Maritime accident investigation and temporal determinants of maritime accidents: A case study

This paper presents the results of an investigation into temporal determinants of maritime accidents based on a data-set obtained from the proceedings of formal inquiries in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). The results show that there is no statistically significant outcome between the probability for an accident and the time of watch. Thus the results do not confirm previous studies, which reported significant time of day effects.The outcome of this study indicates that marine inquiries can provide useful data for an analysis of underlying causes of maritime accidents. It is suggested that accident inquiries should be extended into the area of watch systems employed and should record the hours of work and of rest of the officers on the watch involved in a maritime accident.     

The role of professional associations in shipping

This article is in three parts. The first covers the historical development of qualifying associations. The second covers the particular role of maritime institutions that include The Royal Institution of Naval Architects, The Institute of Marine Engineering Science and Technology and The Nautical Institute. The third and final section considers the future for maritime professional associations in the context of international shipping.     

Analysis of Driver's Decelerating Strategy in a Car-following Situation

This report describes a decelerating driver-model expressed by driving mode transition in car-following situations. The assumptions for constructing the model are that decelerating strategy of a driver is classified into several simple driving modes and that a driver changs his driving modes based on his perceptible characteristics and experiential rules. Deceleration action is divided into three states; following, standing and braking, which are applied to the model. The model has two paths for driver's decelerating action, one of which is selected by the driver based on the perceptible characteristics and experiential rules. The suitability of the model has been experimentally verified.     

Coupled transport-reaction pathways and distribution patterns between siliciclastic-carbonate sediments at the Ria de Vigo

This paper examines the linkages between the space-distribution of grain sizes and the relative percentage of the amount of mineral species that result from the mixing process of siliciclastic and carbonate sediments at the Ria de Vigo (NW of Spain).The space-distribution of minerals was initially determined, starting from a detailed mineralogical study based on XRD-Rietveld analysis of the superficial sediments. Correlations between the maps obtained for grain sizes, average fractions of either siliciclastic or carbonates, as well as for individual-minerals, were further stabilised. From this analysis, spatially organized patterns were found between carbonates and several minerals involved in the siliciclastic fraction. In particular, a coupled behaviour is observed between plagioclases and carbonates, in terms of their relative percentage amounts and the grain size distribution.In order to explain these results a conceptual model is proposed, based on the interplay between chemical processes at the seawater–sediment interface and hydrodynamical factors. This model suggests the existence of chemical control mechanisms that, by selective processes of dissolution-crystallization, constrain the mixed environment's long-term evolution, inducing the formation of self-organized sedimentary patterns.     

Virtual prototype simulation on underwater hydraulic impingement shovel

The virtual prototype technology is applied to the design of the hydraulic impingement shovel, which is to increase the reliability of the design. The work principle of hydraulic impingement shovel is expatiated, and its dynamic equations are established. The 3D model of virtual prototype is built by PRO/E. Then the couple between the mechanical body of prototype and the hydraulic system is completed by virtue of ADAMS. Finally, the simulation is made on the virtual prototype. The simulation results show that the design of underwater hydraulic impingement shovel is rational. The virtual prototype technology could lay sound foundation of successful manufacturing of physical prototype for the first time and offer highly effective and feasible means for the design and production of underwater equipments.     

A review of the Effect of α/W ratio on fracture toughness （Ⅱ） experimental investigation in LEFM

In part I of this series, experimental investigation in EPFM （elastic-plastic fracture mechanics） had been discussed. In this paper, experimental investigation in LEFM （ linear elastic fracture mechanics） is given. Fracture toughness tests had been carried out on three different strength steels, using both through-cracked specimens with different α/W ratio and semi-elliptical cracked specimens with variable crack size and shape. Results show that the fracture toughness KIC increases with decreasing α/W when α/W 〈 0.3 for three-point-bend specimens, and that for α/W 〉 0.3, it is independent of α/W. Shallow crack specimens, both through-cracked and surface-cracked, gave markedly higher values than deeply notched specimens. However, the effect of crack shape on fracture toughness is negligible. Results also show that the LEFM approach to fracture is not tenable for design stresses where αc is often very small, far less than 2.5 （ KIC/σy）^2.     

Micro-Grinding Performance of Hard-Brittle Chip Materials in Precision Micro-Grinding Microgroove

The micro-structure on hard-brittle chip materials (HBCMs) surface can produce predominant functions and features. The micro-grinding with diamond wheel micro-tip is an efficient method to machine microstructure on HBCMs. However, different HBCMs and crystal orientation may have a significant influence on the micro-grinding performance. In this paper, the micro-grinding performance along different crystal orientation of HBCMs is investigated. First, a dressed 600^# diamond grinding wheel is used to micro-grind micro-structure on HBCMs. Then, the experiment of micro-grinding force test is completed. Finally, the quality of microgroove, the grinding ratio and the micro-grinding force are investigated and they are related to the crystal orientation of HBCMs. It is shown that the stronger resistance to the micro-crack propagation has the best quality of microgroove and the smallest grinding ratio. Moreover, the hardest single-crystal SiC has the best machinability and the micro-grinding force is 38.9%, 10.8% and 46.8% less than the one of sapphire, single-crystal Si and quartz glass, respectively. The direction to micro-grind easily is the crystal orientation 〈10\(\overline 1 \)0〉 for single-crystal SiC and sapphire. In addition, the micro-grinding force increases with the increase of the micro-grinding depth and feed rate and decreases with the increase of the grinding wheel speed.     

Lattice-based group signature with verifier-local revocation

Among several post quantum primitives proposed in the past few decades, lattice-based cryptography is considered as the most promising one, due to its underlying rich combinatorial structure, and the worst-case to average-case reductions. The first lattice-based group signature scheme with verifier-local revocation(VLR) is treated as the first quantum-resistant scheme supported member revocation, and was put forward by Langlois et al. This VLR group signature(VLR-GS) has group public key size of O(nm log N log q), and a signature size of O(tm log N log q log β). Nguyen et al. constructed a simple efficient group signature from lattice, with significant advantages in bit-size of both the group public key and the signature. Based on their work, we present a VLR-GS scheme with group public key size of O(nm log q) and signature size of O(tm log q). Our group signature has notable advantages: support of membership revocation, and short in both the public key size and the signature size.     

高压共轨喷油器精密偶件的泄漏分析

高压共轨电控喷油系统中，随着燃油喷射压力的大幅度提高，燃油的粘度-压力效应、粘度-温度效应凸显。作者分析了高压共轨喷油器精密偶件中的泄漏问题，得出的结论是：考虑了燃油的粘压效应、粘温效应后实际的泄漏量并不十分严重；如果考虑油液的极化效应、进口起始段的效应以及环形槽的影响，实际泄漏量可能还会减小。