This is the first book to offer a comprehensive exploration of new methods in inverse problems in electromagnetics. The book provides systematic descriptions of the most important practical inverse problems, and details new methods to solve them. Also included are descriptions of the properties of inverse problems and known solutions, as well as reviews of the practical implementation of these methods in electric circuit theory and electromagnetic fields theory. This comprehensive collection of modern theoretical ideas and methods to solve inverse problems will be of value to both students and working professionals.

Multibody systems are used extensively in the investigation of mechanical systems including structural and non-structural applications. It can be argued that among all the areas in solid mechanics the methodologies and applications associated to multibody dynamics are those that provide an ideal framework to aggregate d- ferent disciplines. This idea is clearly reflected, e. g. , in the multidisciplinary applications in biomechanics that use multibody dynamics to describe the motion of the biological entities, in finite elements where multibody dynamics provides - werful tools to describe large motion and kinematic restrictions between system components, in system control where the methodologies used in multibody dynamics are the prime form of describing the systems under analysis, or even in many - plications that involve fluid-structure interaction or aero elasticity. The development of industrial products or the development of analysis tools, using multibody dynamics methodologies, requires that the final result of the devel- ments are the best possible within some limitations, i. e. , they must be optimal. Furthermore, the performance of the developed systems must either be relatively insensitive to some of their design parameters or be sensitive in a controlled manner to other variables. Therefore, the sensitivity analysis of such systems is fundamental to support the decision making process. This book presents a broad range of tools for designing mechanical systems ranging from the kinematic and dynamic analysis of rigid and flexible multibody systems to their advanced optimization.

This book has evolved from a course on Mechanics of Robots that the author has thought for over a dozen years at the University of Cassino at Cassino, Italy. It is addressed mainly to graduate students in mechanical engineering although the course has also attracted students in electrical engineering. The purpose of the book consists of presenting robots and robotized systems in such a way that they can be used and designed for industrial and innovative non-industrial applications with no great efforts. The content of the book has been kept at a fairly practical level with the aim to teach how to model, simulate, and operate robotic mechanical systems. The chapters have been written and organized in a way that they can be red even separately, so that they can be used separately for different courses and readers. However, many advanced concepts are briefly explained and their use is empathized with illustrative examples. Therefore, the book is directed not only to students but also to robot users both from practical and theoretical viewpoints. In fact, topics that are treated in the book have been selected as of current interest in the field of Robotics. Some of the material presented is based upon the author's own research in the field since the late 1980's.

For over forty years, Materials for Engineers and Technicians has given thousands of students an easily accessible introduction to materials engineering and manufacturing processes. This renowned text is a comprehensive overview of the wide-ranging subject area, written in a straightforward, readable style. It is devoid of excessive jargon and mathematical complexity, and retains a practical down-to-earth approach. This expanded edition references specifications for materials and materials testing that have been updated to include European-wide standards of the EU. More applications of materials and case studies have been included. New content discusses the choice of materials and processes in relation to 3D printing and the importance of materials recycling and sustainability. The increased emphasis on the selection of materials reflects this aspect of materials engineering now seen within current vocational and university courses. In addition to meeting the requirements of vocational and undergraduate engineering syllabuses, this text also serves as a valuable desktop reference for professional engineers working in product design who require a quick source of information on materials and manufacturing processes.

Simulation is a widely used methodology in all Applied Science disciplines. This textbook focuses on this crucial phase in the overall process of applying simulation, and includes the best of both classic and modern methods of simulation experimentation. This book will be the standard reference book on the topic for both researchers and sophisticated practitioners, and it will be used as a textbook in courses or seminars focusing on this topic.

Essential to anyone involved in the planning, design, construction, operation, or finance of infrastructure assets, this innovative work puts project delivery, finance, and operation together in a practical new formulation of how public and private owners can better manage their entire collection of infrastructure facilities.

This book contains an edited version of the lectures and selected contributions presented during the Advanced Summer Institute on "Product Engineering: Eco-Design, Technologies and Green Energy" organized at the st Transilvania University of Brasov (Romania) in the period 14-21 of July 2004. The Advanced Summer Institute (ASI) was organized in the framework of the European FP5 funded project "ADEPT - Advanced computer aided Design of Ecological Products and Technologies integrating green energy sources" and was devoted to the Product Engineering field, with particular attention to the aspects related to the environmentally conscious design and green energy sources. The objective of the ASI was to create the framework for meeting of leading scientists with PhD holders and advanced PhD students carrying out research in the field of Eco-Design, CAD, Simulation technologies, Robotics, Manufacturing and green energy sources. The aim was to create conditions for high level training through a series of 15 invited lectures presented by world reputed scientists, as well as to give possibilities for young researchers to present their achievements and to establish professional contacts. The ASI was seen also as an opportunity for academics, practitioners and consultants from Europe and elsewhere who are involved in the study, management, development and implementation of product engineering principles in the learning and teaching sectors, as well as professionals to come together and share ideas on projects and examples of best practice.

