A cooperative system is a collection of dynamical objects, which communicate and cooperate in order to achieve a common or shared objective. The cooperation of entities is achieved through communication; either explicitly by message passing, or implicitly via observation of another entities' state. As in natural systems, cooperation may assume a hierarchical form and the control processes may be distributed or decentralized. Due to the dynamic nature of individuals and the interaction between them, the problems associated with cooperative systems typically involve many uncertainties. Moreover, in many cases cooperative systems are required to operate in a noisy or hazardous environment, which creates special challenges for designing the control process.

During the last decades, considerable progress has been observed in all aspects regarding the study of cooperative systems including modeling of cooperative systems, resource allocation, discrete event driven dynamical control, continuous and hybrid dynamical control, and theory of the interaction of information, control, and hierarchy. Solution methods have been proposed using control and optimization approaches, emergent rule based techniques, game theoretic and team theoretic approaches. Measures of performance have been suggested that include the effects of hierarchies and information structures on solutions, performance bounds, concepts of convergence and stability, and problem complexity. These and other topics were discusses at the Second Annual Conference on Cooperative Control and Optimization in Gainesville, Florida. Refereed papers written by selected conference participants from the conference are gathered in thisvolume, which presents problem models, theoretical results, and algorithms for various aspects of cooperative control.

Audience: The book is addressed to faculty, graduate students, and researchers in optimization and control, computer sciences and engineering.

This book reviews existing operational software failure analysis techniques and proposes near-miss analysis as a novel, and new technique for investigating and preventing software failures. The authors provide details on how near-miss analysis techniques focus on the time-window before the software failure actually unfolds, so as to detect the high-risk conditions that can lead to a major failure. They detail how by alerting system users of an upcoming software failure, the detection of near misses provides an opportunity to collect at runtime failure-related data that is complete and relevant. They present a near-miss management systems (NMS) for detecting upcoming software failures, which can contribute significantly to the improvement of the accuracy of the software failure analysis. A prototype of the NMS is implemented and is discussed in the book. The authors give a practical hands-on approach towards doing software failure investigations by means of near-miss analysis that is of use to industry and academia

This volume gathers selected peer-reviewed papers presented at the XXVI International Joint Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management (IJCIEOM), held on July 8-11, 2020 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The respective chapters address a range of timely topics in industrial engineering, including operations and process management, global operations, managerial economics, data science and stochastic optimization, logistics and supply chain management, quality management, product development, strategy and organizational engineering, knowledge and information management, work and human factors, sustainability, production engineering education, healthcare operations management, disaster management, and more. These topics broadly involve fields like operations, manufacturing, industrial and production engineering, and management. Given its scope, the book offers a valuable resource for those engaged in optimization research, operations research, and practitioners alike.

The problem of controlling the output of a system so as to achieve asymptotic tracking of prescribed trajectories and/or asymptotic re jection of undesired disturbances is a central problem in control the ory. A classical setup in which the problem was posed and success fully addressed - in the context of linear, time-invariant and finite dimensional systems - is the one in which the exogenous inputs, namely commands and disturbances, may range over the set of all possible trajectories ofa given autonomous linear system, commonly known as the exogeneous system or, more the exosystem. The case when the exogeneous system is a harmonic oscillator is, of course, classical. Even in this special case, the difference between state and error measurement feedback in the problem ofoutput reg ulation is profound. To know the initial condition of the exosystem is to know the amplitude and phase of the corresponding sinusoid. On the other hand, to solve the output regulation problem in this case with only error measurement feedback is to track, or attenu ate, a sinusoid ofknown frequency but with unknown amplitude and phase. This is in sharp contrast with alternative approaches, such as exact output tracking, where in lieu of the assumption that a signal is within a class of signals generated by an exogenous system, one instead assumes complete knowledge of the past, present and future time history of the trajectory to be tracked."

This book systematically discusses the modeling and application of transfer manipulation for flexible electronics packaging, presenting multiple processes according to the geometric sizes of the chips and devices as well as the detailed modeling and computation steps for each process. It also illustrates the experimental design of the equipment to help readers easily learn how to use it. This book is a valuable resource for scholars and graduate students in the research field of microelectronics.

This textbook on Reliability Theory focusses on Applications in Preventive Maintenance (PM). All models are presented in connection with the relevant statistical material. Short and simply written the book is almost self-contained. The reader needs not more than basic knowledge of calculus, probability and statistics. Each chapter is concluded by a series of exercices with detailed solutions. Numerical solutions are elaborated with Mathematica software. Novel topics are discussed, like PM with learning, choice of the best time-scale for PM, handling multidimensional state description, dealing with uncertainty in data. The book is meant for graduate students, researchers and engineers specializing in Quality Control, Logistics, Reliability and Maintenance Engineering.

Precision Manufacturing provides an introduction to precision engineering for manufacturing. With an emphasis on design and performance of precision machinery for manufacturing machine tool elements and structure, sources of error, precision machining processes and process models sensors for process monitoring and control, metrology, actuators, and machine design.

