This book provides concise descriptions of the various solutions of transition curves, which can be used in geometric design of roads and highways. It presents mathematical methods and curvature functions for defining transition curves.

This book highlights the aeolian processes in the desert zone of Kazakhstan and Central Asian Deserts, and analyzes the current status of dust and sand storms in Central Asia and Kazakhstan. It also highlights the analyses, dynamics and long-term observations of storms on the basis of numerous cartographic materials and satellite images. Dust/sand storms are a common and important phenomenon in the arid and semi-arid regions of Kazakhstan and Central Asia as well,especially in its southern parts, where areas are covered by a great variety of deserts and offer a significant source of mineral and salt aerosols. The deserts of Kazakhstan mostly cover lowlands and extend from the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea to the piedmonts of the Tien-Shan Mountain. In Kazakhstan and Central Asia desertification processes due to wind erosion in the form of dust/sand storms were observed in semi-desert and desert landscapes.

This book presents a selection of the best papers from the HEaRT 2015 conference, held in Lisbon, Portugal, which provided a valuable forum for engineers and architects, researchers and educators to exchange views and findings concerning the technological history, construction features and seismic behavior of historical timber-framed walls in the Mediterranean countries. The topics covered are wide ranging and include historical aspects and examples of the use of timber-framed construction systems in response to earthquakes, such as the gaiola system in Portugal and the Bourbon system in southern Italy; interpretation of the response of timber-framed walls to seismic actions based on calculations and experimental tests; assessment of the effectiveness of repair and strengthening techniques, e.g., using aramid fiber wires or sheets; and modelling analyses. In addition, on the basis of case studies, a methodology is presented that is applicable to diagnosis, strengthening and improvement of seismic performance and is compatible with modern theoretical principles and conservation criteria. It is hoped that, by contributing to the knowledge of this construction technique, the book will help to promote conservation of this important component of Europe's architectural heritage.

Anyone who has experienced turbulence in flight knows that it is usually not pleasant, and may wonder why this is so difficult to avoid. The book includes papers by various aviation turbulence researchers and provides background into the nature and causes of atmospheric turbulence that affect aircraft motion, and contains surveys of the latest techniques for remote and in situ sensing and forecasting of the turbulence phenomenon. It provides updates on the state-of-the-art research since earlier studies in the 1960s on clear-air turbulence, explains recent new understanding into turbulence generation by thunderstorms, and summarizes future challenges in turbulence prediction and avoidance.

This book concerns the theoretical foundations of hydro mechanics of Pelton turbines from a viewpoint of engineering. For reference purposes all relevant flow processes and hydraulic aspects in a Pelton turbine have been analyzed completely and systematically. The analyses especially include the quantification of all possible losses existing in the Pelton turbine and the indication of most available potential for further enhancing the system efficiency. As a guideline the book therefore supports further developments of Pelton turbines with regard to their hydraulic designs and optimizations. It is thus suitable for the development and design engineers as well as those working in the field of turbo machinery. Many laws described in the book can also be directly used to simplify aspects of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) or to develop new computational methods. The well-executed examples help better understanding the related flow mechanics.

This book presents a new suite of benchmarks for and examples of porous media mechanics collected over the last two years. It continues the assembly of benchmarks and examples for porous media mechanics published in 2014. The book covers various applications in the geosciences, geotechnics, geothermal energy, and geological waste deposition. The analysis of thermo-hydro-mechanical-chemical (THMC) processes is essential to many applications in environmental engineering, such as geological waste deposition, geothermal energy utilisation, carbon capture and storage, water resources management, hydrology, and even climate change. In order to assess the feasibility and safety of geotechnical applications, process-based modelling is the only tool that can effectively quantify future scenarios, a fact which also creates a huge burden of responsibility concerning the reliability of computational tools. The book shows that benchmarking offers a suitable methodology for verifying the quality of modelling tools based on best practices, and together with code comparison fosters community efforts. It also provides a brief introduction to the DECOVALEX, SeSBench and MOMAS initiatives. This benchmark book is part of the OpenGeoSys initiative - an open source project designed to share knowledge and experience in environmental analysis and scientific computation.

