Search results

This study aims to address the issues of limited pipe diameter adaptability and low inspection efficiency of current pipeline inspection robots, a new type of pipeline inspection robot capable of adapting to various pipe diameters was designed.

The diameter-changing mechanism uses a multilink elastic telescopic structure consisting of telescopic rods, connecting rods and wheel frames, driven by a single motor with a helical drive scheme. A geometric model of the position relationships of the hinge points was established based on the two extreme positions of the diameter-changing mechanism.

A pipeline inspection robot was designed using a simple linkage agency, which significantly reduced the weight of the robot and enhanced its adaptive pipe diameter ability. The analysis determined that the robot could accommodate pipe diameters ranging from 332 mm to 438 mm. A static equilibrium equation was established for the robot in the hovering state, and the minimum pressing force of the wheels against the pipe wall was determined to be 36.68 N. After experimental testing, the robots could successfully pass a height of 15 mm, demonstrating the good obstacle capacity of the robot.

This paper explores and proposes a new type of multilink elastic telescopic variable diameter pipeline inspection robot, which has the characteristics of strong adaptability and flexible operation, which makes it more competitive in the field of pipeline inspection robots and has great potential market value.

The robot is characterized by the innovative design of a multilink elastic telescopic structure and the use of a single motor to drive the wheel for spiral motion. On the basis of reducing the weight of the robot, it has good pipeline adaptability, climbing ability and obstacle-crossing ability.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/17488840610639681. When citing the article, please cite: Xiujie Jiang, Huixian Sun, Xiaomin Chen, Zhihua Wang, Li Zhang, Daxing Wang, (2006), “Utilization of a COTS component in temperature measurement system for microgravity fluid experiment on SZ-4 spaceship”, Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 78 Iss: 1, pp. 45 - 49.

Venezuela ranks fifth in the world in oil proven reserves and has the largest accumulation of liquid fuel in the world. With its importance as an oil country, many countries including the U.S. have expressed concerns about Venezuela’s current economic and political situation. Using the popular SWOT analysis, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats facing the country, are identified. The discussion and conclusions summarize the observations and address the relative tradeoffs within the country. Finally goals and policies appropriate for Venezuelan reform are presented.

The motion picture industry is a cultural and creative industry. Unlike its US counterpart, the Chinese motion picture industry is still developing. Therefore, learning from the US market, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the business model of Chinese movies from the perspective of new product diffusion.

Based on 66 movies released in the US and 21 movies released in China, this paper first compares the diffusion curves of Chinese and US movies through the movie life cycle and box office trends. Next, it analyzes the moviegoing behaviors of Chinese and US audiences based on the innovation and imitation coefficients in the Bass model. Finally, it compares the attention to information of Chinese and US audiences from the perspective of interpersonal word-of-mouth (WOM).

In the USA, a movie’s highest weekly box office is usually in its opening week, followed by a weekly decline in revenue; in China, there is no difference in box office performance between the first two weeks, but a weekly decline in revenue similarly follows. US audiences pay more attention to advertisements for movies than WOM recommendations, while Chinese people pay more attention to WOM recommendations. Neither the Chinese nor the US market differs in the volume of WOM between the first week before release and the opening week, and these two weeks are the most active period of WOM in both markets.

During the production phase for Chinese movies, we should satisfy opinion leaders’ needs. During the distribution phase, we should not only focus on market spending before the movie’s release, but also increase market spending in the opening week. During the theater release phase, we should stimulate WOM communication between moviegoers and thereby attract many more opinion seekers.

Few studies have investigated the Chinese motion picture industry from the perspective of new products. This paper compares and analyzes the diffusion of Chinese and US movies using the Bass model of new product diffusion, providing systematic theoretical guidelines for the commercial operation of the Chinese motion picture industry.

This study aims to investigate how a firm’s sustainable competitive advantage is influenced by the combination of entrepreneurial ecological orientation, digital transformation and dynamic capabilities.

Based on the qualitative comparative analysis method, this study systematically explores the significant key conditions and configuration effects that affect the growth of sustainable competitive advantage. This study uncovers the causal relationship and complex mechanisms underlying the sustainable and unsustainable competitive advantages for new ventures, by examining the grouping effects of the above three factors – entrepreneurial ecological orientation, digital transformation and dynamic capabilities on those advantages.

A single factor fails to constitute a necessary condition for sustainable competitive advantage. Three types of configurations are beneficial to sustainable competitive advantage, namely, flexible and responsive type, dynamically adjusted type and type of opportunity resource integration, whereas four types of configurations lead to the unsustainable competitive advantage of new ventures, namely, type of organizational rigidity, informal entrepreneurial type, information-blocking type and technology-deficient type.

According to this study, adopting an entrepreneurial ecological orientation is a novel strategic move. This study offers an extensive review of three aspects of entrepreneurial ecological orientation, dynamic capacities and digital transformation and their mutually synergistic cascading effects on the sustainable competitive advantage of new ventures. This study investigates how three dimensions interact to achieve sustainable competitive advantage for firms, ultimately contributing to the study of sustainable competitive advantage strategies from an entrepreneurial ecosystem perspective.

