Materials Characterization Using Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) Methods discusses NDT methods and how they are highly desirable for both long-term monitoring and short-term assessment of materials, providing crucial early warning that the fatigue life of a material has elapsed, thus helping to prevent service failures. Materials Characterization Using Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) Methods gives an overview of established and new NDT techniques for the characterization of materials, with a focus on materials used in the automotive, aerospace, power plants, and infrastructure construction industries. Each chapter focuses on a different NDT technique and indicates the potential of the method by selected examples of applications. Methods covered include scanning and transmission electron microscopy, X-ray microtomography and diffraction, ultrasonic, electromagnetic, microwave, and hybrid techniques. The authors review both the determination of microstructure properties, including phase content and grain size, and the determination of mechanical properties, such as hardness, toughness, yield strength, texture, and residual stress.

Semiconductor Nanowires: Part B, and Volume 94 in the Semiconductor and Semimetals series, focuses on semiconductor nanowires.

This book delivers a comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of practical applications of metamaterials, structured media, and conventional porous materials. With increasing levels of urbanization, a growing demand for motorized transport, and inefficient urban planning, environmental noise exposure is rapidly becoming a pressing societal and health concern. Phononic and sonic crystals, acoustic metamaterials, and metasurfaces can revolutionize noise and vibration control and, in many cases, replace traditional porous materials for these applications. In this collection of contributed chapters, a group of international researchers reviews the essentials of acoustic wave propagation in metamaterials and porous absorbers with viscothermal losses, as well as the most recent advances in the design of acoustic metamaterial absorbers. The book features a detailed theoretical introduction describing commonly used modelling techniques such as plane wave expansion, multiple scattering theory, and the transfer matrix method. The following chapters give a detailed consideration of acoustic wave propagation in viscothermal fluids and porous media, and the extension of this theory to non-local models for fluid saturated metamaterials, along with a description of the relevant numerical methods. Finally, the book reviews a range of practical industrial applications, making it especially attractive as a white book targeted at the building, automotive, and aeronautic industries.

Industrial automation is driving the development of robot manipulators in various applications, with much of the research effort focussed on flexible manipulators and their advantages compared to their rigid counterparts. This book reports recent advances and new developments in the analysis and control of these robot manipulators. After a general overview of flexible manipulators the book introduces a range of modelling and simulation techniques based on the Lagrange equation formulation, parametric approaches based on linear input/output models using system identification techniques, neuro-modelling approaches, and numerical techniques for dynamic characterisation using finite difference and finite element techniques. Control techniques are then discussed, including a range of open-loop and closed-loop control techniques based on classical and modern control methods including neuro and iterative control, and a range of soft-computing control techniques based on fuzzy logic, neural networks, and evolutionary and bio-inspired optimisation paradigms. Finally the book presents SCEFMAS, a software environment for analysis, design, simulation and control of flexible manipulators. Flexible Robot Manipulators is essential reading for advanced students of robotics, mechatronics and control engineering and will serve as a source of reference for research in areas of modelling, simulation and control of dynamic flexible structures in general and, specifically, of flexible robotic manipulators.

Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems refer to the latest development in computer microchips which are created by integrating hundreds of thousands of transistors into one chip. Emerging research in this area has the potential to uncover further applications for VSLI technologies in addition to system advancements. Design and Modeling of Low Power VLSI Systems analyzes various traditional and modern low power techniques for integrated circuit design in addition to the limiting factors of existing techniques and methods for optimization. Through a research-based discussion of the technicalities involved in the VLSI hardware development process cycle, this book is a useful resource for researchers, engineers, and graduate-level students in computer science and engineering.

Advances in Imaging and Electron Physics merges two long-running serials, Advances in Electronics and Electron Physics and Advances in Optical and Electron Microscopy. The series features extended articles on the physics of electron devices (especially semiconductor devices), particle optics at high and low energies, microlithography, image science, and digital image processing, electromagnetic wave propagation, electron microscopy, and the computing methods used in all these domains.

Today, air-to-surface vessel (ASV) radars, or more generally maritime surveillance radars, are installed on maritime reconnaissance aircraft for long-range detection, tracking and classification of surface ships (ASuW - Air to Surface Warfare) and for hunting submarines (ASW - anti-submarine warfare). Such radars were first developed in the UK during WWII as part of the response to the threat to shipping from German U-Boats. This book describes the ASV radars developed in the UK after WWII (1946-2000) and used by the RAF for long-range maritime surveillance.

