The text combines an account of scientific and engineering principles with a description of materials and processes of importance in nuclear research and industry. The coverage includes fuel materials, control and shileding materials, and so on - in fact, for most of the important pasts of a reactor.

'A remarkably hopeful and useful book...The climate crisis leaves us no choice but to build a new world and as Sanderson makes clear, we are capable of making it a better one than the dirty and dangerous planet we've come to take for granted.' Bill McKibben, Observer book of the week We depend on a handful of metals and rare earths to power our phones and computers. Increasingly, we rely on them to power our cars and our homes. Whoever controls these finite commodities will become rich beyond imagining. Sanderson journeys to meet the characters, companies, and nations scrambling for the new resources, linking remote mines in the Congo and Chile's Atacama Desert to giant Chinese battery factories, shadowy commodity traders, secretive billionaires, a new generation of scientists attempting to solve the dilemma of a 'greener' world.

The Industrial Electronics Handbook, Second Edition combines traditional and newer, more specialized knowledge that will help industrial electronics engineers develop practical solutions for the design and implementation of high-power applications. Embracing the broad technological scope of the field, this collection explores fundamental areas, including analog and digital circuits, electronics, electromagnetic machines, signal processing, and industrial control and communications systems. It also facilitates the use of intelligent systems-such as neural networks, fuzzy systems, and evolutionary methods-in terms of a hierarchical structure that makes factory control and supervision more efficient by addressing the needs of all production components. Enhancing its value, this fully updated collection presents research and global trends as published in the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics Journal, one of the largest and most respected publications in the field. As intelligent systems continue to replace and sometimes outperform human intelligence in decision-making processes, they have made substantial contributions to the solution of very complex problems. As a result, the field of computational intelligence has branched out in several directions. For instance, artificial neural networks can learn how to classify patterns, such as images or sequences of events, and effectively model complex nonlinear systems. Simple and easy to implement, fuzzy systems can be applied to successful modeling and system control. Illustrating how these and other tools help engineers model nonlinear system behavior, determine and evaluate system parameters, and ensure overall system control, Intelligent Systems: Addresses various aspects of neural networks and fuzzy systems Focuses on system optimization, covering new techniques such as evolutionary methods, swarm, and ant colony optimizations Discusses several applications that deal with methods of computational intelligence Other volumes in the set: Fundamentals of Industrial Electronics Power Electronics and Motor Drives Control and Mechatronics Industrial Communication Systems

Hazardous energy present in systems, machines, and equipment has injured, maimed, and killed many workers. One serious injury can stop the growth of your business in its tracks. Management of Hazardous Energy: Deactivation, De-Energization, Isolation, and Lockout provides the practical tools needed to assess hazardous energy in equipment, machines, and systems, and covers how to manage hazardous energy through elimination or control in order to ensure worker safety and regulatory compliance. Written in plain English with a minimum of jargon, this book provides safety professionals with the knowledge they need to interact with specialists, designers, and engineers to ensure that appropriate and necessary protocols and safety practices and tools are put into place for assessing the dangers and steps taken to eliminate or control exposure to hazardous energy when needed. Approaching the subject from the bottom up, the author starts at the workplace level, to ensure that the right actions happen for the right reasons. The book explains a protocol for describing the flow of energy, including transformation and/or storage; for capturing the logic of decisions about control, including failure analysis and contingency planning; and ultimately for creating procedures that are technically sound and defensible. Creating simple procedures for ensuring worker safety and regulatory compliance, the book offers US and international strategies for hazardous energy management and contains examples to illustrate the application of concepts to specific areas.

