Shale Gas and Fracking: The Science Behind the Controversy explains the relevant geological principles before examining the peer-reviewed evidence and presenting it through a simple and compelling illustrated narrative. Each chapter focuses on a particular controversy, such contamination of well water with gas from fracking, and follows a similar format: starting with the principles; then detailing peer-reviewed case studies for earthquakes, radioactivity, and climate change; and concluding with a judgment of the general risks involved. Shale Gas and Fracking: The Science Behind the Controversy provides readers with the unbiased information they need to make informed decisions on the controversial issue of fracking.

This book highlights the notion of Circular Economy under the umbrella of Sustainability because of the widespread momentum it is gaining. Today the whole world is certainly in emergent need of an alternative system to traditional economy which is linear, i.e. make, use and dispose to get rid-off the waste and very important to ensure continuous use of resources, which is possible by the advent of circular economy. A circular economy aims to utilize the resources in use for as long as possible, extract the maximum value from them during use, then recover and regenerate products and materials at the end of each service life vis-a-vis traditional linear model. This book discusses circular economy in terms of assessment with various case studies.

Containing papers presented at the 4th International Conference on Building Information Modelling (BIM) in Design, Construction and Operations, this volume brings together the research of experts from industry, practice and academia. It describes innovative solutions and predictions for future trends across key BIM-related topics. The modern construction industry and built environment disciplines have been transformed through the development of new and innovative BIM tools and techniques. These have fundamentally altered the manner in which construction teams operate; the processes through which designs are evolved; and the relationships between conceptual, detail, construction and life cycle stages. BIM is essentially value-creating collaboration throughout the entire life-cycle of an asset, underpinned by the data attached to them. BIM has far and reaching consequences on both building procurement and infrastructure. This recent emergence constitutes one of the most exciting developments in the field of the Built Environment. These advances have offered project teams multi-sensory collaborative tools and opportunities for new communication structures. The included papers cover such topics as: BIM and sustainability; Advanced BIM platforms; BIM and automation in construction; BIM and cultural heritage; Digital twin and artificial intelligence for buildings and infrastructure.

Existing coastal management and defense approaches are not well suited to meet the challenges of climate change and related uncertanities. Professionals in this field need a more dynamic, systematic and multidisciplinary approach. Written by an international group of experts, Coastal Risk Management in a Changing Climate provides innovative, multidisciplinary best practices for mitigating the effects of climate change on coastal structures. Based on the Theseus program, the book includes eight study sites across Europe, with specific attention to the most vulnerable coastal environments such as deltas, estuaries and wetlands, where many large cities and industrial areas are located.

This hands-on textbook introduces physics and nuclear engineering students to the experimental and theoretical aspects of fission physics for research and applications through worked examples and problem sets. The study of nuclear fission is currently undergoing a renaissance. Recent advances in the field create the opportunity to develop more reliable models of fission predictability and to supply measurements and data to critical applications including nuclear energy, national security and counter-proliferation, and medical isotope production. An Introduction to Nuclear Fission provides foundational knowledge for the next generation of researchers to contribute to nuclear fission physics.

This book focuses on understanding the shoreline dynamics, nearshore processes and sediment transport around Rameswaram Island and the cities of Dhanushkodi and Arichamunai. Rameswaram Island is located between the Gulf of Mannar on the south and Palk Bay on the north, between the southern tip of India and Sri Lanka, and is unique in terms of physical, chemical and biological processes. The Gulf of Mannar is established as a marine biodiversity conservation area by its richness of variety and variability of marine species such as corals, finfish, shellfish and other fishes. The island is predominantly influenced by four seasons: northeast monsoon, post-monsoon, summer and southwest monsoon; and the sedimentological and hydrodynamic conditions significantly change seasonally, resulting in the island's responding in a different manner with each season. It also explains the physical forces and their impacts around these areas. Rameswaram Island has existed naturally for a long period of time even under the influence of different water masses of the Gulf of Mannar and Palk Bay. Understanding the regional natural phenomena is the only solution to carry out the best management practices to develop coastal constructions and modifications.

This book describes the fundamentals and potential applications of friction stir superplasticity for unitized structures . Conventional superplastic forming of sheets is limited to the thickness of 3 mm because the fine grained starting material is produced by rolling. Friction stir superplasticity has grown rapidly in the last decade because of the effectiveness of microstructural refinement. The thickness of the material remains almost constant, and that allows for forming of thick sheets/plates, which was not possible before. The field has reached a point where designers have opportunities to expand the extent of unitized structures, which are structures in which the traditional primary part and any supporting structures are fabricated as a single unit. With advanced optimization and material considerations, this class of structures can be lighter weight and more efficient, making them less costly, as well as mechanically less complex, reducing areas of possible failure.
Discusses how friction stir processing allows selective microstructural refinement without thickness changeDemonstrates how higher thickness sheets and plates can be superplastically formedExamples are presented for aluminum, magnesium and titanium alloysCovers the production of low-cost unitized structures by selectively processing cast sheets/plates "

This book focuses on the mechanical properties and permeability of coal, and the gas flow in coal seams. Based on coal permeability models, it establishes different models for coal seam gas, from the linear flow model to the gas-solid coupling flow model. It also provides the theoretical basis for the exploitation and safe production of coal as well as coal seam gas resources. As such, it is a valuable reference for researchers, advanced students and practitioners working in mining engineering and coalbed methane engineering.

This book is of paramount importance in the fields of engineering and applied sciences, given that through the values obtained by these procedures, many structures, like spillways of dams and highway culverts, are designed and constructed. The main aim of this book is to provide procedures for implementing many probability distribution functions, all of them based on using a standard and a common computational application known as Excel, which is available to any personal computer user. The computer procedures are given in enough detail, so readers can develop their own Excel worksheets. All the probability distribution functions in the book have schemes to estimate its parameters, quantiles, and confidence limits through the methods of moments and maximum likelihood.