scholarly journals Integrated Thermal Insulation Packing and Vehicle Routing for Perishable Products in Community Group Purchase

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Wenbing Shui ◽  
Huimin Zhao ◽  
Mengxia Li

Two transportation modes have been used to solve the “last kilometer” delivery problem of perishable products in China. One mode involves the use of refrigerated vehicles, and the other involves transportation with nonrefrigerated vehicles but with thermal insulation packaging and phase-change refrigerants. In this paper, we studied the distribution of fresh products using nonrefrigerated vehicles under the community group purchase model. A new integrated model that can simultaneously select insulation packaging methods and vehicle paths was developed. We designed a heuristic algorithm based on genetic algorithm to solve larger-scale problems. We found that nonrefrigerated vehicle delivery was better than refrigerated vehicle delivery when neither the cost of the phase-change refrigerant nor the cost of packaging accounts for more than 50% of the total cost. There was an optimal balance between insulation packaging cost and shipping cost. The combination of thin and light packaging materials and high-efficiency cold storage materials could achieve the goals of ensuring the quality of fresh products and reducing transportation costs simultaneously.

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Ashar Naveed ◽  
Muhammad Afnan Ansari ◽  
Inki Kim ◽  
Trevon Badloe ◽  
Joohoon Kim ◽  
...  

AbstractHelicity-multiplexed metasurfaces based on symmetric spin–orbit interactions (SOIs) have practical limits because they cannot provide central-symmetric holographic imaging. Asymmetric SOIs can effectively address such limitations, with several exciting applications in various fields ranging from asymmetric data inscription in communications to dual side displays in smart mobile devices. Low-loss dielectric materials provide an excellent platform for realizing such exotic phenomena efficiently. In this paper, we demonstrate an asymmetric SOI-dependent transmission-type metasurface in the visible domain using hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) nanoresonators. The proposed design approach is equipped with an additional degree of freedom in designing bi-directional helicity-multiplexed metasurfaces by breaking the conventional limit imposed by the symmetric SOI in half employment of metasurfaces for one circular handedness. Two on-axis, distinct wavefronts are produced with high transmission efficiencies, demonstrating the concept of asymmetric wavefront generation in two antiparallel directions. Additionally, the CMOS compatibility of a-Si:H makes it a cost-effective alternative to gallium nitride (GaN) and titanium dioxide (TiO2) for visible light. The cost-effective fabrication and simplicity of the proposed design technique provide an excellent candidate for high-efficiency, multifunctional, and chip-integrated demonstration of various phenomena.


Nanomaterials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 525
Author(s):  
Joe Shields ◽  
Carlota Ruiz de Galarreta ◽  
Jacopo Bertolotti ◽  
C. David Wright

Materials of which the refractive indices can be thermally tuned or switched, such as in chalcogenide phase-change alloys, offer a promising path towards the development of active optical metasurfaces for the control of the amplitude, phase, and polarization of light. However, for phase-change metasurfaces to be able to provide viable technology for active light control, in situ electrical switching via resistive heaters integral to or embedded in the metasurface itself is highly desirable. In this context, good electrical conductors (metals) with high melting points (i.e., significantly above the melting point of commonly used phase-change alloys) are required. In addition, such metals should ideally have low plasmonic losses, so as to not degrade metasurface optical performance. This essentially limits the choice to a few noble metals, namely, gold and silver, but these tend to diffuse quite readily into phase-change materials (particularly the archetypal Ge2Sb2Te5 alloy used here), and into dielectric resonators such as Si or Ge. In this work, we introduce a novel hybrid dielectric/plasmonic metasurface architecture, where we incorporated a thin Ge2Sb2Te5 layer into the body of a cubic silicon nanoresonator lying on metallic planes that simultaneously acted as high-efficiency reflectors and resistive heaters. Through systematic studies based on changing the configuration of the bottom metal plane between high-melting-point diffusive and low-melting-point nondiffusive metals (Au and Al, respectively), we explicitly show how thermally activated diffusion can catastrophically and irreversibly degrade the optical performance of chalcogenide phase-change metasurface devices, and how such degradation can be successfully overcome at the design stage via the incorporation of ultrathin Si3N4 barrier layers between the gold plane and the hybrid Si/Ge2Sb2Te5 resonators. Our work clarifies the importance of diffusion of noble metals in thermally tunable metasurfaces and how to overcome it, thus helping phase-change-based metasurface technology move a step closer towards the realization of real-world applications.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 2491
Author(s):  
Alena Tažiková ◽  
Zuzana Struková ◽  
Mária Kozlovská

