Plates and panels are primary components in many structures including space vehicles, aircraft, automobiles, buildings, bridge decks, ships and submarines. The ability to design, analyse, optimise and select the proper materials for these structures is a necessity for structural designers, analysts and researchers.

This text consists of four parts. The first deals with plates of isotropic (metallic and polymeric) materials. The second involves composite material plates, including anisotropy and laminate considerations. The third section treats sandwich constructions of various types, and the final section gives an introduction to plates involving piezoelectric materials, in which the "smart" or "intelligent" materials are used as actuators or sensors.

In each section, the formulations encompass plate structures subjected to static loads, dynamic loads, buckling, thermal/moisture environments, and minimum weight structural optimisation.

This is a textbook for a graduate course, an undergraduate senior course and a reference. Many homework problems are given in various chapters.

This book provides the latest information in intelligent vehicle control and intelligent transportation. Detailed discussions of vehicle dynamics and ground-vehicle interactions are provided for the modeling, simulation and control of vehicles. It includes an extensive review of past and current research achievements in the intelligent vehicle motion control and sensory field, and the book provides a careful assessment of future developments.

The aeronautics industry is presently aiming for faster design cycles and shorter time to market of new aircraft. It is looking at the same time for improved aerodynamic performance, for evident competitive reasons. Advanced, computer based design systems, including fast and reliable numerical flow solvers, have been developed in the last decade including new turbulence models. On the experimental side, measurement techniques in general have also been improved significantly, however the data evaluation process remains still very time consuming, and unsteady effects and turbulence are often not being captured with sufficient accuracy and detail. The development of Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) has helped to improve the analysis of the flow fields. After investigations in laboratory scale wind tunnels, a joint initiative on PIV research, by the European Aerospace Research Establishments, within GARTEUR have enabled a wide breakthrough of this new technology in Europe. Within the Research Framework Program of the European Union, the joint research project EUROPIV aimed to apply PIV technology to problems of industrial interest.

An airline schedule represents the central planning element of each airline. In general, the objective of airline schedule optimization is to find the airline schedule that maximizes operating profit. This planning task is not only the most important but also the most complex task an airline is confronted with. Until now, this task is performed by dividing the overall planning problem into smaller and less complex subproblems that are solved separately in a sequence. However, this procedure is only of minor capability to deal with interdependencies between the subproblems, resulting in less profitable schedules than those being possible with an approach solving the airline schedule optimization problem in one step. In this work, two planning approaches for integrated airline scheduling are presented. One approach follows the traditional sequential approach: existing models from literature for individual subproblems are implemented and enhanced in an overall iterative routine allowing to construct airline schedules from scratch. The other planning appraoch represents a truly simultaneous airline scheduling: using metaheuristics, airline schedules are processed and optimized at once without a separation into different optimization steps for its subproblems.

"Recent Advances in Reliability and Quality in Design" presents the latest theories and methods of reliability and quality, with emphasis on reliability and quality in design and modelling. Each chapter is written by active researchers and professionals with international reputations, providing material which bridges the gap between theory and practice to trigger new practices and research challenges.

Postgraduates, researchers, and practitioners in reliability engineering, maintenance engineering, quality engineering, operations research, industrial and systems engineering, mechanical engineering, computer engineering, management, and statistics will find this book a state-of-the-art survey of reliability and quality in design and practices.

This book covers the fundamentals of continuum mechanics, the integral formulation methods of continuum problems, the basic concepts of finite element methods, and the methodologies, formulations, procedures, and applications of various meshless methods. It also provides general and detailed procedures of meshless analysis on elastostatics, elastodynamics, non-local continuum mechanics and plasticity with a large number of numerical examples. Some basic and important mathematical methods are included in the Appendixes. For readers who want to gain knowledge through hands-on experience, the meshless programs for elastostatics and elastodynamics are provided on an included disc.

