Quality, simulation, reliability, system engineering

Maximizing microwave passive component performance demands precise parameter tuning, particularly as modern circuits grow increasingly intricate. Yet, achieving this often requires a comprehensive approach due to their complex geometries and miniaturized structures. However, the computational burden of optimizing these components via full-wave electromagnetic (EM) simulations is substantial. EM analysis remains crucial for circuit reliability, but the expense of conducting rudimentary EM-driven global optimization by means of popular bio-inspired algorithms is impractical...

Quantitative forecasts of acid mine drainage (AMD) production are important for remediation planning. Reactive transport simulations corresponding to a detailed sampling location at a covered legacy tailings impoundment in northern Ontario, Canada, were conducted to quantitatively assess the predominant hydrogeochemical reactions. The simulations span the period from the end of tailings deposition (circa 1970) to early 2020, 12 years after remediation by a five-layer composite cover. The conceptual model of uncovered tailings weathering and subsequent geochemistry of the covered tailings system was implemented in 1D using the multi-component reactive transport code MIN3P...

Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) is a noninvasive optical method widely used for evaluating tissue hemodynamics and various physiological characteristics. Despite its advantages, NIRS faces limitations in light sampling depth and spatial resolution, which has led to the development of implantable NIRS sensors. However, these implantable sensors are prone to Common-Mode Voltage (CMV) interference due to their increased sensor-to-tissue capacitance, which can compromise the signal-to-noise ratio and accuracy of measurements...

A continuous-time exhaustive-limited (K = 2) two-level polling control system is proposed to address the needs of increasing network scale, service volume and network performance prediction in the Internet of Things (IoT) and the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network and an attention mechanism is used for its predictive analysis. First, the central site uses the exhaustive service policy and the common site uses the Limited K = 2 service policy to establish a continuous-time exhaustive-limited (K = 2) two-level polling control system...

The stress-strength reliability (SSR) model ϕ = P(Y < X) is used in numerous disciplines like reliability engineering, quality control, medical studies, and many more to assess the strength and stresses of the systems. Here, we assume X and Y both are independent random variables of progressively first failure censored (PFFC) data following inverse Pareto distribution (IPD) as stress and strength, respectively. This article deals with the estimation of SSR from both classical and Bayesian paradigms...

Sourdough starters are spontaneously generated multispecies communities consisting of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) and yeasts. Traditionally used to make baked goods, these communities of microorganisms can be propagated through successive transfers to other containers. Successive transfers result in microbial community dynamics; however, the mechanisms guiding the dynamics are not fully elucidated. This study tracked five species of sourdough LAB-yeast communities (three LAB species and two yeast species) during successive transfers in vitro to explore the interspecies interactions driving the multispecies community dynamics...

This study introduces a prototype end-to-end Simulator software tool for simulating two-dimensional satellite multispectral imagery for a variety of satellite instrument models in aquatic environments. Using case studies, the impact of variable sensor configurations on the performance of value-added products for challenging applications, such as coral reefs and cyanobacterial algal blooms, is assessed. This demonstrates how decisions regarding satellite sensor design, driven by cost constraints, directly influence the quality of value-added remote sensing products...

Ventilator is an important medical instrument which can replace the function of autonomous ventilation artificially. Its safety and reliability are related to the health and even life safety of patients. With the publishing of the new national standard and international standard for ventilators, higher requirements are put forward for the detection and evaluation. This study mainly introduces an automatic test system for ventilator performance. The test system is based on PF-300 air-flow analyzer of Imtmedical and standard simulation lung...

Recently, remarkable successes have been achieved in the quality assurance of automotive software systems (ASSs) through the utilization of real-time hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation. Based on the HIL platform, safe, flexible and reliable realistic simulation during the system development process can be enabled. However, notwithstanding the test automation capability, large amounts of recordings data are generated as a result of HIL test executions. Expert knowledge-based approaches to analyze the generated recordings, with the aim of detecting and identifying the faults, are costly in terms of time, effort and difficulty...

Contact connections in electrical machines and apparatus are important elements in the whole power supply network and a high level of reliability is expected there. Contact resistance is a fundamental criterion in the design of an electrical contact or contact system. The contact resistance should be as low as possible to minimize losses due to the current passage and the related heating of the contact connection. The value of the contact resistance depends on the material used, the value of the applied force, the type of contact, and, last but not least, the quality of the surface and chemical layers...