Safe Robot Navigation Among Moving and Steady Obstacles is the first book to focus on reactive navigation algorithms in unknown dynamic environments with moving and steady obstacles. The first three chapters provide introduction and background on sliding mode control theory, sensor models, and vehicle kinematics. Chapter 4 deals with the problem of optimal navigation in the presence of obstacles. Chapter 5 discusses the problem of reactively navigating. In Chapter 6, border patrolling algorithms are applied to a more general problem of reactively navigating. A method for guidance of a Dubins-like mobile robot is presented in Chapter 7. Chapter 8 introduces and studies a simple biologically-inspired strategy for navigation a Dubins-car. Chapter 9 deals with a hard scenario where the environment of operation is cluttered with obstacles that may undergo arbitrary motions, including rotations and deformations. Chapter 10 presents a novel reactive algorithm for collision free navigation of a nonholonomic robot in unknown complex dynamic environments with moving obstacles. Chapter 11 introduces and examines a novel purely reactive algorithm to navigate a planar mobile robot in densely cluttered environments with unpredictably moving and deforming obstacles. Chapter 12 considers a multiple robot scenario. For the Control and Automation Engineer, this book offers accessible and precise development of important mathematical models and results. All the presented results have mathematically rigorous proofs. On the other hand, the Engineer in Industry can benefit by the experiments with real robots such as Pioneer robots, autonomous wheelchairs and autonomous mobile hospital.

Advances in Imaging & Electron Physics merges two long-running serials-Advances in Electronics & Electron Physics and Advances in Optical & Electron Microscopy. The series features extended articles on the physics of electron devices (especially semiconductor devices), particle optics at high and low energies, microlithography, image science, and digital image processing, electromagnetic wave propagation, electron microscopy, and the computing methods used in all these domains.

The book systematically introduces smart power system design and its infrastructure, platform and operating standards. It focuses on multi-objective optimization and illustrates where the intelligence of the system lies. With abundant project data, this book is a practical guideline for engineers and researchers in electrical engineering, as well as power network designers and managers in administration.

This book covers the most important issues from classical and robust control, deterministic and stochastic control, system identification, and adaptive and iterative control strategies. It covers most of the known control system methodologies using a new base, the Youla parameterization (YP). This concept is introduced and extended for TDOF control loops. The Keviczky-Banyasz parameterization (KP) method developed for closed loop systems is also presented. The book is valuable for those who want to see through the jungle of available methods by using a unified approach, and for those who want to prepare computer code with a given algorithm.

Advances in Imaging and Electron Physics merges two long-running serials-Advances in Electronics and Electron Physics and Advances in Optical and Electron Microscopy. The series features extended articles on the physics of electron devices (especially semiconductor devices), particle optics at high and low energies, microlithography, image science and digital image processing, electromagnetic wave propagation, electron microscopy, and the computing methods used in all these domains.

The field of robotics isn't what it used to be. Driven by an explosion in information systems over the past two decades, robotics as a discipline has rapidly evolved from the far-flung fantasies of science fiction to a practical, daily necessity of modern industry. Robotics, Automation, and Control in Industrial and Service Settings meets the challenges presented by the rise of ubiquitous computing by providing a detailed discussion of best practices and future developments in the field. This premier reference source offers a comprehensive overview of current research and emerging theory for a diverse and multidisciplinary audience of students, educators, professionals, and policymakers. This reference work includes research and perspectives from scholars and top industry practitioners in fields such as manufacturing, assistive robotics, bioinformatics, human-computer interaction, and intelligent mechatronics, among others.

This volume, number 91 in the Semiconductor and Semimetals series, focuses on defects in semiconductors. Defects in semiconductors help to explain several phenomena, from diffusion to getter, and to draw theories on materials' behavior in response to electrical or mechanical fields. The volume includes chapters focusing specifically on electron and proton irradiation of silicon, point defects in zinc oxide and gallium nitride, ion implantation defects and shallow junctions in silicon and germanium, and much more. It will help support students and scientists in their experimental and theoretical paths.

Advances in Imaging and Electron Physics merges two long-running serials-Advances in Electronics and Electron Physics and Advances in Optical and Electron Microscopy. The series features extended articles on the physics of electron devices (especially semiconductor devices), particle optics at high and low energies, microlithography, image science and digital image processing, electromagnetic wave propagation, electron microscopy, and the computing methods used in all these domains.