Large Eddy Simulation is a relatively new and still evolving computatio nal strategy for predicting turbulent flows. It is now widely used in research to elucidate fundamental interactions in physics of turbulence, to predict phe nomena which are closely linked to the unsteady features of turbulence and to create data bases against which statistical closure models can be asses sed. However, its applicability to complex industrial flows, to which statisti cal models are applied routinely, has not been established with any degree of confidence. There is, in particular, a question mark against the prospect of LES becoming an economically tenable alternative to Reynolds-averaged N avier-Stokes methods at practically high Reynolds numbers and in complex geometries. Aerospace flows pose particularly challenging problems to LES, because of the high Reynolds numbers involved, the need to resolve accura tely small-scale features in the thin and often transitional boundary layers developing on aerodynamic surfaces. When the flow also contains a separated region - due to high incidence, say - the range and disparity of the influen tial scales to be resolved is enormous, and this substantially aggravates the problems of resolution and cost. It is just this combination of circumstances that has been at the heart of the project LESFOIL to which this book is devoted. The project combined the efforts, resources and expertise of 9 partner organisations, 4 universities, 3 industrial companies and 2 research institu tes."

T. Ito, International Space University, Strasbourg Central Campus, 1 Rue Jean Dominique Cassini, Parc d'Innovation, 67400 lllkirch-Graffenstaden, France e-mail: ito@isu. isunet. edu M. J. Rycroft, CAESAR Consultancy, 35 Millington Road, Cambridge CB3 9HW, UK e-mail: Michael. J. Rycroft (R)ukgateway. net As Symposium Committee Chair for the 2003 International Space University (ISU) Symposium, and Editor of this Proceedings volume, respectively, we write this introduction. The success of previous ISU symposia suggests that the ISU has developed a unique and winning formula for a novel type of symposium. The characteristics of ISU symposia are that they: * Adopt a broad, and interdisciplinary, perspective * Address all aspects of the subject, ranging from policy, business, organisational, and legal issues to technical and scientific topics * Foster a constructive dialogue among very different sectors of the space community, and * Allow ample time for interactive discussions. The present Symposium is no exception. It considers the very timely topic of space-based systems for global positioning and navigation, ranging from the GPS system developed by the US military to the Russian GLONASS system, and on to the future European Galileo system. Other nations are planning regional augmentation systems.

This is the first and only monograph on this subject, and provides a systematic presentation of theoretical fundamentals of the mechanics of rods as well as numerical methods used for practical purposes. Includes problems and solutions for self-study.

Analog Circuit Design contains in total 18 tutorials. They reflect the contributions of 6 experts in each of the three fields covered by the three chapters mentioned in the subtitle, as presented at the 15th workshop on Advances in Analog Circuit Design (AACD) held in Maastricht, April 2006.

This book is number 15 in this successful series of Analog Circuit Design, providing valuable information and excellent overviews of analog circuit design and related CAD, mainly in the fields of basic analog modules, mixed-signal electronics, AD and DA converters, RF systems, and automotive electronics.

Analog Circuit Design is an essential reference source for analog circuit designers and researchers wishing to keep abreast with the latest developments in the field. The tutorial coverage also makes it suitable for use in an advanced design course.

Although huge, Chinese Railways are a bottleneck for economic growth in China. The state-owned enterprise returns a small profit but is severely capacity constrained and burdened with inefficiency. Based on interviews with Chinese experts, benchmarking with railways in the US, Germany, Russia, and Japan as well as broad coverage of Chinese-language sources, the book makes detailed recommendations on how to design a comprehensive turnaround program for Chinese Railways.

Increasing demands on the output performance, exhaust emissions, and fuel consumption necessitate the development of a new generation of automotive engine functionality. This monograph is written by a long year developmental automotive engineer and offers a wide coverage of automotive engine control and estimation problems and its solutions. It addresses idle speed control, cylinder flow estimation, engine torque and friction estimation, engine misfire and CAM profile switching diagnostics, as well as engine knock detection. The book provides a wide and well structured collection of tools and new techniques useful for automotive engine control and estimation problems such as input estimation, composite adaptation, threshold detection adaptation, real-time algorithms, as well as the very important statistical techniques. It demonstrates the statistical detection of engine problems such as misfire or knock events and how it can be used to build a new generation of robust engine functionality. This book will be useful for practising automotive engineers, black belts working in the automotive industry as well as for lecturers and students since it provides a wide coverage of engine control and estimation problems, detailed and well structured descriptions of useful techniques in automotive applications and future trends and challenges in engine functionality.