This volume contains the selected manuscripts of the papers presented at the Second IDMME Conference on "Integrated Design and Manufacturing in Mechanical Engineering," held in Compiegne, France, at the University of Technology of Compiegne, May 27-29, 1998. The purpose of the Conference was to present and discuss topics dealing with the optimization of product design and manufacturing processes with particular attention to (1) the analysis and optimum design of mechanical parts and mechanisms (2) the modeling of forming processes (3) the development of computer aided manufacturing tools (4) the methodological aspects of integrated design and manufacturing in adapted technical and human environments. The initiative of the conference and the organization thereof is mainly due to the efforts of the french PRIMECA group (Pool of Computer ResoUfces for Mechanics). The international Institution for Production Engineering Research (C.I.R.P.) was helpful to attract international participants. The conference brought together three hundred and twenty worldwide participants.

This volume contains selected manuscripts of the papers presented at the 4th International Conference on Integrated Design and Manufacturing in Mechanical Engineering - IDMME 2002 held in Clermont-Ferrand, France, at the Institut Franyais de Mecanique A vancee (French Institute for Advanced Mechanics), May 14-16,2002. Following the first three IDMME conferences (held in Nantes in 1966, in Compiegne in 1998 and in Montreal in 2000), the purpose of IDMME 2002 conference was to present recent developments in the integration and the optimization of product design and manufacturing systems. The initiative and the organization of the conference exists thanks to the French national network AIP-PRIMECA (AlP - Ateliers Inter Etablissements de Productique I Inter-Institute Productics Workshops and PRIMECA - Pole de Ressources Informatiques pour la MECAnique I Computer Resource Pole for Mechanics). The conference benefited from the scientific sponsoring of AFM - Association Franyaise de Mecanique (French Association of Mechanical Engineering), ASME - American Society of Mechanical Engineering, CIRP - College International pour l'Etude Scientifique des Techniques de Production Mecanique (International Institution for Production Engineering Research), CSMA - Computational Structural Mechanics Association, IFToMM - International Federation for the Theory of Machines and Mechanisms, SCGM/CSME - Societe Canadienne de Genie Mecanique I Canadian Society of Mechanical Engineering."

New manufacturing technologies have made possible the integration of entire systems on a single chip. This new design paradigm, termed system-on-chip (SOC), together with its associated manufacturing problems, represents a real challenge for designers.

SOC is also reshaping approaches to test and validation activities. These are beginning to migrate from the traditional register-transfer or gate levels of abstraction to the system level. Until now, test and validation have not been supported by system-level design tools so designers have lacked the infrastructure to exploit all the benefits stemming from the adoption of the system level of abstraction. Research efforts are already addressing this issue.

This monograph provides a state-of-the-art overview of the current validation and test techniques by covering all aspects of the subject including:

• modeling of bugs and defects;
• stimulus generation for validation and test purposes (including timing errors;
• design for testability.

High-speed Photodiodes in Standard CMOS Technology describes high-speed photodiodes in standard CMOS technology which allow monolithic integration of optical receivers for short-haul communication. For short haul communication the cost aspect is important, and therefore it is desirable that the optical receiver can be integrated in the same CMOS technology as the rest of the system. If this is possible then ultimately a singe-chip system including optical inputs becomes feasible, eliminating EMC and crosstalk problems, while data rate can be extremely high.

The problem of photodiodes in standard CMOS technology it that they have very limited bandwidth, allowing data rates up to only 50Mbit per second. High-speed Photodiodes in Standard CMOS Technology first analyzes the photodiode behaviour and compares existing solutions to enhance the speed. After this, the book introduces a new and robust electronic equalizer technique that makes data rates of 3Gb/s possible, without changing the manufacturing technology. The application of this technique can be found in short haul fibre communication, optical printed circuit boards, but also photodiodes for laser disks.

