Feature-based technology is the key factor towards meeting the increasingly high demands of improving and speeding up the product development process from concept to customer feedback, and is therefore expected to be able to provide for a better approach to integrate the complete product design process chain. Feature Based Product Life-Cycle Modelling is dedicated to exploring the progress towards an integrated solution for the product creation process based on feature technology. Hence, it encompasses significant phases of the product creation process, from conceptual design to recycling, including the following topics: *Life-phases modelling; *Knowledge based engineering; *Multiple-view geometric modelling; *Technological links among assemblies; *Manufacturing process cost estimation; *Manufacturing modelling; *Machining preparation; *Product deterioration prediction; *Product recovery estimation. For each topic, a state of the art, theoretic bases, tentative solutions and illustrative examples are detailed, demonstrating the successful application of feature technology to the modelling of innovative products and the efficient control of their design. The book is a selection of proceedings from the International Conference on Feature Modelling in Advanced Design-for-the-Life-Cycle Systems (FEATS 2001), which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and held in Valenciennes, France in June 2001.

Software has become a decisive cost and time factor in regard to developing and establishing manufacturing systems and setting them into operation. In addition, software determines the availability, reliability as well as functionality of manufacturing units. Software Engineering for Manufacturing Systems considers the methods and procedures required to deal with problems in the software engineering of control technology for manufacturing systems. Significantly, the following topics are addressed: * definitions and requirements of software for control technology * system design, describing forms of control software * CASE tools for the generation of a code * configuration, adaption of standard software variants, and re-usability of software * and man-machine interface. It contains the selected proceedings of the International Conference on Software Engineering and Case Tools for Control Technology of Manufacturing Systems, sponsored by the IFIP and held in Germany, in March 1996.

Design frameworks have become an important infrastructure for building complex design systems. Electronic Design Automation Frameworks presents a state-of-the-art review of the latest research results covering this topic; results which are also of value for other design frameworks. The book contains the selected proceedings of the Fourth International Working Conference on Electronic Design Frameworks, organized by the International Federation for Information Processing and held in Gramado, Brazil, in November 1994.

On November 9-11, 1998,85 participants, representing 17 countries, gathered in Aubum Hills, Michigan, at the Chrysler Tech Center, to attend a workshop "SSM'98" (or Sculptured Surface Machining '98) organized by IFIP Working Group 5.3. This was the first major workshop on sculptured surface machining since the CAM-I sponsored conference "Machining Impossible Surfaces" held in 1981. The purpose of the SSM'98 workshop, entitled "Machining Impossible Shapes", was to promote a cross-fertilization of ideas among three communities: industrial users, CAM software developers and academic researchers. There were 17 participants who were "industrial users", 15 represented CAM software developers, 4 were from the machine tool industry, with the remainder being academic researchers. The format of the meeting included 40 presentations in 9 sessions, 4 keynote speeches and a sufficient amount of time for informal discussion amongst the participants. One of the most valuable aspects of the workshop was the opportunity for participants to meet informally and to discuss their mutual interests. This led to two "participant organized" sessions on five axis machining and on machine tool controllers.

Towards Balanced Automation The concept. Manufacturing industries worldwide are facing tough challenges as a consequence of the globalization of economy and the openness of the markets. Progress of the economic blocks such as the European Union, NAFTA, and MERCOSUR, and the global agreements such as GATT, in addition to their obvious economic and social consequences, provoke strong paradigm shifts in the way that the manufacturing systems are conceived and operate. To increase profitability and reduce the manufacturing costs, there is a recent tendency towards establishing partnership links among the involved industries, usually between big industries and the networks of components' suppliers. To benefit from the advances in technology, similar agreements are being established between industries and universities and research institutes. Such an open tete-cooperation network may be identified as an extended enterprise or a virtual enterprise. In fact, the manufacturing process is no more carried out by a single enterprise, rather each enterprise is just a node that adds some value (a step in the manufacturing chain) to the cooperation network of enterprises. The new trends create new scenarios and technological challenges, especially to the Small and Medium size Enterprises (SMEs) that clearly comprise the overwhelming majority of manufacturing enterprises worldwide. Under the classical scenarios, these SMEs would have had big difficulties to access or benefit from the state of the art technology, due to their limited human, financial, and material resources.

Over the last few decades, there have been dramatic improvements in the understanding and research of environmental design. Numerous methods have been developed to enhance architectural design in order for it to be more energy efficient, sustainable and health enhancing.

This book presents several theories and techniques that can be used to improve how buildings are engineered and designed in order to utilize more sustainable construction methods while promoting the health of the building's occupants.