Why do some employees choose to prolong their working hours excessively? The current study tested how core self-evaluations (CSEs) might lead to workaholism and how perceived job demands might mediate this relationship.

Insights from the extant literature underpin the hypotheses on how CSEs would affect the development of workaholism through perceived job demands. A sample of 421 working people in China completed the online surveys, and the mediation model was tested using Mplus 7.0 (Muthén and Muthén, 1998–2012).

This study found that different components of CSEs influence workaholism in different ways. Specifically, generalized self-efficacy positively predicts workaholism, whereas emotional stability negatively predicts workaholism. Moreover, most aspects of CSEs (generalized self-efficacy, emotional stability and locus of control) influence workaholism via perceived job demands, specifically via perceived workload but not via perceived job insecurity.

The current study is the first to explore how individuals' fundamental evaluations of themselves (i.e. CSEs) relate to workaholism. The results are helpful for the prevention and intervention of workaholism in organizations.

This study aims to investigate the effects of single dent on the film thickness and pressure in elastohydrodynamically lubricated (EHL) point contacts by numerical analysis.

The governing equations of single dent were established and then the variations of the film thickness and pressure induced by the applied load, the entrainment velocity and the ball radius were investigated. Meanwhile, the film thickness and pressure under smooth and dented surfaces were compared with each other.

The dent enhances both the maximum pressure and the second pressure peak. The minimum film thickness arises before the dent under certain conditions. In the meantime, the pressure decreases at the inside of the dent and the film thickness is just the reverse. The entrainment velocity remarkably affects the overall film thickness, whereas the rest of the input parameters mainly decides the details of the film curve. All input parameters remarkably affect the overall pressure, especially the maximum pressure.

This work is helpful to understanding the effect of the single dent on the lubricating properties of EHL point contacts.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a bi-objective optimization framework to select prefabricated construction service composition. An improved algorithm-genetic simulated annealing algorithm (GSA) is employed to demonstrate the application of the framework.

The weighted aggregate multi-dimensional collaborative relationship is used to quantitatively evaluate the synergistic effect. The quality of service is measured using the same method. The research proposed a service combination selection framework of prefabricated construction that comprehensively considers the quality of service and synergistic effect. The framework is demonstrated by using a GSA that can accept poor solutions with a certain probability. Furthermore, GSA is compared with the genetic algorithm (GA), simulated annealing algorithm (SA) and particle swarm optimization algorithm (PSO) to validate the performance.

The results indicated that GSA has the largest optimal fitness value and synergistic effect compared with other algorithms, and the convergence time and convergence iteration of the improved algorithm are generally at a low level.

The contribution of this study is that the proposed framework enables project managers to clarify the interactions of the prefabricated construction process and provides guidance for project collaborative management. In addition, GSA helps to improve the probability of successful collaboration between potential partners, therefore enhancing client satisfaction.

This study aims to investigate the impact of service employees’ agreeableness personality and daily self-esteem on their daily interpersonal behaviors in terms of interpersonal harmony and counterproductive work behavior toward other individuals (CWB-I). Furthermore, this study examines whether the impact of daily self-esteem on daily interpersonal behaviors is moderated by the quality of service employees’ relationship with their manager and leader–member exchange (LMX).

Using a sample of 111 restaurant employees in China who took daily surveys with 1,412 ratings for 10 consecutive days, a longitudinal analysis was conducted to test the research hypotheses using hierarchical linear modeling.

The results show that agreeableness personality predicted daily interpersonal harmony but had no significant effect on daily CWB-I. It was also found that daily self-esteem predicted both daily interpersonal harmony and daily CWB-I, and LMX moderated the effect of daily self-esteem on daily interpersonal behaviors.

Given the fluctuation of employees’ interpersonal behaviors, organizations should guide the variability of interpersonal behaviors in the positive direction. To promote daily interpersonal harmony and reduce daily CWB-I, managers could focus on recruiting employees with agreeableness, offering daily self-esteem training and enhancing the quality of LMX.

This research is unique in its objectives to examine what influences service employees’ interpersonal behaviors on a daily basis and its methods to implement a longitudinal approach unlike previous studies that often relied on cross-sectional designs to enhance the ecological validity of the findings.

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a comprehensive study on building, fire and evacuation, so as to effectively improve the efficiency of building fire evacuation and the management level of fire evacuation site. Make up for the difficulties of BIM technology in effectively connecting building information and fire data.

First, this paper establishes a fire model and an evacuation model based on BIM information. Then, the safety index (SI) is introduced as a comprehensive index, and the IRI is established by integrating the SI function to evaluate the safety of evacuation routes. Based on these two indices, the IRI-based fire evacuation model is established.

This study offers an Improved Risk Index (IRI)-based fire evacuation model, which may achieve effective evacuation in fire scenes. And the model is verified by taking the fire evacuation of a shopping center building as an example.

This paper proposes a fire evacuation principle based on IRI, so that the relevant personnel can comprehensively consider the fire factors and evacuation factors to achieve the optimization of building design, thereby improving the fire safety of buildings.