This book is about the history of product variety in the US automotive industry from the black Ford-T to hot-rodders and easy-riders up to latest trends. It focuses on the dual structure of automotive industry in the United States: on one hand, relatively few and large companies producing cars that apparently achieve a degree of market power through product differentiation, and on the other hand, a relatively small niche market with distinct and smaller producers offering specialty equipment to enhance the performance, appearance, and handling of vehicles. The book presents novel results from an in-depth study with implications for both economic theory and the management of product variety.

The field of structural optimization is still a relatively new field undergoing rapid changes in methods and focus. Until recently there was a severe imbalance between the enormous amount of literature on the subject, and the paucity of applications to practical design problems. This imbalance is being gradually redressed now. There is still no shortage of new publications, but there are also exciting applications of the methods of structural optimizations in the automotive, aerospace, civil engineering, machine design and other engineering fields. As a result of the growing pace of applications, research into structural optimization methods is increasingly driven by real-life problems. Most engineers who design structures employ complex general-purpose software packages for structural analysis. Often they do not have any access to the source the details of program, and even more frequently they have only scant knowledge of the structural analysis algorithms used in this software packages. Therefore the major challenge faced by researchers in structural optimization is to develop methods that are suitable for use with such software packages. Another major challenge is the high computational cost associated with the analysis of many complex real-life problems. In many cases the engineer who has the task of designing a structure cannot afford to analyze it more than a handful of times.

Autonomy for Marine Robots provides a timely and insightful overview of intelligent autonomy in marine robots. A brief history of this emerging field is provided, along with a discussion of the challenges unique to the underwater environment and their impact on the level of intelligent autonomy required. Topics covered at length examine advanced frameworks, path-planning, fault tolerance, machine learning, and cooperation as relevant to marine robots that need intelligent autonomy.

The combination of conductive polymer technology with the ability to produce nanofibres will facilitate major new developments in biotechnology and information technology, benefiting such areas as scaffolds for tissue engineering and drug delivery systems; wires, capacitors, transistors and diodes; sensor technology; biohazard protection; and energy transport, conversion and storage. The work on nanofibrous materials presented here is designed, first of all, to instruct scientists in the most advanced methods for the formation of nanofibres and nanotubes. The second section covers the physics and chemistry of nanofibres, while the third deals with computer simulation and modelling. The applications described in section 4 include biomedical applications, nanotube-based devices, electronic applications of nanotubes and nanofibres, nanofluidics, and composites. Finally, the fifth section discusses recent developments in nanomaterials, nanoparticles and nanostructures.

Automotive technicians and students need a firm grasp of science and technology in order to fully appreciate and understand how mechanisms and systems of modern vehicles work. Automotive Science and Mathematics presents the necessary principles and applications with all the examples and exercises relating directly to motor vehicle technology and repair, making it easy for automotive students and apprentices to relate the theory back to their working practice. The coverage of this book is based on the syllabus requirements of the BTEC First in Vehicle Technology, BTEC National in Vehicle Repair and Technology, and the IMI Certificate and Diploma in Vehicle Maintenance and Repair, but will help all automotive students and apprentices at levels 2 and 3 and up to and including HNC/HND, foundation and first degree with their studies and in achieving the Key Skill 'Application of Number' at levels 2 and 3. The book is designed to cater for both light and heavy vehicle courses. Full worked solutions of most exercises are available as a free download from www.routledge.com/9780750685221 Allan Bonnick is a motor vehicle education and training consultant and was formerly Head of Motor Vehicle Engineering, Eastbourne College. He is the author of several established automotive engineering textbooks.

Composed of papers written by leading engineers and scientists in the field, this valuable collection reports the most recent advances in cryocooler development, contains extensive performance test results and comparisons, and relates the latest experience in integrating cryocoolers into advanced applications.

Focuses on the methods of solving incompressible flows, although flows with significant property change due to heat transfer are also covered. Covers turbulent flow simulation, unstructured mesh, and two-phase flows. Uses a practical approach for CFD to build a foundation for those planning to work on low-speed flows. Provides detailed steps of solving 1-D and 2-D flow examples and MATLAB (R) codes of important algorithms. Includes numerous real-word examples and worked problems.