Contributions to the study of environmental design have come from a diversity of fields including applied mathematics, optimization, computer science, medical research, psychology, management science, architecture, and engineering. The techniques developed in these areas of research can be used to increase building performance, occupant satisfaction, productivity, and well being, and reducing the incidence of health conditions and chronic diseases related to the use of a designed space.

This book provides architectural practitioners, civil engineers as well as other interdisciplinary researchers with the techniques needed to design, implement, and test for sustainability and health promotion in new or existing structures.

xiv box for Balanced Automation, research in this area is still young and emerging. In our opinion, the development of hybrid balanced solutions to cope with a variety of automation levels and manual approaches, is a much more challenging research problem than the search for a purely automatic solution. Various research activities described in this book illustrate some of these challenges through the development proposals, assisting tools, and initial results. In certain chapters however, the balancing aspects are not yet achieved in the research area, but their inclusion in this book is intended to give a broader and more comprehensive perspective of the multiple areas involved. One important aspect to be noticed is the extension and application of the concept of balanced automation to all areas of the manufacturing enterprise. Clearly, the need for a "balanced" approach is not restricted to the shop floor components, rather it applies to all other areas, as illustrated by the wide spectrum of research contributions found in this book. For instance, the need for an appropriate integration of multiple systems and their perspectives is particularly important for the implantation of virtual enterprises. Although both the BASYS'95 and the BASYS'96 conferences have provided important contributions, approaches, and tools for the implantation of balanced automation systems, there are a number of areas that require further research: .

Knowledge Intensive Design Technology is a collection of papers presented at the Fifth Workshop on Knowledge Intensive CAD, which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 5.2 and hosted by the Department of Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Malta in July 2002. The book chapters progressively take the reader through the following sequential sections; -Part One - KIC Development Approaches, -Part Two - Knowledge Systematization, -Part Three - Prototype KIC Systems. Knowledge Intensive Design Technology makes essential reading for practicing engineers/scientists involved in R&D as well as for relevant Masters and Ph.D. students. The book is also pertinent to those in industry concerned with capturing and structuring company-specific knowledge for proactive reuse to increase product development efficiency, and also to those involved in the development of CAD systems.

In recent years microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) have emerged as a new technology with enormous application potential. MEMS manufacturing techniques are essentially the same as those used in the semiconductor industry, therefore they can be produced in large quantities at low cost. The added benefits of lightweight, miniature size and low energy consumption make MEMS commercialization very attractive. Modeling and simulation is an indispensable tool in the process of studying these new dynamic phenomena, development of new microdevices and improvement of the existing designs. MEMS technology is inherently multidisciplinary since operation of microdevices involves interaction of several energy domains of different physical nature, for example, mechanical, fluidic and electric forces. Dynamic behavior of contact-type electrostatic microactuators, such as a microswitches, is determined by nonlinear fluidic-structural, electrostatic-structural and vibro-impact interactions. The latter is particularly important: Therefore it is crucial to develop accurate computational models for numerical analysis of the aforementioned interactions in order to better understand coupled-field effects, study important system dynamic characteristics and thereby formulate guidelines for the development of more reliable microdevices with enhanced performance, reliability and functionality.

The flow of two-phase mixtures through restrictions. is a complex phenomenon that to date has not been fully described analytically. It is an area that received a geat deal of attention because of its application to nuclear reactor technology. The majority of the work done in this area considered ideal geometries such as nozzles, orifices and straight pipes. In the area of control valves very little work has been done. Brockett & King [1] studied subcooled water. Stiles [2] looked at subcooled freon. Martinec [4] compared subcooled freon in valves with ideal geometries. Sheldon & Schuder [3) looked experimentally at airjwater mixtures through valves that resulted in a sizing procedure. Fagerlund [10] presented an analytical model that required use of the Sheldon & Schuder data to establish the behavior of valves as opposed to more ideal geometries. However, the data used was limited to a single valve travel. Fagerlund & Storer [11] have expanded this to include several valve travels that further generalizes the technique. It is the intent of this paper to summarize a practical approach to s1z1ng valves for two-phase service that may be reduced to either a graphical or calculator procedure. Discussion of Analysis A fundamental assumption in this method is that the quality remains constant between the inlet and the vena contracta. For gas-liquid flows it is obvious providing vaporization does not occur.