Optimal control deals with the problem of finding a control law for a given system such that a certain optimality criterion is achieved. An optimal control is a set of differential equations describing the paths of the control variables that minimize the cost functional. This book, Continuous Time Dynamical Systems: State Estimation and Optimal Control with Orthogonal Functions, considers different classes of systems with quadratic performance criteria. It then attempts to find the optimal control law for each class of systems using orthogonal functions that can optimize the given performance criteria. Illustrated throughout with detailed examples, the book covers topics including: Block-pulse functions and shifted Legendre polynomials State estimation of linear time-invariant systems Linear optimal control systems incorporating observers Optimal control of systems described by integro-differential equations Linear-quadratic-Gaussian control Optimal control of singular systems Optimal control of time-delay systems with and without reverse time terms Optimal control of second-order nonlinear systems Hierarchical control of linear time-invariant and time-varying systems

Electricity Generation and the Environment is a very concise, up-to-date, and accessible guide to the evolution of environmental awareness, what that environmental awareness has taught the industry, and how technologies can be used to test and improve power performance. There is a strong emphasis on the related social impacts and economic factors involved in the various methods of generating electricity which Breeze explores, making this a valuable and insightful read for those involved in the planning and delivery of energy, such as energy engineers, power generation planners, policy makers, managers, and academics.

An intelligent transportation system (ITS) offers considerable opportunities for increasing the safety, efficiency, and predictability of traffic flow and reducing vehicle emissions. Sensors (or detectors) enable the effective gathering of arterial and controlled-access highway information in support of automatic incident detection, active transportation and demand management, traffic-adaptive signal control, and ramp and freeway metering and dispatching of emergency response providers. As traffic flow sensors are integrated with big data sources such as connected and cooperative vehicles, and cell phones and other Bluetooth-enabled devices, more accurate and timely traffic flow information can be obtained. The book examines the roles of traffic management centers that serve cities, counties, and other regions, and the collocation issues that ensue when multiple agencies share the same space. It describes sensor applications and data requirements for several ITS strategies; sensor technologies; sensor installation, initialization, and field-testing procedures; and alternate sources of traffic flow data. The book addresses concerns related to the introduction of automated and connected vehicles, and the benefits that systems engineering and national ITS architectures in the US, Europe, Japan, and elsewhere bring to ITS. Sensor and data fusion benefits to traffic management are described, while the Bayesian and Dempster-Shafer approaches to data fusion are discussed in more detail. ITS Sensors and Architectures for Traffic Management and Connected Vehicles suits the needs of personnel in transportation institutes and highway agencies, and students in undergraduate or graduate transportation engineering courses.

An intelligent transportation system (ITS) offers considerable opportunities for increasing the safety, efficiency, and predictability of traffic flow and reducing vehicle emissions. Sensors (or detectors) enable the effective gathering of arterial and controlled-access highway information in support of automatic incident detection, active transportation and demand management, traffic-adaptive signal control, and ramp and freeway metering and dispatching of emergency response providers. As traffic flow sensors are integrated with big data sources such as connected and cooperative vehicles, and cell phones and other Bluetooth-enabled devices, more accurate and timely traffic flow information can be obtained. The book examines the roles of traffic management centers that serve cities, counties, and other regions, and the collocation issues that ensue when multiple agencies share the same space. It describes sensor applications and data requirements for several ITS strategies; sensor technologies; sensor installation, initialization, and field-testing procedures; and alternate sources of traffic flow data. The book addresses concerns related to the introduction of automated and connected vehicles, and the benefits that systems engineering and national ITS architectures in the US, Europe, Japan, and elsewhere bring to ITS. Sensor and data fusion benefits to traffic management are described, while the Bayesian and Dempster-Shafer approaches to data fusion are discussed in more detail. ITS Sensors and Architectures for Traffic Management and Connected Vehicles suits the needs of personnel in transportation institutes and highway agencies, and students in undergraduate or graduate transportation engineering courses.