This monograph introduces a numerical computational methodology for thermal performance modeling of cross-flow heat exchangers, with applications in chemical, refrigeration and automobile industries. This methodology allows obtaining effectiveness-number of transfer units (e-NTU) data and has been used for simulating several standard and complex flow arrangements configurations of cross-flow heat exchangers. Simulated results have been validated through comparisons with results from available exact and approximate analytical solutions. Very accurate results have been obtained over wide ranges of NTU and C* values in all cases. The proposed procedure constitutes a useful research tool for both theoretical and experimental studies of cross-flow heat exchangers. The following are the unique features of the book: - The monograph includes the computational code named HETE (Heat Exchanger Thermal Effectiveness) in Chapter 5. A version of this code is available for downloading. - The computational procedure could be used for reducing experimental data using the effectiveness - NTU (e-NTU) method in research and industrial laboratories. - Even after more than one century in heat exchanger research, the search for new flow arrangements with higher effectiveness still is an unsolved problem. The present methodology could be a useful tool in pursuing that goal.

Hans von Holst Royal Institute of Technology, WHO Collaborating Center, Sweden Ake Nygren Karolinska Institute, WHO Collaborating Center, Sweden Ake E. Andersson Institute for Futures Studies, Sweden n a recent study initiated by Harvard University, World Bank and I World Health Organization it was concluded that road injuries will be ranked from number 9 today to number 3 within the next two to three decades if authorities all over the world do not pay more attention to this significant problem. Injuries in traffic do not only concern the patient himself but also the relatives from an emotional point of view and the society from a socio economic point. Both emerging markets and industrial countries have significant experi ence of the events following a traffic accident. Much effort has been directed towards transportation of the victim from the scene of the accident to intensive care unit in the hospital. Simultaneously, the awareness of our knowledge about how these injuries should be prevented is striking. The focus of this second book of transportation, traffic safety and health is to further present some of the latest aspects in the area of mobility and its rela tion to planning of an optimal traffic safety with respect to our present knowl edge in the field. The volume contains a collection of contributions presented of scientists, clinicians and administrators at The Second International Conference on Transportation, Traffic Safety and Health, held in Brussels, Belgium, 1996."

The book investigates how, and which, forgiving road environments (FOR) and self-explaining road measures (SER) will contribute to increasing road safety and also increase network efficiency on the road. It presents both the general approach and the methodology for generating the possible FOR and SER measures. The book further discusses the prioritization and the testing methodologies, as well as the designing VMS methodology. The next parts of the book present a few important examples: lane departure warning systems; intelligent speed adaptation systems and perception enhancement studies; designs of European pictorial signs, e.g. for VMS but also examples of designs of European road wordings; and finally how personalization can take place of VMS signs and wordings for the individual driver. The last part shows the final evaluation of FOR and SER, and detailed Multiple Criterion Analysis and Cost Benefit Analyses are performed on a number of FOR and SER measures. This results in the development of a set of guidelines, conclusions and recommendations for the future.

Universal vehicular communication promises many improvements in terms of ac- dent avoidance and mitigation, better utilization of roads and resources such as time and fuel, and new opportunities for infotainment applications. However, before widespread acceptance, vehicular communication must meet challenges comparable to the trouble and disbelief that accompanied the introduction of traf c lights back then. The rst traf c light was installed in 1868 in London to signal railway, but only later, in 1912, was invented the rst red-green electric traf c light. And roughly 50 years after the rst traf c light, in 1920, the rst four-way traf c signal comparable to our today's traf c lights was introduced. The introduction of traf c signals was necessary after automobiles soon became prevalent once the rst car in history, actually a wooden motorcycle, was constructed in 1885. Soon, the scene became complicated, requiring the introduction of the "right-of-way" philosophy and later on the very rst traf c light. In the same way the traf c light was a necessary mean to regulate the beginning of the automotive life and to protect drivers, passengers, as well as pedestrians and other inhabitants of the road infrastructure, vehicular communication is necessary to accommodate the further growth of traf c volume and to signi cantly reduce the number of accidents.