This is the eleventh volume in the series Light Scattering Reviews, devoted to current knowledge of light scattering problems and both experimental and theoretical research techniques related to their solution. The focus of this volume is to describe modern advances in radiative transfer and light scattering optics. This book brings together the most recent studies on light radiative transfer in the terrestrial atmosphere, while also reviewing environmental polarimetry. The book is divided into nine chapters: * the first four chapters review recent advances in modern radiative transfer theory and provide detailed descriptions of radiative transfer codes (e.g., DISORT and CRTM). Approximate solutions of integro-differential radiative transfer equations for turbid media with different shapes (spheres, cylinders, planeparallel layers) are detailed; * chapters 5 to 8 focus on studies of light scattering by single particles and radially inhomogeneous media; * the final chapter discusses the environmental polarimetry of man-made objects.

This book details how the GALO system of basin modelling may be used in the analysis of actual, non-standard problems of geology. It begins by addressing the tectonic subsidence of sedimentary basins, and goes on to consider the problems of maturation of organic matter and hydrocarbon generation in the vicinity of intrusions and subtrappean sedimentary complexes. Lastly, the book discusses the formation of temperature and heat flow distributions with depth due to the sharp climate variations in the Quaternary, which was marked by repeated formation and degradation of permafrost. The book studies the application of the GALO basin modelling system to the three problems mentioned above. Employing the GALO system provides a unique opportunity to assess the amplitude and duration of the stretching and thermal activation of the basin lithosphere, and to study in detail the formation of a maturity aureole of organic matter in the basin's subtrappean sedimentary cover. This book offers a valuable resource for all graduate students and professionals interested in numerical modelling of the thermal evolution of sedimentary basins. It will also be of great interest to petroleum geologists engaged in oil and gas exploration in the trap provinces of the world. Lastly, it will benefit those students and geologists dealing with the thermal field of sedimentary blankets in actual and degraded permafrost areas.

This collection focuses on the development of novel approaches to address one of the most pressing challenges of civil engineering, namely the mitigation of natural hazards. Numerous engineering books to date have focused on, and illustrate considerable progress toward, mitigation of individual hazards (earthquakes, wind, and so forth.). The current volume addresses concerns related to overall safety, sustainability and resilience of the built environment when subject to multiple hazards: natural disaster events that are concurrent and either correlated (e.g., wind and surge); uncorrelated (e.g., earthquake and flood); cascading (e.g., fire following earthquake); or uncorrelated and occurring at different times (e.g., wind and earthquake). The authors examine a range of specific topics including methodologies for vulnerability assessment of structures, new techniques to reduce the system demands through control systems; instrumentation, monitoring and condition assessment of structures and foundations; new techniques for repairing structures that have suffered damage during past events, or for structures that have been found in need of strengthening; development of new design provisions that consider multiple hazards, as well as questions from law and the humanities relevant to the management of natural and human-made hazards.

This book presents a thorough review of the state-of-knowledge and recent innovations in the synthesis of pure and improved grades of fly ash zeolites (FAZ). Addressing improvements to conventional methods, it also showcases a novel technique for the synthesis of high cation exchangers from fly ash and detailed characterization techniques for the products obtained. In addition, it examines in detail various areas of specific applications of fly ash zeolites. Over the years, several methods such as hydrothermal, fusion prior to hydrothermal, microwave assisted hydrothermal and molten salt techniques for producing FAZ have been developed. However, one-step and two-step reactions between the fly ash and alkali usually generate alkaline wastes that may cause environmental contamination. In addition, the separation of FAZ from the partially activated fly ash (the impurities) remains a major concern for researchers and industrialists alike. In view of these challenges, this book presents a novel technique for three-step activation (TSA), which focuses on recycling the fly ash-NaOH-water reaction by-products until zeolitic residue is formed. The FAZ (the final residue after third step reactions) synthesized in this manner exhibits exceptionally high cation exchange capacity, specific surface area and pore area. This book offers a comprehensive compendium of reading material on fly ash and its recycled product, the zeolites. Students at both undergraduate and graduate levels, researchers, and practicing engineers will all find this book to be a valuable guide in their respective fields.

This book introduces the underlying concepts of column dynamics and buckling, based on the latest state-of-the-art research on this innovative topic. It begins with a summary of the basic concepts behind column dynamics and buckling, before moving on to the models for studying dynamic buckling inside oil wells. Four models with increasing complexity are presented: columns without friction; columns with friction; columns inside slant wells; and columns inside offshore wells. Each model is divided into two cases, depending on whether the column is being tripped in or out. A case study is used to demonstrate these models and is further developed as each model is presented and explained. The results include comparisons between the models themselves, thus showing the implications of the adopted hypotheses of each. This book enables academic, industrial, and graduate student readers to fully understand the fundamentals of dynamic buckling and to further develop the presented models for their own research.