The Impulse Excitation Technique (IET) is one of the most useful testing methods for evaluating or calculating some material properties. This can be useful to evaluate and confirm that the material ordered is what was delivered. In the case of unknown materials, where their properties are required by simulation software, this is also a quick way to obtain mechanical properties and thus improve the simulation quality. The main drawback of the method is the requirement for a specialized sensor and acquisition system and a well-trained engineer to prepare the setup and analyze the results...

Heart failure remains the leading cause of death worldwide, creating a pressing need for better preclinical models of the human heart. Tissue engineering is crucial for basic science cardiac research; in vitro human cell culture eliminates the interspecies differences of animal models, while a more tissue-like 3D environment (e.g., with extracellular matrix and heterocellular coupling) simulates in vivo conditions to a greater extent than traditional two-dimensional culture on plastic Petri dishes. However, each model system requires specialized equipment, for example, custom-designed bioreactors and functional assessment devices...

Due to record errors, transmission interruptions, etc., low-quality process data, including outliers and missing data, commonly exist in real industrial processes, challenging the accurate modeling and reliable monitoring of the operating statuses. In this study, a novel variational Bayesian Student's-t mixture model (VBSMM) with a closed-form missing value imputation method is proposed to develop a robust process monitoring scheme for low-quality data. First, a new paradigm for the variational inference of Student's-t mixture model is proposed to develop a robust VBSMM model, which optimizes the variational posteriors in an extended feasible region...

Quantitative evaluation protocols are critical for the development of algorithms that remove artifacts from real EEG optimally. However, visually inspecting the real EEG to select the top-performing artifact removal pipeline is infeasible while hand-crafted EEG data allow assessing artifact removal configurations only in a simulated environment. This study proposes a novel, principled approach for quantitatively evaluating algorithmically corrected EEG without access to ground truth in real-world conditions...

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) gyroscopes are widely used, e.g., in modern automotive and consumer applications, and require signal stability and accuracy in rather harsh environmental conditions. In many use cases, device reliability must be guaranteed under large external loads at high frequencies. The sensitivity of the sensor to such external loads depends strongly on the damping, or rather quality factor, of the high-frequency mechanical modes of the structure. In this paper, we investigate the influence of thermoelastic damping on several high-frequency modes by comparing finite element simulations with measurements of the quality factor in an application-relevant temperature range...

OBJECTIVE: To develop and validate a versatile Monte Carlo (MC)-based dose calculation engine to support MC-based dose verification of treatment planning systems (TPSs) and quality assurance (QA) workflows in proton therapy. METHODS: The GATE MC toolkit was used to simulate a fixed horizontal active scan-based proton beam delivery (SIEMENS IONTRIS). Within the nozzle, two primary and secondary dose monitors have been designed to enable the comparison of the accuracy of dose estimation from MC simulations with respect to physical QA measurements...

Wireless Sensor Networks are increasingly getting deployed for the safety use cases in industrial applications. While several research papers discuss about the Quality & Reliability improvement techniques in WSN systems to achieve minimal delay, higher node life, optimal routing etc., very limited work is witnessed on assessment of safety integrity levels of WSN systems. In this paper we tried to bridge this gap by bringing out a QoS metric-based safety integrity assessment for the end-to-end industrial Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) system...

This work considers an extended version of flexible job-shop problem from a postprinting or semiconductor manufacturing environment, which needs a directed acyclic graph rather than a linear order to describe the precedences among operations. To obtain its reliable and high-quality schedule in a reasonable time, a learning-based cuckoo search (LCS) algorithm is presented. In it, cuckoo search is selected as an optimizer. To produce promising solutions in a high-dimensional solution space, a sparse autoencoder is introduced to compress a high-dimensional solution into an informative low-dimensional one...

In the practice of power line engineering, navigation and positioning technology is often used in the fields of information collection and analysis, optimized line design, and deformation monitoring. Compared with traditional measurement technology, it has the characteristics of high precision and high reliability. In order to realize the measurement of abnormal displacement of power lines, improve the efficiency and quality of monitoring, and reduce the occurrence of faults, firstly, this study introduces the basic theory of artificial neural network (ANN)...

Healthcare vehicles such as ambulances are the key drivers for digital and pervasive remote care for elderly patients. Thus, Healthcare Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (H-VANET) plays a vital role to empower the digital and Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) for the smart medical world. Quality of Service (QoS) performance of vehicular communication can be improved through the development of a robust routing protocol having enhanced reliability and scalability. One of the most important issues in vehicular technology is allowing drivers to make trustworthy decisions, therefore building an efficient routing protocol that maintains an appropriate level of Quality of Service is a difficult task...