In human interaction and communication, not only verbal messages but also nonverbal behavior such as nodding and paralanguage are rhythmically related and mutually synchronized among speakers. This synchrony of embodied rhythms unconsciously enhances a sense of unification and causes an interaction-activated communication in which nonverbal behaviors such as body movements and speech activity increase, and the embodied interaction is activated. In this paper, we propose the concept of an estimation model of interaction-activated communication based on the heat conduction equation with the characteristics of precipitous speed fluctuation and develop a model that estimates the degree of interaction-activated communication by using speech input only. Further, we evaluate the developed model in estimating the period of the interaction-activated communication in an avatar-mediated communication. The results demonstrate that the developed model is effective in estimating the interaction-activated communication.

Aiming to solve the problems of distortion and incomplete decomposition by direct application of the original Local Mean Decomposition (LMD) to square wave alternating current (AC) welding arc signal, a LMD based on linear interpolation is proposed to investigate square wave AC welding current signal. Linear interpolation is introduced in LMD to obtain the local mean function and the local envelope function instead of the methods of moving average and spline interpolation. The superiority of the LMD based on linear interpolation is verified by the analysis of the simulation and experimental square wave alternating welding current signal. The results indicate that the proposed method not only can effectively decompose welding current signal into different compents related to welding quality, but also has the function of the noise reduction by reconstruction of the valid compents after correlation analysis. Meanwhile, the time-frequency distribution of the welding current signal is also obtained by the Hilbert transformation based on the decomposed results by LMD, which can effectively describe and estimate welding arc energy characteristics related to the welding quality.

This paper presents the performance characteristics of rough surface spur gears under thermo-elastohydrodynamic lubrication (TEHL) with non-Newtonian solid-liquid lubricant based on a Power law viscosity model. The bi-phase lubricant contains oil with Molybdenum disulfide particles. The time dependent modified Reynolds equation, elasticity equation, powder load carrying capacity, and energy equation with initial conditions were formulated and solved numerically using a multigrid multilevel with full approximation technique for an involute spur gear. In this analysis, the normal load and overloads are applied on either two pairs or one pair of gear teeth respectively. The transitions from two pairs to one pair and vice versa are modeled as a step variation of load. The effects of solid particle concentration, diameter of solid particle and surface roughness were examined in the region along the line of action of the meshing gear. The results show that both solid particle concentration and surface roughness affect significantly the film thickness, film temperature and friction coefficient, but the diameters of solid particle are relatively insignificant for rough TEHL.

Thrust bearing is an important component in high speed rotor bearing system. For the thrust bearing, the pad circumferential partition is recognized as an essential factor for the foil thrust bearing in hydrodynamic lubrication. In this paper, performances of multi-decked protuberant foil thrust bearing (MDPFTB) with different pad numbers were experimentally studied on a thrust bearing test rig. Static deflection, transient start-up and transient loading performance of the thrust bearings of 3 pads, 4 pads and 6 pads were compared. The test results indicated that partition of thrust pad had a significant effect on the static and transient loading characteristics of the bearing. Radial vibration of the rotor-bearing system was coupled with the axial thrust bearing support condition. The axial supporting had limited effects on the lower order critical speeds in the radial direction. However, in higher speed range, more thrust pads could increase the second and higher critical speeds and suppress the vibration amplitude. The ultimate load capacity of the bearing increased with thrust pads. However, the available operational speed range was narrowed down. For the bearing with more thrust pads, load capacity decreased earlier in high speed range with softer static stiffness. The results may provide some design guides for application of protuberant foil thrust bearing.

The vibration acceleration and temperature changes of the sliding parts of a vane-type hydraulic pump were measured simultaneously, including under the operating condition in which vane tips became detached. The test pump was a compact vane pump with 12 vanes having a theoretical displacement of 9.4 ml/rev, a maximum discharge pressure of 21 MPa, and a maximum rotational speed of 30 s^-1. The vanes were inserted front to back into the slots of the pump rotor in order to allow ease of detachment. An acceleration pickup was affixed to the cam ring. In addition, four thermocouples were embedded in the cam ring, and four thermocouples were embedded in the side-plate. A hydraulic oil with ISO VG32 was used as the test fluid, and the inlet oil temperature was set to 40-60°C. The rotational speed was set as high as 15 s^-1. The discharge pressure was increased in 1 MPa increments up to 10 MPa, and the oil temperature and rotational speed were held constant until detachment occurred. The experimental results revealed that detachment of the vane tip from the cam ring was easy to occur at lower discharge pressure under the conditions of high oil temperature and low rotational speed. When the vanes began to repeatedly and violently detach and reattach, the cam ring temperature instantly decreased and subsequently increased markedly, while the vibration acceleration increased greatly.

An integrated fuzzy-based Taguchi method (TM) for multi-response optimization of product form design is presented in this paper. The fuzzy-based TM is applied to determine the optimum combination of design parameters for product form design which will fulfill consumers' aesthetic and emotional needs. Since conventional TM is incapable of handling multi-response optimization problems, a fuzzy logic system is integrated with the TM to overcome this problem. A case study of a car form design is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the fuzzy-based TM and confirmation test is carried out to verify the method. It is found that the integrated design optimization method is capable of solving multi-response optimization problems in Kansei engineering (KE) and is able to determine the optimum combination of design parameters of a car form which are representative of consumers' perception. The optimum designs generated from the integrated design optimization method are compared with competitor designs. It is found that the integrated design optimization method gives the best overall performance.