This book provides users, pump manufactures, engineers, researchers and students with extensive information about pump's behavior in reverse operation. It reports on cutting-edge methods for selecting the proper PAT and improving PAT's efficiency, discusses PAT's reliability, economic issues and environmental impact as well. The book describes in detail electromechanical equipment of PAT systems, their installation and operation, and gives important practical insight into the use of PAT in water transmission and distribution systems, as part of thermal power plants and cooling systems, in oil distribution systems and other systems as well. It reports on different types on PAT control modes as well as on numerical methods useful for PAT analysis and implementation. All in all, the book represents a comprehensive practice-oriented reference-guide to design engineers, as well as PAT general users and manufactures. It also provides researchers with extensive technical information on the use of PAT thus fostering new discussions and ideas to improve current methods and cope with future challenges.

This book presents selected mathematical problems involving the dynamics of a two-dimensional viscous and ideal incompressible fluid on a rotating sphere. In this case, the fluid motion is completely governed by the barotropic vorticity equation (BVE), and the viscosity term in the vorticity equation is taken in its general form, which contains the derivative of real degree of the spherical Laplace operator. This work builds a bridge between basic concepts and concrete outcomes by pursuing a rich combination of theoretical, analytical and numerical approaches, and is recommended for specialists developing mathematical methods for application to problems in physics, hydrodynamics, meteorology and geophysics, as well for upper undergraduate or graduate students in the areas of dynamics of incompressible fluid on a rotating sphere, theory of functions on a sphere, and flow stability.

This book sheds new light on improved methods for the study of the initiation and run-out of earthquake-induced landslides. It includes an initiation study method that considers tension-shear failure mechanism; an improved, rigorous, dynamic sliding-block method based on dynamic critical acceleration; and a run-out analysis of earthquake-induced landslides that takes account of the trampoline effect, all of which add to the accuracy and accessibility of landslide study. The book includes abundant illustrations, figures and tables, making it a valuable resource for those looking for practical landslide research tools.

Advances in Nonlinear Geosciences is a set of contributions from the participants of "30 Years of Nonlinear Dynamics" held July 3-8, 2016 in Rhodes, Greece as part of the Aegean Conferences, as well as from several other experts in the field who could not attend the meeting. The volume brings together up-to-date research from the atmospheric sciences, hydrology, geology, and other areas of geosciences and presents the new advances made in the last 10 years. Topics include chaos synchronization, topological data analysis, new insights on fractals, multifractals and stochasticity, climate dynamics, extreme events, complexity, and causality, among other topics.

This contributed volume presents a multi-perspective collection of the latest research findings on oil and gas exploration and imparts insight that can greatly assist in understanding field behavior, design of test programs, and design of field operations. With this book, engineers also gain a powerful guide to the most commonly used numerical simulation methods that aid in reservoir modelling. In addition, the contributors explore development of technologies that allow for cost effective oil and gas exploration while minimizing the impact on our water resources, surface and groundwater aquifers, geological stability of impacted areas, air quality, and infrastructure assets such as roads, pipelines, water, and wastewater networks. Easy to understand, the book identifies equipment and procedural problems inherent to oil and gas operations and provides systematic approaches for solving them.

This thesis presents a study of strong stratification and turbulence collapse in the planetary boundary layer, opening a new avenue in this field. It is the first work to study all regimes of stratified turbulence in a unified simulation framework without a break in the paradigms for representation of turbulence. To date, advances in our understanding and the parameterization of turbulence in the stable boundary layer have been hampered by difficulties simulating the strongly stratified regime, and the analysis has primarily been based on field measurements. The content presented here changes that paradigm by demonstrating the ability of direct numerical simulation to address this problem, and by doing so to remove the uncertainty of turbulence models from the analysis. Employing a stably stratified Ekman layer as a simplified physical model of the stable boundary layer, the three stratification regimes observed in nature- weakly, intermediately and strongly stratified-are reproduced, and the data is subsequently used to answer key, long-standing questions. The main part of the book is organized in three sections, namely a comprehensive introduction, numerics, and physics. The thesis ends with a clear and concise conclusion that distills specific implications for the study of the stable boundary layer. This structure emphasizes the physical results, but at the same time gives relevance to the technical aspects of numerical schemes and post-processing tools. The selection of the relevant literature during the introduction, and its use along the work appropriately combines literature from two research communities: fluid dynamics, and boundary-layer meteorology.