This volume, Mechanical Design: Theory and Methodology, has been put together over the past four years. Most of the work is ongoing as can be ascertained easily from the text. One can argue that this is so for any text or monograph. Any such book is only a snapshot in time, giving information about the state of knowledge of the authors when the book was compiled. The chapters have been updated and are representative of the state of the art in the field of design theory and methodology. It is barely over a decade that design as an area of study was revived, mostly at the behest of industry, government, and academic leaders. Profes sor Nam Suh, then the head of the Engineering Directorate at the National Science Foundation, provided much of the impetus for the needed effort. The results of early work of researchers, many of whom have authored chapters in this book, were fundamental in conceiving the ideas behind Design for X or DFX and concurrent engineering issues. The artificial intelli gence community had a strong influence in developing the required com puter tools mainly because the field had a history of interdisciplinary work. Psychologists, computer scientists, and engineers worked together to under stand what support tools will improve the design process. While this influ ence continues today, there is an increased awareness that a much broader community needs to be involved."

Mechanical design includes an optimization process in which designers always consider objectives such as strength, deflection, weight, wear, corrosion, etc. depending on the requirements. However, design optimization for a complete mechanical assembly leads to a complicated objective function with a large number of design variables. It is a good practice to apply optimization techniques for individual components or intermediate assemblies than a complete assembly. Analytical or numerical methods for calculating the extreme values of a function may perform well in many practical cases, but may fail in more complex design situations. In real design problems, the number of design parameters can be very large and their influence on the value to be optimized (the goal function) can be very complicated, having nonlinear character. In these complex cases, advanced optimization algorithms offer solutions to the problems, because they find a solution near to the global optimum within reasonable time and computational costs.

"Mechanical Design Optimization Using Advanced Optimization Techniques" presents a comprehensive review on latest research and development trends for design optimization of mechanical elements and devices. Using examples of various mechanical elements and devices, the possibilities for design optimization with advanced optimization techniques are demonstrated. Basic and advanced concepts of traditional and advanced optimization techniques are presented, along with real case studies, results of applications of the proposed techniques, and the best optimization strategies to achieve best performance are highlighted. Furthermore, a novel advanced optimization method named teaching-learning-based optimization (TLBO) is presented in this book and this method shows better performance with less computational effort for the large scale problems.

"Mechanical Design Optimization Using Advanced Optimization Techniques" is intended for designers, practitioners, managers, institutes involved in design related projects, applied research workers, academics, and graduate students in mechanical and industrial engineering and will be useful to the industrial product designers for realizing a product as it presents new models and optimization techniques to make tasks easier, logical, efficient and effective.

This book contains the papers included in the proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on High-speed and Intercity Railways (IWHIR 2011) held in Shenzhen and Hong Kong, China from July 19 to July 22, 2011, which is organized by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, in collaboration with Southwest Jiaotong University, Beijing Jiaotong University, Dalian Jiaotong University, China Engineering Consultants, Inc., Zhejiang University, and Tsinghua University. Continuing the great initiatives and momentums of the rapid development in high-speed and intercity railways worldwide in recent years, IWHIR 2011 aims at providing a platform for academic scholars and practicing engineers to share knowledge and experience, to promote collaboration, and to strengthen R&D activities related to railway engineering. Engineers, scientists, professors, and students from universities, research institutes, and related industrial companies have been cordially invited to participate in the workshop. These papers have covered a wide range of issues concerning high-speed and intercity railways in the theoretical, numerical, and experimental work pertaining to high-speed and intercity railways. Showcasing diversity and quality, these papers report the state-of-the-art and point to future directions of research and development in this exciting area.

Bringing together the expertise of worldwide authorities in the field, Design for X is the first comprehensive book to offer systematic and structured coverage of contemporary and concurrent product development techniques. It features over fifteen techniques, including: design for manufacture and assembly; design for distribution; design for quality; and design for the environment. Alternative approaches and common elements are discussed and critical issues such as integration and tradeoff are explored.

Features include: jargon-free language with well-tried, real-world examples; useful tips for managers at the end of each chapter; a comprehensive bibliography at the end of the book. It is also highly informative for graduate and undergraduate engineering students and ideally suited for establishing a web-based design management system for geographically dispersed teams. Changes in the second edition: New case studies. Expanded text in each chapter (about 50 new pages worth) including a wholly new chapter on the analysis of the design process as a whole.

In order to compete in the current commercial environment companies must produce greater product variety, at lower cost, all within a reduced product life cycle. To achieve this, a concurrent engineering philosophy is often adopted. In many cases the main realization of this is Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DFM/A). There is a need for in-depth study of the architectures for DFM/A systems in order that the latest software and knowledge-based techniques may be used to deliver the DFM/A systems of tomorrow. This architecture must be based upon complete understanding of the issues involved in integrating the design and manufacturing domains. This book provides a comprehensive view of the capabilities of advanced DFM/A systems based on a common architecture.