The Industrial Electronics Handbook, Second Edition, Industrial Communications Systems combines traditional and newer, more specialized knowledge that helps industrial electronics engineers develop practical solutions for the design and implementation of high-power applications. Embracing the broad technological scope of the field, this collection explores fundamental areas, including analog and digital circuits, electronics, electromagnetic machines, signal processing, and industrial control and communications systems. It also facilitates the use of intelligent systems-such as neural networks, fuzzy systems, and evolutionary methods-in terms of a hierarchical structure that makes factory control and supervision more efficient by addressing the needs of all production components. Enhancing its value, this fully updated collection presents research and global trends as published in the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics Journal, one of the largest and most respected publications in the field. Modern communication systems in factories use many different-and increasingly sophisticated-systems to send and receive information. Industrial Communication Systems spans the full gamut of concepts that engineers require to maintain a well-designed, reliable communications system that can ensure successful operation of any production process. Delving into the subject, this volume covers: Technical principles Application-specific areas Technologies Internet programming Outlook, including trends and expected challenges Other volumes in the set: Fundamentals of Industrial Electronics Power Electronics and Motor Drives Control and Mechatronics Intelligent Systems

Modeling and Control of Precision Actuators explores new technologies that can ultimately be applied in a myriad of industries. It covers dynamical analysis of precise actuators and strategies of design for various control applications. The book addresses four main schemes: modeling and control of precise actuators; nonlinear control of precise actuators, including sliding mode control and neural network feedback control; fault detection and fault-tolerant control; and advanced air bearing control. It covers application issues in the modeling and control of precise actuators, providing several interesting case studies for more application-oriented readers. Introduces the driving forces behind precise actuators Describes nonlinear dynamics of precise actuators and their mathematical forms, including hysteresis, creep, friction, and force ripples Presents the control strategies for precise actuators based on Preisach model as well as creep dynamics Develops relay feedback techniques for identifying nonlinearities such as friction and force ripples Discusses a MPC approach based on piecewise affine models which emulate the frictional effects in the precise actuator Covers the concepts of air bearing stages with the corresponding control method Provides a set of schemes suitable for fault detection and accommodation control of mechanical systems Emphasizing design theory and control strategies, the book includes simulation and practical examples for each chapter; covers precise actuators such as piezo motors, coil motors, air bearing motors, and linear motors; discusses integration among different technologies; and includes three case studies in real projects. The book concludes by linking design methods and their applications, emphasizing the key issues involved and how to implement the precision motion control tasks in a practical system. It provides a concise and comprehensive source of the state-of-the-art developments and results for modeling and control of precise actuators.

Due to its abilities to compensate disturbances and uncertainties, disturbance observer based control (DOBC) is regarded as one of the most promising approaches for disturbance-attenuation. One of the first books on DOBC, Disturbance Observer Based Control: Methods and Applications presents novel theory results as well as best practices for applications in motion and process control that have already benefited numerous organizations. Supplying authoritative guidance in the areas of disturbance estimation and compensation for practical engineering systems, the book includes coverage of theoretic methods and practical applications of disturbance estimation and compensation for control systems through a DOBC approach. It considers applications in flight control systems, motion control systems, and process control systems. Supplies an authoritative overview of disturbance observer based control approaches Reports on recent developments in disturbance estimation techniques Considers matched and mismatched disturbance/uncertainty attenuation for DOBC Illustrates applications of the methods covered with detailed engineering case studies Filled with valuable insights gathered over decades of research by the authors, this book provides time- and stress-saving guidance for anyone interested in the theory and method research of DOBC. Using typical engineering examples, the text provides readers with an understanding of recent developments in DOBC as well as the tools required to make the most of this promising approach to disturbance-attenuation.

A guide for software development of the dynamic security assessment and control of power systems, Structure Preserving Energy Functions in Power Systems: Theory and Applications takes an approach that is more general than previous works on Transient Energy Functions defined using Reduced Network Models. A comprehensive presentation of theory and applications, this book: Describes the analytics of monitoring and predicting dynamic security and emergency control through the illustration of theory and applications of energy functions defined on structure preserving models Covers different facets of dynamic analysis of large bulk power systems such as system stability evaluation, dynamic security assessment, and control, among others Supports illustration of SPEFs using examples and case studies, including descriptions of applications in real-time monitoring, adaptive protection, and emergency control Presents a novel network analogy based on accurate generator models that enables an accurate, yet simplified approach to computing total energy as the aggregate of energy in individual components The book presents analytical tools for online detection of loss of synchronism and suggests adaptive system protection. It covers the design of effective linear damping controllers using FACTS, for damping small oscillations during normal operation to prevent transition to emergency states, and emergency control based on FACTS, to improve first swing stability and also provide rapid damping of nonlinear oscillations that threaten system security during major disturbances. The author includes detection and control algorithms derived from theoretical considerations and illustrated through several examples and case studies on text systems.

