Simulation and visualization of the mechanical components have become a predominant phase during the design and the production stages. Several means are used to improve the design and to reduce study time. Today, the powerful hardware and the software available on the market have contributed greatly on the improvement of design, visualization and manufacturing process of complex parts (turbine blade). In this context, our study is a contribution to the establishment of a methodology to a CAD modelling and finite element analysis, which allows us to identify the mechanical behavior of a gas turbine blade. The profile of the blade turbine model is obtained after regeneration using the CATIA V5R20 software from the retro-design technique using a FARO-type scanner. The turbine blade is analyzed under a static mechanical behavior. It has been observed that the maximum stresses and deformations are located in the vicinity of the root and the upper surface along the turbine blade. On the other hand, the elastic energy is located at a distance from the root of the turbine blade.

Evaluating the socio-economic efficiency of scientific and technological topics/projects after acceptance is very difficult because it is not easy to find common ground on the criteria for evaluating the socio-economic efficiency of topics/ projects of different research fields. Hence, depending on researchers’ views, the evaluation criteria or the weight of evaluating the socio-economic efficiency of each topic/project should be different. This study uses the expert method and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method to determine the criteria and to calculate weights for criteria on five scientific fields according to scientific sub-disciplines in Binh Dinh province, including agricultural science, natural science, social sciences and humanities, medical science, engineering and technological sciences. Our research shows that the evaluation of the socio-economic efficiency of the provincial topics/projects should be based on eight aspects, including science, technology, economics, environment, culture - society, information - management, and education. At the same time, the results also identified a set of common criteria for evaluating the socio-economic efficiency of topics/projects and suggested how to calculate points and to rank the effectiveness of topics/projects. However, the weight of the criteria and the composition of each criterion is different.

A reverse supply chain is viewed as a process from consumption point to recovery point and the management of domestic waste is considered as a specific and complex reverse supply chain. This important sector represents a high challenging problem for our cities, constrained by financial, social, health and environmental considerations. This paper proposes multicriteria decision aid to help choose an efficient domestic waste management strategy. In fact, Multicriteria decision making techniques are considered as a key option to solve this type of problems, giving a solution that represents a good compromise between different preferences. The adopted approach consists in outranking a set of candidate management plans using a method based on partial aggregation criteria. This model is applied on a real case study of an Algerian city and to validate the obtained results, a deep sensitivity analysis is carried out, giving the most appropriate plans.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to determine factors influencing on content marketing in banking industry. The study designs a questionnaire consists of 40 questions in Likert scale and distributes it among 550 randomly selected regular customers of Bank Mellat in city of Tehran, Iran and 400 properly filled questionnaires are collected. Cronbach alphas for all components of the survey are well above desirable level. Using principle component analysis with Varimax rotation, the study has determined six factors influencing the most on content marketing including organization, details, having new ideas, quality, sensitivity and power while the last component contains only two subcomponents and is removed from the study.

In this paper, an innovative and efficient sandwich panel is proposed for the structural walls for quickly assembled post-disaster housing, as well as load bearing panels for pre-fabricated modular construction and semi-permanent buildings. This study focuses on the flexural and shear behavior of the innovative sandwich panels, which is composed of two 3-D high density polyethylene (HDPE) skins, and high-density Polyurethane (PU) foam core. An experimental study was carried out to validate the effectiveness of this panel for increasing the ultimate bending strength. A series of experimental tests were performed on medium-scale specimens to characterize their core shear behavior. Then, some supplementary tests were run to determine the panels’ flexural and shear stiffness. The numerical and experimental investigations show that the 3-D-HDPE sheets, manufactured with a studded surface; considerably enhance the pull-out and delamination strength. Good agreement has been observed between the numerical and experimental tests.

The term innovation which is about the novelty on products, processes, services, technologies, on strategies or organizational structures is important for companies to stay in the competition and run their businesses well to gain both financial and organizational achievements. By the changing and globalizing world, innovation may require some interaction and cooperation which is called open innovation. In this research, five factors including brainstorming, feedback, benchmarking, open-minded mentality and relationship with supply chain elements triggering open innovation are investigated and ranked by one of the multi-criteria decision making models called ELECTRE III according to two criteria of inbound and outbound innovations.

Corporate governance has become a common discussion issue in developed and developing countries. Therefore, the intensive interest that the corporate governance determines firm performance and protects the interests of shareholders has result in increasing global concern about the corporate governance concept and determinants. There is an increasing forms of corporate finance literature which build a correlation between corporate governance techniques and financial performance. This study represents a new attempt to show the role of corporate governance characteristics on the performance of Jordanian Banks expressed by return on equity ROE during the period from 2014 to 2017. The investigation employed statistics measurements and tools to state the relationships between ROE and different variables. The study indicates a significant effects of different corporate governance characteristics on the performance of banks. In other words, the study reports significant effects of the board size, board diligence, audit committee size and audit committee diligence separately on ROE by considering two controlling variables; namely, firm size and return on assets.

This paper investigates the configuration of a closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) network, which involves suppliers, a single manufacturer, customers, collection/disassembly centers, disposal centers, a single recovery center and subcontractors. Due to the importance of green issues in the proposed supply chain, the efforts mainly focus on the suitable parts that form more durable and more sustainable products, reduce costs and help the environmental protection. To do so, an integrated framework is introduced which consists of a multi-attribute decision making (MADM) method and a multi-objective mathematical model that determines the material flow in the dynamic consecutive time segments of the network. This flow consists of parts and products which pass through the extant or potential facilities so that ultimately organize a CLSC network. Thereafter, a numerical example is examined by the augmented ε-constraint method and the results are demonstrated in a specific time horizon as an efficient solution. The results show the effects of time horizon in finding different solutions for each time segment. Furthermore, it shows how subcontractors can facilitate the flow of materials.

In today’s scenario, software has become an essential component in all kinds of systems. The size and the complexity of the software increases with a corresponding increase in its functionality, hence leads to the development of the modular software systems. Software developers emphasize on the concept of component based software engineering (CBSE) for the development of modular software systems. The CBSE concept consists of dividing the software into a number of modules; selecting Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) for each module; and finally integrating the modules to develop the final software system. The selection of COTS for any module plays a vital role in software development. To address the problem of selection of COTS, a framework for ranking and selection of various COTS components for any software system based on expert opinion elicitation and fuzzy-based matrix methodology is proposed in this research paper. The selection problem is modeled as a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problem. The evaluation criteria are identified through extensive literature study and the COTS components are ranked based on these identified and selected evaluation criteria using the proposed methods according to the value of a permanent function of their criteria matrices. The methodology is explained through an example and is validated by comparing with an existing method.

The paper aims to examine the impact of human capital, capital structure choice and firm profitability of 48,673 Vietnamese construction firms in 2016. Measuring firm profitability by return on assets (ROA) or return on equity (ROE), the results demonstrated that using more debt in capital structure would positively increase the performance of the firm but this positive effect was increasingly declining. Moreover, evidence showed that human capital had a positive impact on the result of business activities. A larger size of a firm could positively boost firm performance. Regarding firm location, a firm locating in the metropolitan of Ho Chi Minh City had a higher level of performance than a firm locating in the metropolitan of Hanoi capital. Finally, operating status of the firm as well as the establishment of industrial park had insignificant impacts on firm profitability.