The last two years have witnessed a continuation in the breakthrough shift toward pulse tube cryocoolers for long-life, high-reliability cryocooler applications. One class of pulse tubes that has reached maturity is referred to as "Stirling type" because they are based on the linear Oxford Stirling-cooler type compressor; these generally provide cooling in the 30 to 100 K temperature range and operate at frequencies from 30 to 60 Hz. The other type of pulse tube cooler making great advances is the so-called "Gifford-McMahon type. " Pulse tube coolers of this type use a G-M type compressor and lower frequency operation to achieve temperatures in the 2 to 10 K temperature range. Nearly a third of this proceedings covers these new developments in the pulse tube arena. Complementing the work on low-temperature pulse tubes is substantial continued progress on rare earth regenerator materials and Gifford-McMahon coolers. These technologies continue to make great progress in opening up the 2 - 4 K market. Also in the commercial sector, continued interest is being shown in the development of long-life, low-cost cryocoolers for the emerging high temperature superconductor electronics market, particularly the cellular telephone base-station market. At higher temperature levels, closed-cycle J-T or throttle-cycle refrigerators are taking advantage of mixed refrigerant gases to achieve low-cost cryocooler systems in the 65 to 80 K temperature range.

Compiled from papers of the 4th Biennial Workshop on DSP (Digital Signal Processing) for In-Vehicle Systems and Safety this edited collection features world-class experts from diverse fields focusing on integrating smart in-vehicle systems with human factors to enhance safety in automobiles. "Digital Signal Processing for In-Vehicle Systems and Safety" presents new approaches on how to reduce driver inattention and prevent road accidents.

The material addresses DSP technologies in adaptive automobiles, in-vehicle dialogue systems, human machine interfaces, video and audio processing, and in-vehicle speech systems. The volume also features recent advances in Smart-Car technology, coverage of autonomous vehicles that drive themselves, and information on multi-sensor fusion for driver ID and robust driver monitoring.

"Digital Signal Processing for In-Vehicle Systems and Safety" is useful for engineering researchers, students, automotive manufacturers, government foundations and engineers working in the areas of control engineering, signal processing, audio-video processing, bio-mechanics, human factors and transportation engineering.

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Vehicle Power Management addresses the challenge of improving vehicle fuel economy and reducing emissions without sacrificing vehicle performance, reliability and durability. It opens with the definition, objectives, and current research issues of vehicle power management, before moving on to a detailed introduction to the modeling of vehicle devices and components involved in the vehicle power management system, which has been proven to be the most cost-effective and efficient method for initial-phase vehicle research and design. Specific vehicle power management algorithms and strategies, including the analytical approach, optimal control, intelligent system approaches and wavelet technology, are derived and analyzed for realistic applications. Vehicle Power Management also gives a detailed description of several key technologies in the design phases of hybrid electric vehicles containing battery management systems, component optimization, hardware-in-the-loop and software-in-the-loop. Vehicle Power Management provides graduate and upper level undergraduate students, engineers, and researchers in both academia and the automotive industry, with a clear understanding of the concepts, methodologies, and prospects of vehicle power management.

The idea for this book was conceived by the authors some time in 1988, and a first outline of the manuscript was drawn up during a summer school on mathematical physics held in Ravello in September 1988, where all three of us were present as lecturers or organizers. The project was in some sense inherited from our friend Marvin Shinbrot, who had planned a book about recent progress for the Boltzmann equation, but, due to his untimely death in 1987, never got to do it. When we drew up the first outline, we could not anticipate how long the actual writing would stretch out. Our ambitions were high: We wanted to cover the modern mathematical theory of the Boltzmann equation, with rigorous proofs, in a complete and readable volume. As the years progressed, we withdrew to some degree from this first ambition- there was just too much material, too scattered, sometimes incomplete, sometimes not rigor ous enough. However, in the writing process itself, the need for the book became ever more apparent. The last twenty years have seen an amazing number of significant results in the field, many of them published in incom plete form, sometimes in obscure places, and sometimes without technical details. We made it our objective to collect these results, classify them, and present them as best we could. The choice of topics remains, of course, subjective.

A purpose of science is to organize diversified factual knowledge into a coherent body of information, and to present this from the simplest possible viewpoint. This is a formidable task where our knowledge is incomplete, as it is with explosions. Here one runs the risk of oversimplification, naivete, and incom pleteness. Nevertheless a purpose of this work is to present as simply as possible a general description of the basic nature of explosions. This treatise should be of interest to all who are working with explosives such as used in construction or in demolition work, in mining operations, or in military applications. It should also be of interest to those concemed with disasters such as explosions or earthquakes, to those involved in civil defense precautions, and to those concemed with defense against terrorists. That is, this material should be of interest to all who wish to utilize, or to avoid, the effects of explosions as weil as to those whose interest is primarily scientific in nature."