This book deals with complex variants of Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) and Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) within the manufacturing and service industries. The objective is to develop heuristics for these supply chain problems in order to offer practical solutions to improve operational efficiency. These heuristics are evaluated using benchmark and derived data-sets. Case studies pertaining to logistics in different industries including textile machinery manufacturing and banking are also included to demonstrate the created heuristics. High competition in today's global market has forced the organizations to invest in and focus on their logistics system. The critical function of logistics is the transportation within and across various supply chain entities. Both supply and distribution procedure require effective transportation management. A small improvement in routing problems can lead to huge logistics savings in absolute terms. This book should appeal to executives, researchers and consultants seeking supply chain management solutions.

For decades biology has focused on decoding cellular processes one gene at a time, but many of the most pressing biological questions, as well as diseases such as cancer and heart disease, are related to complex systems involving the interaction of hundreds, or even thousands, of gene products and other factors. How do we begin to understand this complexity? Fundamentals of Systems Biology: From Synthetic Circuits to Whole-cell Models introduces students to methods they can use to tackle complex systems head-on, carefully walking them through studies that comprise the foundation and frontier of systems biology. The first section of the book focuses on bringing students quickly up to speed with a variety of modeling methods in the context of a synthetic biological circuit. This innovative approach builds intuition about the strengths and weaknesses of each method and becomes critical in the book's second half, where much more complicated network models are addressed including transcriptional, signaling, metabolic, and even integrated multi-network models. The approach makes the work much more accessible to novices (undergraduates, medical students, and biologists new to mathematical modeling) while still having much to offer experienced modelers--whether their interests are microbes, organs, whole organisms, diseases, synthetic biology, or just about any field that investigates living systems.

Techniques such as dead time compensation, adaptive control and Kalman filtering have been around for some time, but as yet find little application in industry. This is due to several reasons, including: Articles in the literature usually assume that the reader is familiar with a specific topic and are therefore often difficult for the practicing control engineer to comprehend. Many practicing control engineers in the process industry have a chemical engineering background and did not receive a control engineering education. There is a wide gap between theory and practical implementation, since implementation is primarily concerned with robustness, and theory is not. The user therefore has to build an "expert shell" in order to achieve the desired robustness. Little is published on this issue, however. This book tries to promote the use of advanced control techniques by taking the reader from basic theory to practical implementation. It is therefore of interest to practicing control engineers in various types of industries, especially the process industry. Graduate and undergraduate students in control engineering will also find the book extremely useful since many practical details are given which are usually omitted in books on control engineering. Of special interest are the simulation examples, illustrating the application of various control techniques. The examples are available on a 5-1/4" floppy disk and can be used by anyone who has access to LOTUS 1-2-3. Chapter 1 is the introduction; Chapters 2 through 6 deal with distributed control system networks, computer system software, computer system selection, reliability and security, and batch and continuous control. Chapter 7 gives and introduction to advanced control. Chapters 8 through 11 deal with dead time compensation techniques and model identification. Chapters 12 through 14 discuss constraint control and design, and the adjustment and application of simple process models and optimization. Chapter 15 gives a thorough introduction to adaptive control, and the last two chapters deal with state and parameter estimation. This book is a valuable tool for everyone who realizes the importance of advanced control in achieving improved plant performance. It will take the reader from theory to practical implementation.

In practice, actuators often undergo failures and various factors influence its effectiveness. Also due to the increasing complexity of large-scale systems, subsystems are often interconnected, whereas the interactions between any two subsystems are difficult to deal with. This book details a series of new methodologies of designing and analyzing adaptive backstepping control systems involving treatment on actuator failures, subsystem interactions and nonsmooth nonlinearities. Moreover, it discusses some interesting open issues in adaptive failure accommodation, decentralized adaptive control and distributed adaptive coordinated control.