Both academia and the real world are showing a vastly increased interest in international logistics. Although this book covers the entire topic, it may not contain sufficient detail to answer all questions. The topic-and the challenge is much larger than any single book can cover! A number of people helped us, and their assistance should be recognized. They include Robert L. Argentieri, Eunice Coleman, Patricia J. Daugherty, Robert Derbin, Robert Hannus, Ken Knox, Douglas Long, Eugene L. Magad, Dale S. Rogers, Robert Rouse, John Silvey, and Clyde Kenneth Walter. This book is designed for both the business world and the classroom. A separate Instructor's Manual has been prepared and may be requested on school letterhead from Chapman & Hall. International Logistics 1 Introduction This book is about international logistics and the international logistics system. International means that it will deal with transactions involving indi viduals or firms in more than one nation. Logistics means the organized movement of goods, ser vices, and, sometimes, people. Logistics was originally a military term. For exam ple, in author Tom Clancy's novel, Red Storm Rising, Russian General Alekseyev thought to himself about a battlefield situation: "The tactics ... no, amateurs dis cuss tactics. Professional soldiers study logistics. ,,1 When one speaks of the intema tionallogistics system, he means that huge array of carriers, forwarders, bankers, traders, and so on that facilitate international transactions, trades, and movements of goods and services. Communications are important, and a logistics system in cludes whatever communication capability it needs.

In the last decade the research in signal analysis was dominated by models that encompass nonstationarity as an important feature. This book presents the results of a workshop held in Grodek Polandin February 2013 which was dedicated to the investigation of cyclostationary signals. Its main objective is to highlight the strong interactions between theory and applications of cyclostationary signals with the use of modern statistical tools.

An important application of cyclostationary signals is the analysis of mechanical signals generated by a vibrating mechanism. Cyclostationary models are very important to perform basic operations on signals in both time and frequency domains. One of the fundamental problems in diagnosis of rotating machine is the identification of significant modulating frequencies that contribute to the cyclostationary nature of the signals. The book shows that there are modern tools available for analyzing cyclostationary signals without the assumption of gaussianity. Those methods are based on the ideas of bootstrap, subsampling and Fraction-of-time (FOT) models. The book is organised in two parts. The first part will be dedicated to pure theory on cyclostationarity. Applications are presented in the second part including several mechanical systems such as bearings, gears, with or without damages."

Plate structures are used in almost every area of engineering, including aerospace and naval architecture, civil engineering, and electronics. These structures have diverse geometries and have to withstand a wide range of loading conditions. This book provides the theoretical foundations of the theories of plates manufactured from various materials, outlines and illustrates the methods used for the analysis of these structures, and emphasizes designs and solution techniques available to an engineer. The book is written for engineers working in industry, graduate students at aerospace, mechanical, civil engineering and naval architecture departments, and investigators interested in the development of the theory of plates and related subjects. While the mathematical modeling employed in the book is understandable to both engineers and graduate students, the book also provides insight into relevant phenomena and theories underlying plate structures. Thus, the reader is equipped with a thorough understanding of the problems and appropriate assumptions, even if the analysis is conducted using commercially available software codes. In addition, the book includes numerous analytical solutions that can confidently be used in the design of plate structures. The combination of theoretical insight and references to practical problems makes the book equally attractive to academia and industry.

We describe in this book, bio-inspired models and applications of hybrid intel- gent systems using soft computing techniques for image analysis and pattern r- ognition based on biometrics and other information sources. Soft Computing (SC) consists of several intelligent computing paradigms, including fuzzy logic, neural networks, and bio-inspired optimization algorithms, which can be used to produce powerful hybrid intelligent systems. The book is organized in five main parts, which contain a group of papers around a similar subject. The first part consists of papers with the main theme of classification methods and applications, which are basically papers that propose new models for classification to solve general pr- lems and applications. The second part contains papers with the main theme of modular neural networks in pattern recognition, which are basically papers using bio-inspired techniques, like modular neural networks, for achieving pattern r- ognition based on biometric measures. The third part contains papers with the theme of bio-inspired optimization methods and applications to diverse problems. The fourth part contains papers that deal with general theory and algorithms of bio-inspired methods, like neural networks and evolutionary algorithms. The fifth part contains papers on computer vision applications of soft computing methods. In the part of classification methods and applications there are 5 papers that - scribe different contributions on fuzzy logic and bio-inspired models with appli- tion in classification for medical images and other data.