This book will be of interest to design engineers, quality engineers and manufacturing engineers, academics and those who may or may not have previous experience with precision manufacturing, but want to learn more.

These two volumes contain the Proceedings of the 9th IFAC symposium on Information Control in Manufacturing which took place in Nancy and Metz, France, between 24-26 June, 1998.
This INCOM'98 program had six main themes which focused on the role of information for automating manufacturing operations; the role of information for integrating and distributing automated manufacturing activities in the whole Enterprise and; the role of information for enhancing synergies between humans and machines.
This year's symposium drew attention from more than 35 countries, and the number of the papers presented was over 200. The scientific relevance of this symposium was sponsored by three International Scientific Societies: IFAC with 6 Technical Committees, IFIP and CIRP, and two National Scientific Institutions: CNRS and INRIA. The industrial relevance of this symposium produced sponsorship by more than 10 companies who actively participated in this event.

This book focuses on the emerging additive manufacturing technology and its applications beyond state-of-the-art, fibre-reinforced thermoplastics. It also discusses the development of a hybrid, integrated process that combines additive and subtractive operations in a single-step platform, allowing CAD-to-Part production with freeform shapes using long or continuous fibre-reinforced thermoplastics. The book covers the entire value chain of this next-generation technology, from part design and materials composition to transformation stages, product evaluation, and end-of-life studies. Moreover, it addresses the following engineering issues: * Design rules for hybrid additive manufacturing; * Thermoplastic compounds for high-temperature and -strength applications; * Advanced extrusion heads and process concepts; * Hybridisation strategies; * Software ecosystems for hAM design, pre-processing, process planning, emulating and multi-axis processing; * 3D path generators for hAM based on a multi-objective optimisation algorithm that matches the recent curved adaptive slicing method with a new transversal scheme; * hAM parameters, real-time monitoring and closed-loop control; * Multiparametric nondestructive testing (NDT) tools customised for FRTP AM parts; * Sustainable manufacturing processes validated by advanced LCA/LCC models.

Water engineers require knowledge of stochastic, frequency concepts, uncertainty analysis, risk assessment, and the processes that predict unexpected events.

This book presents the basics of stochastic, risk and uncertainty analysis, and random sampling techniques in conjunction with straightforward examples which are solved step by step. In addition, appropriate Excel functions are included as an alternative to solve the examples, and two real case studies is presented in the last chapters of book.

The IFAC Workshop on Intelligent Components for Vehicles (ICV'98) was held in Seville (Spain), on March 23-24 1998. The event follows the Workshop on Intelligent Components for Autonomous and Semiautonomous Vehicles (ICASAV'95) held in Toulouse (France, October 1995).

The main objective of ICV'98 was to bring together specialists on components and instruments for automotive systems, mobile robots and vehicles in general to enhance the value of their experience in both hardware and software intelligent components.

Future vehicles will deal more and more with autonomous functions to improve safety and traffic management and to reduce consumption and pollution. Numerous on-board decision systems will replace the driver in critical running phases. The problems and solutions experienced, by adopting this new technology, will bring out many common points with other transportation systems and mobile robots.

Research and Developments on Mobile Robotics have produced many components for perception, control and planning that can be used in vehicles for collision detection and avoidance, position estimation, guidance and manoeuvering aids for drivers, advanced teleoperation, and other applications.

The topics of the Workshop are in an emerging field in which the research is quickly being converted into industrial products. Several applications in the automotive domain, marine vehicles, agricultural and others were included in the program.

In addition to the presentation of the papers, ICV also included a plenary talk and a round table about intelligent components for future vehicles with the participation of several industrial companies.

This book offers readers a concise yet comprehensive introduction to a set of diagnostic methods for on-line condition monitoring of lubricated tribosystems used in industry. It covers the latest trends in on-line tribodiagnostics, an important and rapidly developing area of tribology. The book also reports on new tools as they have been developed and applied by the authors. A special emphasis is given to the physical fundamentals of opto-magnetic detectors, ferro-analyzers and analyzers of metal particles in lubricated tribosystems, as well as fluorescence methods for real-time oil monitoring in compressors, hydraulic systems and electrical transformers. Further, the book discusses other important issues such as the monitoring of water content in oil, and presents techniques for measuring soot content in oil in diesel engine oils. Lastly, it describes the modular intelligent (SMART) diagnostic system for vehicles. Mainly intended for researchers, industrial and automotive engineers developing cost-effective techniques and sensors for the on-line monitoring of lubricating oil, the book also offers a valuable source of information for students and project managers in the manufacturing, energy, oil and gas, and automotive industry.

The high reliability required in industrial processes has created the necessity of detecting abnormal conditions, called faults, while processes are operating. The term fault generically refers to any type of process degradation, or degradation in equipment performance because of changes in the process's physical characteristics, process inputs or environmental conditions. This book is about the fundamentals of fault detection and diagnosis in a variety of nonlinear systems which are represented by ordinary differential equations. The fault detection problem is approached from a differential algebraic viewpoint, using residual generators based upon high-gain nonlinear auxiliary systems ('observers'). A prominent role is played by the type of mathematical tools that will be used, requiring knowledge of differential algebra and differential equations. Specific theorems tailored to the needs of the problem-solving procedures are developed and proved. Applications to real-world problems, both with constant and time-varying faults, are made throughout the book and include electromechanical positioning systems, the Continuous Stirred Tank Reactor (CSTR), bioreactor models and belt drive systems, to name but a few.

