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.

This book discusses the ways in which engineering educators are responding to the challenges that confront their profession. On the one hand, there is an overarching sustainability challenge: the need for engineers to relate to the problems brought to light in the debates about environmental protection, resource depletion, and climate change. There are also a range of societal challenges that are due to the permeation of science and technology into ever more areas of our societies and everyday lives, and finally, there are the intrinsic scientific and technological challenges stemming from the emergence of new fields of "technosciences" that mix science and technology in new combinations. In the book, the author discusses and exemplifies three contending response strategies on the part of engineers and engineering educators: a commercial strategy that links scientists and engineers into networks or systems of innovation; an academic strategy that reasserts the traditional values of science and engineering; and an integrative strategy that aims to combine scientific knowledge and engineering skills with cultural understanding and social responsibility by fostering what the author terms a "hybrid imagination." Professor Jamison combines scholarly analysis with personal reflections drawing on over forty years of experience as a humanist teaching science and engineering students about the broader social, political and cultural contexts of their fields. The book has been written as part of the Program of Research on Opportunities and Challenges in Engineering Education in Denmark (PROCEED), funded by the Danish Strategic Research Council, for which Professor Jamison has served as coordinator.

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.

This book compiles all aspects of biomimetics from fundamental principles to current technological advances and their future trends in the development of nanoscale biomaterials and tissue engineering. The scope of this book is principally confined to biologically-inspired design of materials and systems for the development of next generation nanobiomaterials and tissue engineering. The book addresses the state-of-the-art of research progress in the applications of the principles, processes, and techniques of biomimetics. The prospective outcomes of current advancements and challenges in biomimetic approaches are also presented.

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.

By incorporating biologically-inspired functions into ICT, various types of new-generation information and communication systems can be created. Just some example of areas already benefiting from such design inspiration are network architectures, information processing, molecular communication, and complex network modeling for solving real world-problems. This book provides the theoretical basis for understanding these developments and explains their practical applications. Highlighted inserts appears throughout to help readers to understand the very latest topics in these emerging research fields. The book ends with a more philosophical discussion on how new ICT solutions can be found by looking at analogous systems in biology. This new way of thinking may help researchers and practitioners to apply innovative ideas in developing next-generation technologies.

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.

The proceedings contain papers accepted for the 17th ISPE International Conference on Concurrent Engineering, which was held in Cracow, Poland, September 6-10, 2010. Concurrent Engineering (CE) has a history of over twenty years. At first, primary focus was on bringing downstream information as much upstream as possible, by introducing parallel processing of processes, in order to prevent errors at the later stage which would sometimes cause irrevocable damage and to reduce time to market. During the period of more than twenty years, numerous new concepts, methodologies and tools have been developed. During this period the background for engineering/manufacturing has changed extensively. Now, industry has to work with global markets. The globalization brought forth a new network of experts and companies across many different domains and fields in distributed environments. These collaborations integrated with very high level of profesionalism and specialisation, provided the basis for innovations in design and manufacturing and succeeded in creating new products on a global market.

This book covers the foundations and successes of Neuroergonomics, combining neuroscience and ergonomics to enhance efficiency and safety. An overview of the essential areas within the field is given including chapters on brain networks, perception, attention, and performance.

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 application of computational electromagnetics to practical EMI/EMC engineering is an emerging technology. Because of the increased complexity in EMI/EMC issues resulting from advancements in electronics and telecommunications, it is no longer possible to rely exclusively on traditional techniques and tools to solve the growing list of electronic engineering design problems. EMI/EMC Computational Modeling Handbook introduces modeling and simulation of electromagnetics to real-world EMI/EMC engineering. It combines the essentials of electromagnetics, computational techniques, and actual EMI/EMC applications. Included are such popular full-wave computational modeling techniques as the Method of Moments, Finite-Difference Time Domain Technique, Finite Element Method, and several others. The authors have included a myriad of applications for computers, telecommunications, consumer electronics, medical electronics, and military uses. EMI/EMC Computational Modeling Handbook is an invaluable reference work for practicing EMI/EMC engineers, electronic design engineers, and any engineer involved in computational electromagnetics.

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."

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.

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.

Composite Materials in Aerospace Design is one of six titles in a coherent and definitive series dedicated to advanced composite materials research, development and usage in the former Soviet Union. Much of the information presented has been classified until recently. Thus each volume provides a unique insight into hitherto unknown research and development data. This volume deals with the design philosophy and methodology used to produce primary and secondary load bearing composite structures with high life expectancies. The underlying theme is of extensive advanced composites research and development programs in aircraft and spacecraft applications, including the space orbital ship `BURAN'. The applicability of much of this work to other market sectors, such as automotive, shipbuilding and sporting goods is also examined in some detail. The text starts by describing typical structures for which composites may be used in this area and some of the basic requirements from the materials being used. Design of components with composite materials is then discussed, with specific reference to case studies. This is followed by discussion and results from evaluation of finished structures and components, methods of joining with conventional materials and finally, non-destructive testing methods and forecasting of the performance of the composite materials and the structures which they form. Composite Materials in Aerospace Design will be of interest to anyone researching or developing in composite materials science and technology, as well as design and aerospace engineers, both in industry and universities.

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.

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.

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 concerned with two intimately related topics of metaphysics: the identity of entities and the foundations of classification. What it adds to previous discussions of these topics is that it addresses them with respect to human-made entities, that is, artefacts. As the chapters in the book show, questions of identity and classification require other treatments and lead to other answers for artefacts than for natural entities. These answers are of interest to philosophers not only for their clarification of artefacts as a category of things but also for the new light they may shed on these issue with respect to to natural entities. This volume is structured in three parts. The contributions in Part I address basic ontological and metaphysical questions in relation to artefact kinds: How should we conceive of artefact kinds? Are they real kinds? How are identity conditions for artefacts and artefact kinds related? The contributions in Part II address meta-ontological questions: What, exactly, should an ontological account of artefact kinds provide us with? What scope can it aim for? Which ways of approaching the ontology of artefact kinds are there, how promising are they, and how should we assess this? In Part III, the essays offer engineering practice rather than theoretical philosophy as a point of reference. The issues addressed here include: How do engineers classify technical artefacts and on what grounds? What makes specific classes of technical artefacts candidates for ontologically real kinds, and by which criteria?

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.

The current marketplace is undergoing an accelerated pace of change that challenges corporations to innovate new techniques to respond rapidly to an ever-changing environment. At the center of this changing environment is a new generation of empowered buyers (customers) equipped with fast evolving technologies that allow them to buy from markets scattered across the globe. Empowering the customers has deprived organizations of what was once their right-to introduce new products slowly, at their own leisure. Organizations used to introduce new products every few years, and, for the most part, products offered limited functionalities and features. A low-priced quality product-irrespective of customer satisfaction-was a guaranteed ticket for success. New global economies and global markets changed business practices and focused on the customer as the major player in the economy. Organizations now fail or succeed based upon their ability to respond quickly to changing customer demands and to utilize new technological innovations. In such an environment, the advantage goes to the firm that can offer greater varieties of new products with higher performance and greater overall appeal. In order to compete in this fast-paced global market, organizations need to produce products that can be easily configured to offer distinctive capabilities compared to the competition. Furthermore, organizations need to develop new methods and techniques to react rapidly to required changes in products and market trends and to shorten the product development cycle, which will enable them to gain more economic competitiveness.