A new discipline is said to attain maturity when the subject matter takes the shape of a textbook. Several textbooks later, the discipline tends to acquire a firm place in the curriculum for teaching and learning. Computer Aided Engineering Design (CAED), barely three decades old, is interdisciplinary in nature whose boundaries are still expanding. However, it draws its core strength from several acknowledged and diverse areas such as computer graphics, differential geometry, Boolean algebra, computational geometry, topological spaces, numerical analysis, mechanics of solids, engineering design and a few others. CAED also needs to show its strong linkages with Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM). As is true with any growing discipline, the literature is widespread in research journals, edited books, and conference proceedings. Various textbooks have appeared with different biases, like geometric modeling, computer graphics, and CAD/CAM over the last decade. This book goes into mathematical foundations and the core subjects of CAED without allowing itself to be overshadowed by computer graphics. It is written in a logical and thorough manner for use mainly by senior and graduate level students as well as users and developers of CAD software. The book covers (a) The fundamental concepts of geometric modeling so that a real understanding of designing synthetic surfaces and solid modeling can be achieved. (b) A wide spectrum of CAED topics such as CAD of linkages and machine elements, finite element analysis, optimization. (c) Application of these methods to real world problems.

This book examines concepts and tools for selecting and modifying a combination of technologies that will be either developed by a technology supply organization, such as a national laboratory or a corporate research center, or adopted by a technology application organization, such as a government administrative office or a corporation management department, to either advance public goals or enhance corporate strategies.

Since the dawn of civilization, mankind has been engaged in the conception and manufacture of discrete products to serve the functional needs of local customers and the tools (technology) needed by other craftsmen. In fact, much of the progress in civilization can be attributed to progress in discrete product manufacture. The functionality of a discrete object depends on two entities: form, and material composition. For instance, the aesthetic appearance of a sculpture depends upon its form whereas its durability depends upon the material composition. An ideal manufacturing process is one that is able to automatically generate any form (freeform) in any material. However, unfortunately, most traditional manufacturing processes are severely constrained on all these counts. There are three basic ways of creating form: conservative, subtractive, and additive. In the first approach, we take a material and apply the needed forces to deform it to the required shape, without either adding or removing material, i. e. , we conserve material. Many industrial processes such as forging, casting, sheet metal forming and extrusion emulate this approach. A problem with many of these approaches is that they focus on form generation without explicitly providing any means for controlling material composition. In fact, even form is not created directly. They merely duplicate the external form embedded in external tooling such as dies and molds and the internal form embedded in cores, etc. Till recently, we have had to resort to the 'subtractive' approach to create the form of the tooling.

The 2nd edition of defect oriented testing has been extensively updated. New chapters on Functional, Parametric Defect Models and Inductive fault Analysis and Yield Engineering have been added to provide a link between defect sources and yield. The chapter on RAM testing has been updated with focus on parametric and SRAM stability testing. Similarly, newer material has been incorporated in digital fault modeling and analog testing chapters. The strength of Defect Oriented Testing for nano-Metric CMOS VLSIs lies in its industrial relevance.

The scope of this book is to identify and emphasize the successful link between computational materials modeling as a simulation and design tool and its synergistic application to experimental research and alloy development. The book provides a more balanced perspective of the role that computational modeling can play in every day research and development efforts. Each chapter describes one or more particular computational tool and how they are best used.

This is the first book of robotics presenting solutions of uncoupled and fully-isotropic parallel robotic manipulators and a method for their structural synthesis. Part 1 presents the methodology proposed for structural synthesis. Part 2 presents the various topologies of parallel robots generated by this systematic approach. Many solutions are presented here for the first time. The book will contribute to a widespread implementation of these solutions in industrial products.

Reliability theory is a major concern for engineers and managers engaged in making high quality products and designing highly reliable systems. "Advanced Reliability Models and Maintenance Policies" is a survey of new research topics in reliability theory and optimization techniques in reliability engineering. The book introduces partition and redundant problems within reliability models, and provides optimization techniques. The book also indicates how to perform maintenance in a finite time span and at failure detection, and to apply recovery techniques for computer systems. New themes such as reliability complexity and service reliability in reliability theory are theoretically proposed, and optimization problems in management science using reliability techniques are presented. The book is an essential guide for graduate students and researchers in reliability theory, and a valuable reference for reliability engineers engaged both in maintenance work and in management and computer systems.

