leadership. The concepts…
Abstract
In this chapter, the author explains the three components of Trilogy of Taoist Leadership – responsible business, responsible management and responsible leadership. The concepts of business, management and leadership are defined from multiple angles, including an etymological perspective. The historical origins and evolution of these three areas are explored to provide a comprehensive understanding. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the interconnections among the trilogy's components and illustrates how the trilogy can contribute to the development of sustainable organizations.
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