Simplified fracture mechanics based assessment methods are widely used by the industry to determine the structural integrity significance of postulated cracks, manufacturing flaws, service-induced cracking or suspected degradation of engineering components under normal and abnormal service loads. In many cases, welded joints are the regions most likely to contain original fabrication defects or cracks initiating and growing during service operation. Various procedures provide upper bound residual stress profiles for various classes of welded joints that can be used in fracture assessments, but these often give very conservative results. Recently, the option to use more realistic profiles has been adopted, but only where such profiles are based on finite element residual stress simulations supported by detailed residual stress measurements. Rapid advances in the capability of residual stress measurement techniques, such as the contour and deep hole drilling techniques as well as the neutron and synchrotron X-ray diffraction methods, now readily allow residual stresses and strains to be mapped on defined planes within a structure. The contents of this book have been grouped into three topic areas covering theoretical /numerical and experimental analyses of residual stress and its effects on fatigue and fracture.

One of the next challenges in vehicular technology field is to improve drastically the road safety. Current developments are focusing on both vehicle platform and diverse assistance systems. This book presents a new engineering approach based on lean vehicle architecture ready for the drive-by-wire technology.

Based on a cognitive functionality split, execution and command levels are detailed. The execution level centralized over the stability control performs the motion vector coming from the command level. At this level the driver generates a motion vector which is continuously monitored by a virtual co-pilot. The integration of assistance systems in a safety relevant multi-agent system is presented here to provide first an adequate feedback to the driver to let him recover a dangerous situation. Robust strategies are also presented for the intervention phase once the command vehicle has to be optimized to stay within the safety envelope.

Based on a long engineering experience, this book offers a comprehensive and state-of-the-art analysis of aerodynamic and flight mechanic entry topics. This updated edition had new chapters on Re-entry on Mars mission, flight quality, rarefied aerodynamics and re-entry accuracy. In addition, it provides a large set of application exercises and solutions.

Large Eddy Simulation (LES) is a high-fidelity approach to the numerical simulation of turbulent flows. Recent developments have shown LES to be able to predict aerodynamic noise generation and propagation as well as the turbulent flow, by means of either a hybrid or a direct approach. This book is based on the results of two French/German research groups working on LES simulations in complex geometries and noise generation in turbulent flows. The results provide insights into modern prediction approaches for turbulent flows and noise generation mechanisms as well as their use for novel noise reduction concepts.

The aerospace industry increasingly relies on advanced numerical simulation tools in the early design phase. This volume provides the results of a German initiative which combines many of the CFD development activities from the German Aerospace Center (DLR), universities, and aircraft industry. Numerical algorithms for structured and hybrid Navier-Stokes solvers are presented in detail. The capabilities of the software for complex industrial applications are demonstrated.

A few years ago the Helmholtz Association (HGF) consisting of 15 research Institutions including the German Aerospace Center (DLR) started a network research program called 'Virtual Institutes'. The basic idea of this program was to establish research groups formed by Helmholtz research centers and universities to study and develop methods or technologies for future applications and educate young scientists. It should also enable and encourage the partners of this Virtual Institute after 3 years funding to continue their cooperation in other programs. Following this HGF request and chance the DLR Windtunnel Department of the Institute of Aerodynamics and Flow Technology took the initiative and established a network with other DLR institutes and German u- versities RWTH Aachen, University of Stuttgart and Technical University Munich. The main goal of this network was to share the experience in system analysis, ae- dynamics and material science for aerospace for improving the understanding and applicability of some key technologies for future reusable space transportation s- tems. Therefore, the virtual institute was named RESPACE (Key Technologies for Re- Usable Space Systems).

