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The passenger’s motion behavior during the check-in process will directly influence the check-in efficiency. However, little effort has been made to study this topic. This paper incorporates the passenger’s motion behavior into the route guidance strategy to enhance the check-in efficiency. Firstly, an extended social force (SF) model is developed to describe each passenger’s movement at an airport terminal. Secondly, a route guidance strategy accounting for the flight’s remaining departure time and the passenger density is designed to enhance the passengers’ check-in efficiency. Thirdly, a greedy algorithm is designed to search an optimal route for each passenger during the check-in process. Finally, the check-in process of one flight at an airport terminal is selected to testify the extended SF model and the proposed route guidance strategy. The simulation results show that (i) the extended SF model can reasonably describe the motion behavior of each passenger, and (ii) the proposed route-guidance strategy can enhance the check-in efficiency under passengers’ state described by the extend SF model. The results can guide administrators to better organize and manage the check-in process.

Improving the efficiency of check-in counters is a significant concern for airport operation management departments and airline companies. However, the existing studies mainly optimize the counter allocation based on the number of counters and airport demands, which needs more exploration on improving the utilization rate of check-in counters under the condition of unchanged resource allocation. In this paper, we propose a counter-sharing method to improve check-in efficiency by sharing the idle check-in counters in the adjacent check-in area. In the proposed counter-sharing method, we first define the passenger’s total walking distance and waiting time for queues as the metrics, then reassign the check-in areas and adjust the internal departure sequence of flights to maximize the counter-sharing rate. The numerical results indicate that the proposed counter-sharing method can improve the efficiency of check-in counters and reduce the passenger’s total walking distance and waiting time in the queue during the check-in process, which can enhance the airport’s operation efficiency and competitiveness.

Once the gate of one departure flight needs to be reassigned, the passengers of this flight should move from the original gate to an alternative gate, which will affect the passengers’ motions near the boarding gates involved in the gate transfer process (e.g., the motion trajectory, the motion time, and so on). Therefore, it is necessary to study the impacts of gate reassignment on passengers’ motions and provide some reasonable suggestions for gate reassignment. However, it is not easy to describe large-scale passengers’ complex dynamic nonlinear interactions, especially involving passengers carrying luggage. Thus, we propose an extended social force (SF) model to describe each passenger’s motion when the flight’s gate is temporarily transferred to one alternative gate, where the proposed model has explicitly considered the interactions among the adjacent passengers and between the passengers and their luggage. The simulation results illustrate that the passengers’ motion directions, the number of passengers with carried luggage, and the passengers’ contact distances will affect the passengers’ motion efficiency during the gate transfer process. In addition, based on the simulation results, we propose some suggestions for gate reassignment from the perspective of the passengers’ motion efficiency, where the suggestions can help administrators better reassign boarding gates.

The reasonable boarding strategy can enhance the efficiency, so how to enhance the boarding efficiency has been a hot topic in the air transportation. In this paper, we incorporate the luggage quantity and the passenger’s group behavior into the boarding model, and develop an extended strategy to explore each passenger’s boarding behavior and the influences of the proposed strategy on the boarding efficiency. The numerical results indicate that the proposed strategy can relieve the congestions at the wicket and in the cabin, eliminate the seat conflicts, and reduce the time of handling luggage and the boarding time. This shows that the proposed strategy can enhance the boarding efficiency. The results can help administrators organize the boarding pattern to enhance the efficiency.

The microwave absorption dielectric-spectrum technique was used to study the decay kinetics of the free photoelectrons and shallow-trapped electrons in the sulfur-sensitized T-grain AgBrI crystals prepared under different sensitization times. The range of the shallow electron trap depth traps was determined to be 0.26-0.27 eV.

We introduce 1-Dodecanethiol (DT) to poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT)/[6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester based polymer solar cells as a processing additive. When the amount of DT is 1vol%, the device performance is best. A final power conversion efficiency of 3.1% is achieved, which is an improvement of more than 40% compared to the reference solar cell without DT. To investigate the causes of improvement of the PCE, UV-vis spectroscopy, external quantum efficiency (EQE) is measured and an AFM is used. The enhanced photovoltaic performances are discussed in terms of optical properties and the film morphology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Al nanoparticles (NPs) are incorporated in the active layers to enhance the performance of organic solar cells (OSCs). The improved short circuit current Jsc and power conversion efficiency (PCE) for OSCs with Al NPs are observed. A final PCE of 3.66wt% is achieved, which is an improvement of more than 30wt% compared to a standard cell with a PCE of 2.84wt%. When the mass of Al NPs is 10wt% of OSCs, the device performance is best. The optical performance of OSCs reveals that the absorption from sunlight increases. The external quantum efficiency spectra suggests that the Al NPs in the active layers influence the efficiency of converting photons into electrons, which leads to the improvements in the photocurrent. The enhanced photovoltaic performance induced by incorporating Al NPs in the active layer is discussed in the terms of increasing charge separation at the donor-acceptor interface and the effectively decreasing transmission distance of charge in polymer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demonstrates efficient free running lasing on the XeF(C-A) electronic transition in an unmodified commercial discharge excimer laser. Reduction of buffer gas pressure; Measurement of the laser spectrum peak wavelength and bandwidth; Computation of the laser output energy.