Shirong Ge

The drum is a key winding component of an ultra-deep shaft construction hoist, and its structural characteristics directly affect wire-rope vibration and winding behavior, potentially leading to abnormal winding phenomena such as rope jumping. Therefore, a dynamic model of wire-rope inter-turn and inter-layer transitions and a rope-jumping discrimination model are established, and the second-to-third-layer transition acceleration and the third-layer critical fleet angle in the folded-line area are selected as the dual optimization objectives. A polynomial response-surface surrogate model is constructed based on orthogonal-test screening and central composite design, and multi-objective drum-structure optimization is performed using NSGA-II combined with entropy-weighted TOPSIS. Scaled winding tests are then conducted to evaluate the dynamic tension, critical fleet angle, and winding state before and after optimization. The results show that the second-to-third-layer transition acceleration decreases by 8.2%, while the third-layer critical fleet angle in the folded-line area increases by 4.7%. The optimized drum exhibits reduced dynamic-tension fluctuations at both inter-layer transition positions, and the relative errors between the theoretical and experimental critical fleet angles are all below 2.0%. Under the tested disturbance condition, rope jumping occurs in all four tests with the original drum, whereas no rope jumping is observed with the optimized drum.

During multi-layer winding of hoisting steel wire ropes for ultra-deep vertical shafts on double broken-line drums, abnormal winding behaviors such as rope interlocking, rope jumping and disordered rope arrangement may occur, accelerating abrasion and wire breakage, reducing load-bearing capacity and service life, and compromising operational safety. A dynamic rope-jumping discrimination approach considering transverse-vibration-induced fleet-angle variation was developed and evaluated through field tests. Meanwhile, based on the spatial trajectory model of multi-layer wound hoisting steel wire ropes and a quantitative criterion for rope interlocking, the effects of key drum structural parameters on rope interlocking were investigated. Results show that the broken-line zone is the main high-risk region for rope jumping, with the rightmost position of the third layer after the second-to-third-layer transition being the most critical location. Transverse rope vibration increases the fleet angle, and rope jumping occurs when the critical threshold is exceeded. At the three representative winding positions, the relative errors between the calculated and measured fleet angles are below 7.0%, and the predicted high-risk rope-jumping location is consistent with the field observation, providing field-based support for the model under the examined operating condition. Rope-interlocking risk is significantly higher in the broken-line zone and increases with larger fleet angles, smaller rope groove clearance coefficients and larger drum-to-rope diameter ratios.

Electronics manufacturing is undergoing rapid transformation with advances towards the high intelligence, higher integration and nanodevices. The surface and interfacial related tribological issues during the electronic fabrication process have become one of the predominant factors affecting the production efficiency, products quality and performance of devices because the miniscule size of the newly developed devices is towards atomic scale. It poses a significant challenge for us to comprehensively understand the role of tribology during the electronic fabrication. The review paper proposes the concept of electronics manufacturing tribology. Afterwards, the inseparable development history of electronics manufacturing and tribology has been looked back. The important role of tribology on promoting the development of electronics manufacturing has been elaborated in detail. The review attempts to highlight the future opportunities and challenges of electronics manufacturing tribology in the last part. It is hoped that such a review will throw light on the future development of high-performance electronics manufacturing and enrich the micro- & nano- tribology fundamentals as well.

Meissner’s corpuscles are essential mechanoreceptors that detect low-frequency vibrations. However, the internal fluid dynamic processes that convert directional mechanical stimuli into neural signals are not yet fully understood. This study aims to clarify the direction-specific sensing mechanism by analyzing internal fluid flow and shear stress distribution under different vibration modes. A biomimetic microfluidic platform was developed and coupled with a dynamic mesh computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model to simulate the response of the corpuscle to 20 Hz normal and tangential vibrations. The simulation results showed clear differences in fluid behavior. Normal vibration produced localized vortices and peak wall shear stress greater than 0.0054 Pa along the short axis. In contrast, tangential vibration generated stable laminar flow with a lower average shear stress of about 0.0012 Pa along the long axis. These results suggest that the internal structure of the Meissner corpuscle is important for converting mechanical inputs from different directions into specific fluid patterns. This study provides a physical foundation for understanding mechanotransduction and supports the design of biomimetic sensors with improved directional sensitivity for use in smart skin and soft robotic systems.

The working environment of the coal mine boom-type roadheader is harsh with large blind areas and numerous safety hazards for operators. Traditional on-site or remote control methods do not meet the requirements for intelligent tunneling. This paper proposes a digital twin monitoring system of an EBZ-type roadheader based on mixed reality (MR). First, the system integrates a five-dimensional digital twin model to establish the boom-type roadheader digital twin monitoring system. Second, the Unity3D software (v2020.3.25f1c1) and the MR Hololens (v22621.1133 produced by Microsoft) are used to build a digital twin human–machine interaction platform, achieving bidirectional mapping and driving of cutting operation data. Third, a twin data exchange program is designed by employing the Winform framework and the C/S communication architecture, making use of the socket communication protocol to transmit and store the cutting model data within the system. Finally, a physical prototype of the boom-type roadheader is built, and a validation experiment of the monitoring system’s digital twin is conducted. The experimental results show that the average transmission error of the cutting model data of the twin monitoring system is below 0.757%, and the execution accuracy error is below 3.7%. This system can achieve bidirectional real-time mapping and control between the twins, which provides a new monitoring method for actual underground roadheader operations. It effectively eliminates the operator’s blind areas and improves the intelligence level of roadheader monitoring. Beyond mining, this methodology can be extended to the monitoring and control of other mining equipment, predictive maintenance in manufacturing, and infrastructure management in smart cities.