With the constant emergence of new research and application possibilities, gaseous electronics is more important than ever in disciplines including engineering (electrical, power, mechanical, electronics, and environmental), physics, and electronics. The first resource of its kind, Gaseous Electronics: Tables, Atoms, and Molecules fulfills the author's vision of a stand-alone reference to condense 100 years of research on electron-neutral collision data into one easily searchable volume. It presents most-if not all-of the properly classified experimental results that scientists, researchers, and students require for a theoretical and practical understanding of collision properties and their impact. An unprecedented collection and analysis of electron neutral collision properties This book follows a new user-friendly format that enables readers to easily retrieve, analyze, and apply specific atomic/molecular information as needed. In his previous work, Gaseous Electronics: Theory and Practice, the author first explored electron-neutron interactions. To clarify the complex fundamental processes involved, he cited as much experimental data on atoms and molecules as limited space would allow. Completing that task, this handy reference more fully compiles essential revised data on more than 420 atoms and molecules, arranging it into easily digestible chapters, sections, and appendices. Analysis parameters include total scattering, ionization, excitation, attachment cross sections, ionization and attachment coefficients, attachment rates, and ion drift velocity. Some recent research areas in gaseous electronics include: Environmentally efficient and protective lighting devices Plasma research for power generation and space applications Medical applications (some involving skin treatment and healing) Written entirely in SI units, the book includes hundreds of tables, figures, and specially drawn charts, with data expressed in both tabular and graphical form. Each chapter stands independently and contains references for further research.

Coarse-grained reconfigurable architecture (CGRA) has emerged as a solution for flexible, application-specific optimization of embedded systems. Helping you understand the issues involved in designing and constructing embedded systems, Design of Low-Power Coarse-Grained Reconfigurable Architectures offers new frameworks for optimizing the architecture of components in embedded systems in order to decrease area and save power. Real application benchmarks and gate-level simulations substantiate these frameworks. The first half of the book explains how to reduce power in the configuration cache. The authors present a low-power reconfiguration technique based on reusable context pipelining that merges the concept of context reuse into context pipelining. They also propose dynamic context compression capable of supporting required bits of the context words set to enable and the redundant bits set to disable. In addition, they discuss dynamic context management for reducing power consumption in the configuration cache by controlling a read/write operation of the redundant context words. Focusing on the design of a cost-effective processing element array to reduce area and power consumption, the second half of the text presents a cost-effective array fabric that uniquely rearranges processing elements and their interconnection designs. The book also describes hierarchical reconfigurable computing arrays consisting of two reconfigurable computing blocks with two types of communication structure. The two computing blocks share critical resources, offering an efficient communication interface between them and reducing the overall area. The final chapter takes an integrated approach to optimization that draws on the design schemes presented in earlier chapters. Using a case study, the authors demonstrate the synergy effect of combining multiple design schemes.

The goal of the book is to provide basic and advanced knowledge of design, analysis, and circuit implementation for electronic instrumentation and clarify how to get the best out of the analog, digital, and computer circuitry design steps. The reader will learn the physical fundamentals guiding the electrical and mechanical devices that allow for a modern automation and control system, which are widely comprised of computers, electronic instrumentation, communication loops, smart grids, and digital circuitry. It includes practical and technical data on electronic instrumentation with respect to efficiency, maximum power, and applications. Additionally, the text discusses fuzzy logic and neural networks and how they can be used in practice for electronic instrumentation of distributed generation, smart grids, and power systems.

Currently, a new generation of fuel-efficient ships, which use wind force in addition to conventional propulsion technology, is being developed. This study describes a mathematical method for a probabilistic estimate of the wind propulsion force on a ship route. The method is based on quantile regression, which makes it suitable for various ship routes with variable weather conditions. Furthermore, the author takes different macro weather situations into account for the calculation of the statistical distributions. He validates the results for a multi-purpose carrier, a ship route in the North Atlantic Ocean and archived weather forecasts. It showed that the wind force can be estimated more accurately if the macro weather situation is taken into account properly.