As an overview of reliability performance and specification in new product development, Product Reliability is suitable for managers responsible for new product development. The methodology for making decisions relating to reliability performance and specification will be of use to engineers involved in product design and development. This book can be used as a text for graduate courses on design, manufacturing, new product development and operations management and in various engineering disciplines.

engineers into a single volume whilst concentrating on two important research control design problems: autopilots with rudder-roll stabilization and fin and combined rudder-fin stabilization. He has been guided by some of the leading marine control academics, in particular Mogens Blanke and Thor Fossen; indeed Chapters 3 and 4 on kinematics and kinetics of ship motion are jointly authored with Professor Fossen. There are some 240 cited references - an invaluable resource for interested readers. The volume is likely to appeal to a wide range of readers who will each be able to extract something different from the various parts of the monograph. Part I has some four chapters on the modelling fundamentals including kinematics, dynamics and actuators. Part II is a very useful survey of the ship roll stabilization problem and how ship roll performance is measured and assessed. This clearly motivates the human necessity for roll-reduction and roll stabilization. Parts III and IV move on to the control systems aspects of the various stabilization designs. Valuable material here includes a study of system performance limitations as caused by the presence of non-minimum phase characteristics and actuator saturation. Chapter 10 has an interesting historical review of these marine control problems stretching back some thirty-years into the 1970s.

This superb text provides a systematic way to support the system architect in this job. Therefore, an iterative system-level design approach is defined where iterations are based on fast and accurate estimations or predictions of area, performance and energy consumption. This method is illustrated with a concrete real life example of multi-carrier communication. This book is the result of a Ph.D. thesis, which is part of the UbiCom project at Delft University of Technology.

A representation of objects by their parts is the dominant strategy for representing complex 3D objects in many disciplines. In computer vision and robotics, superquadrics are among the most widespread part models. Superquadrics are a family of parametric models that cover a wide variety of smoothly changing 3D symmetric shapes, which are controlled with a small number of parameters and which can be augmented with the addition of global and local deformations. The book covers, in depth, the geometric properties of superquadrics. The main contribution of the book is an original approach to the recovery and segmentation of superquadrics from range images. Several applications of superquadrics in computer vision and robotics are thoroughly discussed and, in particular, the use of superquadrics for range image registration is demonstrated. Audience: The book is intended for readers of all levels who are familiar with and interested in computer vision issues.

The aim of this publication is to present the research results in robotics that are now state-of-the-art, and indicate the possible future lines of development. To effectively work and cooperate with us, robots must exhibit abilities that are comparable to those of humans. The book describes the ongoing efforts to design and develop human-friendly robotic systems that can safely and effectively interact and work with humans.

The Analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) is the most pervasive block in electronic systems. With the advent of powerful digital signal processing and digital communication techniques, ADCs are fast becoming critical components for system's performance and flexibility. Knowing accurately all the parameters that characterise their dynamic behaviour is crucial, on one hand to select the most adequate ADC architecture and characteristics for each end application, and on the other hand, to understand how they affect performance bottlenecks in the signal processing chain.

Dynamic Characterisation of Analogue-to-Digital Converters presents a state of the art overview of the methods and procedures employed for characterising ADCs' dynamic performance behaviour using sinusoidal stimuli. The three classical methods - histogram, sine wave fitting, and spectral analysis - are thoroughly described, and new approaches are proposed to circumvent some of their limitations.

This is a must-have compendium, which can be used by both academics and test professionals to understand the fundamental mathematics underlining the algorithms of ADC testing, and as an handbook to help the engineer in the most important and critical details for their implementation.

During the 1980s and early 1990s there was signi?cant work in the design and implementation of hardware neurocomputers. Nevertheless, most of these efforts may be judged to have been unsuccessful: at no time have have ha- ware neurocomputers been in wide use. This lack of success may be largely attributed to the fact that earlier work was almost entirely aimed at developing custom neurocomputers, based on ASIC technology, but for such niche - eas this technology was never suf?ciently developed or competitive enough to justify large-scale adoption. On the other hand, gate-arrays of the period m- tioned were never large enough nor fast enough for serious arti?cial-neur- network (ANN) applications. But technology has now improved: the capacity and performance of current FPGAs are such that they present a much more realistic alternative. Consequently neurocomputers based on FPGAs are now a much more practical proposition than they have been in the past. This book summarizes some work towards this goal and consists of 12 papers that were selected, after review, from a number of submissions. The book is nominally divided into three parts: Chapters 1 through 4 deal with foundational issues; Chapters 5 through 11 deal with a variety of implementations; and Chapter 12 looks at the lessons learned from a large-scale project and also reconsiders design issues in light of current and future technology.