Thiseditedbookispublishedin honorofDr. GeorgeJ. Vachtsevanos, ourDr. V, c- rently Professor Emeritus, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, on the occasion of his 70th birthday and for his more than 30 years of contribution to the discipline of Intelligent Control and its application to a wide spectrum of engineering and bioengineering systems. The book is nothing but a very small token of appreciation from Dr. V's former graduate students, his peers and colleagues in the profession - and not only - to the Scientist, the Engineer, the Professor, the mentor, but most important of all, to the friend and human being. All those who have met Dr. V over the years and haveinteractedwith himin someprofessionaland/orsocial capacityunderstandthis statement: Georgenevermadeanybodyfeelinferiortohim, hehelpedandsupported everybody, and he was there when anybody needed him I was not Dr. V's student. I rst met him and his wife Athena more than 26 years ago during one of their visits to RPI, in the house of my late advisor, Dr. George N. Saridis. Since then, I have been very fortunate to have had and continue to have interactions with him. It is not an exaggeration if I say that we all learned a lot from him.

The Space Age is nearly 50 years old but exploration of the outer planets and beyond has only just begun. Deep-Space Probes Second Edition draws on the latest research to explain why we should explore beyond the edge of the Solar System and how we can build highly sophisticated robot spacecraft to make the journey. Many technical problems remain to be solved, among them propulsion systems to permit far higher velocities, and technologies to build vehicles a fraction of the size of today 's spacecraft.

Beyond the range of effective radio control, robot vehicles for exploring deep space will need to be intelligent, thinking craft able to make vital decisions entirely on their own. Gregory Matloff also looks at the possibility for human travel into interstellar space, and some of the immense problems that such journeys would entail.

This second edition includes an entirely new chapter on holographic message plaques for future interstellar probes a NASA-funded project.

Flight mechanics is the application of Newton's laws to the study of vehicle trajectories (performance), stability, and aerodynamic control. This volume details the derivation of analytical solutions of airplane flight mechanics problems associated with flight in a vertical plane.

It covers trajectory analysis, stability, and control. In addition, the volume presents algorithms for calculating lift, drag, pitching moment, and stability derivatives. Throughout, a subsonic business jet is used as an example for the calculations presented in the book.

This book brings together the quick integral approaches and advances in the field for the prediction of stall and surge problems in the compressor. The book is useful for people involved in the flow analysis, design and testing of rotating machinery. For students, it can be used as a specialized topic of senior undergraduate or graduate study. The book can also serve as self-study material.

Traditionally, the study of internal combustion engines operation has focused on the steady-state performance. However, the daily driving schedule of automotive and truck engines is inherently related to unsteady conditions. In fact, only a very small portion of a vehicle's operating pattern is true steady-state, e. g. , when cruising on a motorway. Moreover, the most critical conditions encountered by industrial or marine engines are met during transients too. Unfortunately, the transient operation of turbocharged diesel engines has been associated with slow acceleration rate, hence poor driveability, and overshoot in particulate, gaseous and noise emissions. Despite the relatively large number of published papers, this very important subject has been treated in the past scarcely and only segmentally as regards reference books. Merely two chapters, one in the book Turbocharging the Internal Combustion Engine by N. Watson and M. S. Janota (McMillan Press, 1982) and another one written by D. E. Winterbone in the book The Thermodynamics and Gas Dynamics of Internal Combustion Engines, Vol. II edited by J. H. Horlock and D. E. Winterbone (Clarendon Press, 1986) are dedicated to transient operation. Both books, now out of print, were published a long time ago. Then, it seems reasonable to try to expand on these pioneering works, taking into account the recent technological advances and particularly the global concern about environmental pollution, which has intensified the research on transient (diesel) engine operation, typically through the Transient Cycles certification of new vehicles.

The authors here provide a detailed treatment of the design of robust adaptive controllers for nonlinear systems with uncertainties. They employ a new tool based on the ideas of system immersion and manifold invariance. New algorithms are delivered for the construction of robust asymptotically-stabilizing and adaptive control laws for nonlinear systems. The methods proposed lead to modular schemes that are easier to tune than their counterparts obtained from Lyapunov redesign.

Is the automobility regime experiencing a transition towards sustainability? To answer that question, this book investigates stability and change in contemporary transport systems. It makes a socio-technical analysis of transport systems, exploring the strategies and beliefs of crucial actors such as car manufacturers, local and national governments, citizens, car drivers, transport planners and civil society. Two guiding questions are: Will we see a greening of cars, based on technological innovations that sustain the existing car-based system? Or is something more radical desirable and likely, such as the development of travel regimes in which car use is less dominant?