This study deals with small investors’ demands on thermal insulation systems when choosing the most suitable solution for a family house. By 2050, seventy percent of current buildings, including residential buildings, are still expected to be in operation. To reach carbon neutrality, it is necessary to reduce operational energy consumption and thus reduce the related cost of building operations and the cost of the life cycle of buildings. One solution is to adapt envelopes of buildings by proper insulation solutions. To choose an optimal thermal insulation system that will reduce energy consumption of building, it is necessary to consider the environmental cost of insulation materials in addition to the construction cost of the materials. The environmental cost of a material depends on the carbon footprint from the initial origin of the material. This study presents the results of a multi-criteria decision-making analysis, where five different contractors set the evaluation criteria for selection of the optimal thermal insulation system. In their decision-making, they involved the requirements of small investors. The most common requirements were selected: the construction cost, the construction time (represented by the total man-hours), the thermal conductivity coefficient, the diffusion resistance factor, and the reaction to fire. The confidences of the criteria were then determined with the help of the pairwise comparison method. This was followed by multi-criteria decision-making using the method of index coefficients, also known as the method of basic variant. The multi-criteria decision-making included thermal insulation systems based on polystyrene, mineral wool, thermal insulation plaster, and aerogels’ nanotechnology. As a result, it was concluded that, currently, in Slovakia, small investors emphasize the cost of material and the coefficient of thermal conductivity and they do not care as much about the carbon footprint of the material manufacturing, the importance of which is mentioned in this study.


2012 ◽  
Vol 239-240 ◽  
pp. 1522-1527
Author(s):  
Wen Bo Wu ◽  
Yu Fu Jia ◽  
Hong Xing Sun

The bottleneck assignment (BA) and the generalized assignment (GA) problems and their exact solutions are explored in this paper. Firstly, a determinant elimination (DE) method is proposed based on the discussion of the time and space complexity of the enumeration method for both BA and GA problems. The optimization algorithm to the pre-assignment problem is then discussed and the adjusting and transformation to the cost matrix is adopted to reduce the computational complexity of the DE method. Finally, a synthesis method for both BA and GA problems is presented. The numerical experiments are carried out and the results indicate that the proposed method is feasible and of high efficiency.


2011 ◽  
Vol 204-210 ◽  
pp. 1415-1418
Author(s):  
De Jiang Zhang ◽  
Na Na Dong ◽  
Xiao Mei Lin

By studying the conventional algorithm of contour extraction, a new method of contour extraction in blood vessel of brain is proposed based on the MOC maximum optimization cost. First of all, the theory computes the gray differential of the image by conventional differential method to build the cost space. Then, by using dynamic programming theory, the maximum optimization cost curve in the space is extracted to serve as the specific cerebrovascular profile. The experiments show that this method ensures high efficiency in extracting cerebrovascular contour and a high accuracy in positioning cerebrovascular contour, and it diminishes the target image ambiguity caused by noise to improve the anti-interference ability of Contour extraction.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1094 ◽  
pp. 445-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Chen ◽  
Hong Hao Ma ◽  
Zhao Wu Shen ◽  
De Bao Wang

Due to the inefficiency problem of the cut blasting in rock excavation and rock breaking, a shell radial shaped charge device was proposed based of the ideal of ‘cutting to slotting’ and it was validated through experiments. For this device, the shell materials are used to be shaped materials and multiple shaped ring is designed on the circular tube. It can not only reduce charge quantity but also raise the utilization ratio of explosive energy. After explosion, multiple radial shaped charge jets can be formed along the axial line in sequence and then the surrounding rock mass would be cracked. The crack network will be formed along with the further extension of the fraction under the action of quasi static loading of detonation gas. The shell radial shaped charge device was tested through the cut blasting model experiment. Experimental results show that the utilization ratio of blasting hole nearly approaches 98% with this device. The blasting efficiency and cyclical footage can be improved effectively and the cost of drifting can also be reduced.


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