This book demonstrates the use of the optimization techniques that are becoming essential to meet the increasing stringency and variety of requirements for automotive systems. It shows the reader how to move away from earlierapproaches, based on some degree of heuristics, to the use ofmore and more common systematic methods. Even systematic methods can be developed and applied in a large number of forms so the text collects contributions from across the theory, methods and real-world automotive applications of optimization.

Greater fuel economy, significant reductions in permissible emissions, new drivability requirements and the generally increasing complexity of automotive systems are among the criteria that the contributing authors set themselves to meet. In many cases multiple and often conflicting requirements give rise to multi-objective constrained optimization problems which are also considered. Some of these problems fall into the domain of the traditional multi-disciplinary optimization applied to system, sub-system or component design parameters and is performed based on system models; others require applications of optimization directly to experimental systems to determine either optimal calibration or the optimal control trajectory/control law.

"Optimization and Optimal Control in Automotive Systems "reflects the state-of-the-art in and promotes a comprehensive approach to optimization in automotive systems by addressing its different facets, by discussing basic methods and showing practical approaches and specific applications of optimization to design and control problems for automotive systems. The book will be of interest both to academic researchers, either studying optimization or who have links with the automotive industry and to industrially-based engineers and automotive designers."

Over the last decade, flow visualization has advanced in step with the progress in laser and computer technologies. The scope of the International Symposium on Flow Visualiza- tion will be broader than ever, covering the range of infor- mation generally thought of as nonvisual and reflecting the inclusion of computer - aided methodologies. The Sixth In- ternational Symposium on Flow Visualization aims to attract the participation of experts and users of flow viualizing techniques on furthering an advanced philosophy for the de- velopment of the methods and their applications.

Microsystems are an important success factor in the automobile industry. In order to fulfil the customers requests for safety convenience and vehicle economy, and to satisfy environmental requirements, microsystems are becoming indispensable. Thus a large number of microsystem applications came into the discussion. With the international conference AMAA '99, VDI/VDE-IT provides a platform for the discussion of all MST relevant components for automotive applications. The conference proceedings gather the papers by authors from automobile suppliers and manufacturers.

This volume contains the papers presented. at the Third IFIP International Working Conference on Dependable Computing for Critical Applications, sponsored by IFIP Working Group 10.4 and held in Mondello (Sicily), Italy on September 14-16, 1992. System developers increasingly apply computers where they can affect the safety and security of people and equipment. The Third IFIP International Working Conference on Dependable Computing for Critical Applications, like its predecessors, addressed various aspects of computer system dependability, a broad term defined as the degree of trust that may justifiably be placed in a system's reliability, availability, safety, security, and performance. Because the scope of the conference was so broad, we hope the presentations and discussions will contribute to the integration of these concepts so that future computer-based systems will indeed be more dependable. The Program Committee selected 18 papers for presentation from a total of 7 4 submissions at a May meeting in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. The resulting program represented a broad spectrum of interests, with papers from universities, corporations, and government agencies in eight countries. Much diligent work by the Program Committee and the quality of reviews from more than a hundred external referees from around the world, for which we are most grateful, significantly eased the production of this technical program.

This book will consist of a coherent collection of recent results on near wall turbulence including theory, new experiments, DNS, and modeling with RANS, LES and Low Order Dynamical Systems.

The increasing trend towards electric cars leads to several challenges for the automobile industry, research institutes and politics as well as for the society. Research and serial development move closer together to meet automotive standards with new components like traction batteries integrated into hybrid and electrical drivetrains. Furthermore, the influence of e-mobility on the daily mobility behavior, the effects on the automotive supply chain and the impact on industrial production have to be taken into account. According to these complex aspects it is crucial to not only acquire specific knowledge in the particular fields but also to consider their functional interaction. Therefore, it seems essential to merge competence from science, economy and politics. This year, the annual "Conference on Future Automotive Technology" as the follow-up of the "2. Automobiltechnisches Kolloquium Munchen" focuses on the economical realization of widespread automotive electromobility.