Dealing with environmental issues should no longer be considered simply as a cost of doing business. Effective environmental improvements to a company's products and services can be turned into business opportunities. This book was written with the express purpose of helping managers of companies, in particular of Small to Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs), to better deal with environmental challenges and address customer requirements, all in order to turn their environmental inve- ments into competitive market advantages. Several examples are provided throughout the book, but also warning signs (Alert Boxes). These "Alerts" are posted to help managers avoid typical traps when working with environmental considerations in business processes. The authors have many years of experience in the various aspects of impleme- ing Ecodesign. This experience includes working in industry for many years; le- ing the environmental departments in a multinational company; managing research projects in eco-product development; Life Cycle Assessment; and national and international environmental communication and marketing. This book is the latest in a series. The 2002 "Ecodesign Pilot" introduced a tool and software to help design more environmentally compatible products. It was directed specifically at designers. The 2004 book, "Ecodesign Implementation," was written to help project managers optimize product development processes from an environmental perspective.

This book is devoted to the optimization of product design and manufacturing systems. It contains selected and carefully composed articles based on presentations given at the IDMME conference held in Nantes, France in 1996. The authors are all involved in cutting-edge research in their respective fields of specialization. The integration of manufacturing constraints and their optimization in the design process is becoming more and more widespread in the development of mechanical products or systems. There is a clear industrial need for these kind of methodologies. Important - but still unsolved - problems are related to the definition of design processes, the choice of optimal manufacturing processes and their integration through coherent methodologies in adapted environments. The main topics addressed in this book are: the optimization and evaluation of the product design process (design methodology, representation and integration of design constraints, design for manufacturing, synthesis of objects with constraints, automatic modelling) the optimization and evaluation of the manufacturing systems (modelling of machining processes, modelling for control and measuring, feature-based manufacturing, CAM and off-line programming) some methodological aspects (computational geometry, simultaneous and concurrent engineering, integrated design and CAD/CAM systems, object modelling, feature-based modelling, design and communication, automatic solvers and optimizers) . Apart from giving a thorough theoretical background, a very important theme is the relation between research and industrial applications. The book is of interest for engineers, researchers and PhD students who are involved in the optimization of design and manufacturing processes.

As Directors of this NATO Workshop we welcome this opportunity to record formally our thanks to the NATO Scientific Affairs Division for making our meeting possible through generous financial support and encouragement. This meeting had two purposes: the first obvious one because we have collected key scientists from East and West together to discuss the latest developments in the design against fatigue for structures and components. The second is less obvious but perhaps in the longer term more important; that is the building of bridges between East and West Europe, bridges cemented in the first place by personal friendship between scientists. Fatigue is the process by which structures subjected to cyclical loads deteriorate. The advent of the industrial revolution and in particular the spread of railways caused this phenomena to be recognised and studied some 150 years ago. Despite intensive efforts over the years and despite a huge increase in our theoretical and practical understanding offatigue, failures still occur causing economic disruption and even loss of life. Some of the reasons lying behind this apparent failure to apply advanced knowledge to everyday engineering were explored during this Workshop. Economic pressures to extend the lives of existing plant are becoming more intense. Therefore of vital importance is the generation of knowledge used to assess the performance of existing structures and machines and to produce guidance on their continued safe operation.

The importance of proper geometric dimensioning and tolerancing as a means of expressing the designer's functional intent and controlling the inevitable geometric and dimensional variations of mechanical parts and assemblies, is becoming well recognized. The research efforts and innovations in the field of tolerancing design, the development of supporting tools, techniques and algorithms, and the significant advances in computing software and hardware all have contributed to its recognition as a viable area of serious scholarly contributions. The field of tolerancing design is successfully making the transition to maturity where deeper insights and sound theories are being developed to offer explanations, and reliable implementations are introduced to provide solutions. Machine designers realized very early that manufacturing processes do not produce the nominal dimensions of designed parts. The notion of associating a lower and an upper limit, referred to as tolerances, with each dimen sion was introduced. Tolerances were specified to ensure the proper function of mating features. Fits of mating features included clearances, location fits, and interference fits, with various sub-grades in each category assigned a tolerance value depending on the nominal size of the mating features. During the inspection process, a part is rejected if a dimension fell outside the specified range. As the accuracy requirements in assemblies became tighter, designers had to consider other critical dimensions and allocate tolerances to them in order to ensure the assembly's functionality.