Dynamics of Civil Structures, Volume 2: Proceedings of the 35th IMAC, A Conference and Exposition on Structural Dynamics, 2017, the second volume of ten from the Conference brings together contributions to this important area of research and engineering. The collection presents early findings and case studies on fundamental and applied aspects of the Dynamics of Civil Structures, including papers on: Modal Parameter Identification Dynamic Testing of Civil Structures Control of Human Induced Vibrations of Civil Structures Model Updating Damage Identification in Civil Infrastructure Bridge Dynamics Experimental Techniques for Civil Structures Hybrid Simulation of Civil Structures Vibration Control of Civil Structures System Identification of Civil Structures

This book contains the scientific contributions to the 11th International Workshop on Bifurcation and Degradation in Geomaterials (IWBDG) held in Limassol-Cyprus, May 21-25, 2017. The IWBDG series have grown in size and scope, since their inception 30 years ago in Germany, covering more and wider areas of geomaterials and geomechanics research including modern trends. The papers cover a wide range of topics including advances in instabilities, localized and diffuse failure, micromechanical, multiscale phenomena, multiphysics modeling and other related topics. This volume gathers a series of manuscript by brilliant international scholars who work on modern recent advances in experimental, theoretical and numerical methods. The theoretical and applied mechanics are linked successfully with engineering applications in traditional and in emerging fields, such as geomechanics for the energy and the environment. The quality of the contributed papers has benefited from the peer review process by expert referees. This book can be used as a useful reference for research students, academics and practicing engineers who are interested in the instability and degradation problems in geomaterials, geomechanics, geotechnical engineering and other related applications.

This book analyzes the issues associated with climate change in the Himalayas. The purpose of choosing the Himalayas as a focus is because it is a particularly fragile mountain system, highly sensitive to climate change impacts, and it contains one of the largest human populations affected by climate change. The book provides extensive data and information regarding the climate history of the Himalayas, and the current effects of climate change on Himalayan weather systems, and on human and animal populations in the region. The book begins with an overview of global climate change with discussions of data trends and international initiatives, then segues into a history of climate changes and weather trends in the Himalayas. Weather systems of the Himalayas, both past and current, are analyzed and detailed through climate models, seasonal observations of weather fronts, and overviews of various climate scenarios. The book then discusses climate change impacts and signat ures specific to the Central Himalayan region, where the largest effects of impacts are observed. Readers will discover analysis presented on water resources, meteorological changes, biodiversity, agriculture and human health along with perspectives of management and policy. This book will appeal to researchers studying climate science, climatology, environmental scientists and policymakers.

This book presents a new concept of General Systems Theory and its application to atmospheric physics. It reveals that energy input into the atmospheric eddy continuum, whether natural or manmade, results in enhancement of fluctuations of all scales, manifested immediately in the intensification of high-frequency fluctuations such as the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation and the El-Nino-Southern Oscillation cycles. Atmospheric flows exhibit self-organised criticality, i.e. long-range correlations in space and time manifested as fractal geometry to the spatial pattern concomitant with an inverse power law form for fluctuations of meteorological parameters such as temperature, pressure etc. Traditional meteorological theory cannot satisfactorily explain the observed self-similar space time structure of atmospheric flows. A recently developed general systems theory for fractal space-time fluctuations shows that the larger-scale fluctuation can be visualised to emerge from the space-time averaging of enclosed small-scale fluctuations, thereby generating a hierarchy of self-similar fluctuations manifested as the observed eddy continuum in power spectral analyses of fractal fluctuations. The interconnected network of eddy circulations responds as a unified whole to local perturbations such as global-scale response to El-Nino events. The general systems theory model predicts an inverse power law form incorporating the golden mean for the distribution of space-time fluctuation patterns and for the power (variance) spectra of the fluctuations. Since the probability distributions of amplitude and variance are the same, atmospheric flows exhibit quantumlike chaos. Long-range correlations inherent to power law distributions of fluctuations are identified as nonlocal connection or entanglement exhibited by quantum systems such as electrons or photons. The predicted distribution is close to the Gaussian distribution for small-scale fluctuations, but exhibits a fat long tail for large-scale fluctuations. Universal inverse power law for fractal fluctuations rules out unambiguously linear secular trends in climate parameters.

This book discusses in detail the science and morphology of powerful hurricane detection systems. It broadly addresses new approaches to monitoring hazards using freely available images from the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Sentinel-1 SAR satellite and benchmarks a new interdisciplinary field at the interface between oceanography, meteorology and remote sensing. Following the launch of the first European Space Agency (ESA) operational synthetic aperture radar satellite, Sentinel-1, in 2014, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data has been freely available on the Internet hub in real-time. This advance allows weather forecasters to view hurricanes in fine detail for the first time. As a result, the number of synthetic aperture radar research scientists working in this field is set to grow exponentially in the next decade; the book is a valuable resource for this large and budding audience.