Elements of Power Systems prepares students for engineering degrees, diplomas, Associate Member of the Institution of Engineers (AMIE) examinations, or corresponding examinations in electrical power systems. Complete with case studies, worked examples, and circuit schematic diagrams, this comprehensive text: Provides a solid understanding of the theoretical aspects of power system engineering Instills a practical knowledge of large-scale power system analysis techniques Covers load characteristics, tariffs, power system stability, and more Elements of Power Systems is designed as an undergraduate-level textbook, but the book also makes a handy reference for practicing power engineers.

This book presents fabrication approaches that could be adapted for the high-throughput and low-cost manufacturing of the proposed transparent electrode. It proposes and demonstrates a new type of embedded metal-mesh transparent electrode (EMTE) that offers superior electrical, optical, and mechanical properties. The structure of the EMTE allows thick metal mesh to be used (for high conductivity) without sacrificing surface smoothness. In addition, the embedded structure improves the EMTE's mechanical stability under high bending stress, as well as its chemical stability in ambient environments. These design aspects are then shown to be suitable for larger electrode areas, narrower metal-mesh line widths, and a wide range of materials, and can easily be adapted to produce flexible and even stretchable devices. In closing, the book explores the practical applications of EMTEs in flexible bifacial dye-sensitized solar cells and transparent thin-film heaters, demonstrating their outstanding performance.

Electrical Power Systems provides comprehensive, foundational content for a wide range of topics in power system operation and control. With the growing importance of grid integration of renewables and the interest in smart grid technologies it is more important than ever to understand the fundamentals that underpin electrical power systems. The book includes a large number of worked examples, and questions with answers, and emphasizes design aspects of some key electrical components like cables and breakers. The book is designed to be used as reference, review, or self-study for practitioners and consultants, or for students from related engineering disciplines that need to learn more about electrical power systems.

Fuzzy logic control (FLC) has proven to be a popular control methodology for many complex systems in industry, and is often used with great success as an alternative to conventional control techniques. However, because it is fundamentally model free, conventional FLC suffers from a lack of tools for systematic stability analysis and controller design. To address this problem, many model-based fuzzy control approaches have been developed, with the fuzzy dynamic model or the Takagi and Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy model-based approaches receiving the greatest attention. Analysis and Synthesis of Fuzzy Control Systems: A Model-Based Approach offers a unique reference devoted to the systematic analysis and synthesis of model-based fuzzy control systems. After giving a brief review of the varieties of FLC, including the T-S fuzzy model-based control, it fully explains the fundamental concepts of fuzzy sets, fuzzy logic, and fuzzy systems. This enables the book to be self-contained and provides a basis for later chapters, which cover: T-S fuzzy modeling and identification via nonlinear models or data Stability analysis of T-S fuzzy systems Stabilization controller synthesis as well as robust H and observer and output feedback controller synthesis Robust controller synthesis of uncertain T-S fuzzy systems Time-delay T-S fuzzy systems Fuzzy model predictive control Robust fuzzy filtering Adaptive control of T-S fuzzy systems A reference for scientists and engineers in systems and control, the book also serves the needs of graduate students exploring fuzzy logic control. It readily demonstrates that conventional control technology and fuzzy logic control can be elegantly combined and further developed so that disadvantages of conventional FLC can be avoided and the horizon of conventional control technology greatly extended. Many chapters feature application simulation examples and practical numerical examples based on MATLAB (R).

Multiple intelligent agent systems are commonly used in research requiring complex behavior. Synchronization control provides an advantage in solving the problem of multi-agent coordination. This book focuses on the use of synchronization control to coordinate the group behavior of multiple agents. The author includes numerous real-world application examples from robotics, automation, and advanced manufacturing. Giving a detailed look at cross-coupling based synchronization control, the text covers such topics as adaptive synchronization control, synchronous tracking control of parallel manipulators, and minimization of contouring errors of CNC machine tools with synchronization controls.