UEberschwemmungen, Artensterben, Voelkerwanderungen, Durren, Supertornados - der Klimawandel ist keine am Horizont drohende Gefahr mehr, sondern langst in unserem Alltag angekommen. Die Lage ist sehr ernst, aber wir haben durchaus Konzepte, den verheerenden Klimatrend aufzuhalten und umzukehren. Alle durch den Menschen erzeugten klimarelevanten Einflusse lassen sich auf einen einzigen Faktor zuruckfuhren: Energie. Wer die aktuelle Klimadynamik stoppen und sogar umkehren will, muss daher auch auf die drei zentralen Fragen zur Energie und dem Klima eine Antwort finden: Wie genau beeinflusst unsere bestehende Art des Energieverbrauchs das Klima? Welche Moeglichkeiten haben wir, Energie ohne negative Klimaeffekte zu erzeugen? Welche technologischen Fortschritte werden uns dabei in der Zukunft konkret helfen? Lars Jaeger gibt einen Ausblick auf eine moegliche klimafreundliche Wirtschaft der Zukunft, beschreibt, wie eine oekologische Gesellschaft funktionieren kann und wie lokale Energiekonzepte weltweiten Erfolg haben koennen. Er kommt dabei mit einer klaren und optimistischen Botschaft: Wir verfugen schon heute uber die technischen Moeglichkeiten (und in der Zukunft umso mehr), um den verheerenden Klimatrend ohne signifikante Wohlstandsbeschrankung umzukehren. Die Hindernisse liegen vor allem in oekonomischen und politischen "Sachzwangen" und partikularen wirtschaftlichen Interessenskonflikten. Diese zu uberwinden, darum geht es in der zukunftigen Energiepolitik. Stimmen zum Buch "Ein sehr wichtiges Buch, das eine der wichtigsten Fragen unsere Zeit - wie wir Klimawandel mit Energiewandel meistern koennen - mit wissenschaftlicher Prazision und klaren Worten erlautert.", Georg Kell, Grunder und fruherer Executive Director der United Nations Global Compact Der Autor Lars Jaeger hat Physik, Mathematik, Philosophie und Geschichte in Bonn und Paris studiert und mehrere Jahre in der theoretischen Physik im Bereich der Quantenfeldtheorien und Chaostheorie geforscht. Er lebt seit zwanzig Jahren in der Nahe von Zurich, wo er - als umtriebiger Denker - zwei eigene Unternehmen aufgebaut hat. Als Autor zahlreicher Bucher bringt er allgemeinverstandlich die Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, moderne Technologien und die Folgen des Energieverbrauchs in der Klimakrise nahe.

This book investigates elementary processes in the Earth's atmosphere involving photons, electrons, ions, radicals, and aerosols. It is based on global atmospheric models such as the standard atmospheric model with averaged atmospheric parameters across the globe and over time, the Earth's energetic balance, and the global electric circuit that allows to analyze fundamental atmospheric properties to be analyzed. Rate constants of elementary processes in the Earth's atmosphere, together with measured atmospheric parameters and existing concepts of atmospheric phenomena, are used in the analysis of global and local atmospheric processes. Atmospheric photoprocesses result from the interaction of solar radiation with the atmosphere and processes involving ions, oxygen atoms, excited atomic particles and ozone molecules. Atmospheric electricity as a secondary phenomenon to atmospheric water circulation results in a chain of processes that begins with collisions of water aerosols in different aggregate states. Cosmic rays are of importance for atmospheric electricity, as they create positive and negative ions in the air. Air breakdown in an electric field of clouds in the form of lightning may develop under the influence of cosmic ray-created seed electrons, which are necessary for electron multiplication in ionization wave-streamers. The upper atmosphere (ionosphere) is formed under solar radiation in a vacuum ultraviolet spectrum, and absorption of this radiation leads to air photoionization. The greenhouse effect is determined by atmospheric water, whereas transitions between a water vapor and aerosols may lead to a change in atmospheric optical depth. Carbon dioxide contributes in small portions to the atmospheric greenhouse effect. Cosmic rays are of importance for atmospheric discharge, the origin of lightning and cloud formation in the first stage of aerosol growth. This book provides a qualitative description of atmospheric properties and phenomena based on elementary processes and simple models.