This book introduces process control to engineers and technicians unfamiliar with control techniques, providing an understanding of how to actually apply control in a real industrial environment. It avoids analytical treatment of the numerous statistical process control techniques to concentrate on the practical problems involved. A practical approach is taken, making it relevant in virtually all manufacturing and process industries.
There is currently no information readily available to practising engineers or students that discusses the real problems and such material is long overdue.
An indispensable guide for all those involved in process control
Includes equipment specification, troubleshooting, system specification and design
Provided with guidelines of HOW TO and HOW NOT TO install process control

This book gives details on the processes of agglomeration and its role in modern metal production processes. It starts with a chapter on sinter production, also discussing the quality of sinter and environmental aspects involved on the process. The following chapters focus on pellet production and briquetting of natural and anthropogenic raw materials. It also highlights the best available technologies for briquetting by stiff extrusion.

This book presents the selected peer-reviewed proceedings of the International Conference on Innovative Engineering Design (ICOIED 2020). The contents provide a multidisciplinary approach for the development of innovative product design and their benefits for the society. The book presents latest advances in various fields like design process, service development, micro/nano technology, sensors and MEMS, and sustainability in engineering design. This book can be useful for students, researchers, and professionals interested in innovative product/process design and development.

This book investigates the utilization of harmonics in the permanent magnet (PM) or rotor shape to improve the torque density of PM brushless AC machines including three-phase inner rotor and outer rotor machines, five-phase machines, dual three-phase machines, linear machines, by means of analytical, finite element analyses, and as well as experimental validation. The torque density can be improved while the torque ripple remains low in PM shaping utilizing the 3rd harmonic. In this book, the analytical expression of output torque is derived for PM machines with rotor shape using the 3rd harmonic, and then the optimal 3rd harmonic for maximizing torque is analytically obtained. The book compares the PM shape in surface-mounted PM (SPM) machines and the rotor lamination shape in interior PM (IPM) machines utilizing the 3rd harmonic, and it becomes clear that their shaping methods and amount of torque improvement are different. In a five-phase PM machine, the 3rd harmonic can be utilized in both the current waveform and PM shapes to further improve the output torque. For the dual three-phase SPM machines without deteriorating the torque more than 30% when the optimal 3rd harmonic into both the current and PM shape are injected. The harmonics in airgap flux density have significant influence on the cogging torque, stator iron flux distribution, and radial force between the rotor and stator. These effects has been investigated as well in this book.

This book focuses on the introduction of new and modern maintenance management frameworks of assets in the electricity & gas network sector and more specifically, on electricity networks for distribution. The author describes methodologies for developing and implementing maintenance management maturity models, using case studies to show how these have been applied. These maturity models are discussed as part of an overarching, multi-disciplinary organizational maintenance management professionalization framework. This book adds a new dimension to the well-known Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) method, by incorporating failure modes via multiple scenarios into business values, by means of statistical risk calculation methods. The author demonstrates a method called Utility Risk Linked RCM, which uses a statistical tool to develop failure models which can be used to predict future failure behavior of assets in relation to corporate business values. This new method is a practical, structured and comprehensive framework for assessing risk based maintenance policies. The book also proposes a condition monitoring framework that can be used as a guide to assist asset managers in identifying the relationship between failure modes, ageing processes to select amongst condition monitoring regimes.

This book presents concepts, methods and techniques to examine symptoms of faults and failures of structures, systems and components and to monitor functional performance and structural integrity. The book is organized in five parts. Part A introduces the scope and application of technical diagnostics and gives a comprehensive overview of the physics of failure. Part B presents all relevant methods and techniques for diagnostics and monitoring: from stress, strain, vibration analysis, nondestructive evaluation, thermography and industrial radiology to computed tomography and subsurface microstructural analysis. Part C cores the principles and concepts of technical failure analysis, illustrates case studies, and outlines machinery diagnostics with an emphasis on tribological systems. Part D describes the application of structural health monitoring and performance control to plants and the technical infrastructure, including buildings, bridges, pipelines, electric power stations, offshore wind structures, and railway systems. And finally, Part E is an excursion on diagnostics in arts and culture. The book integrates knowledge of basic sciences and engineering disciplines with contributions from research institutions, academe, and industry, written by internationally known experts from various parts of the world, including Europe, Canada, India, Japan, and USA.

Owing to the development and rapid spread of communication technologies including the Internet, the world is indeed turning into a global village. The rate of introduction of new products and technologies is steadily rising. At the same time, pressures to reduce time-to-market are mounting. Only companies that are able to realize products rapidly are able to survive today.
From a technological viewpoint, rapid product realization involves rapid design, rapid prototyping, and rapid tooling. Fortunately, a class of technologies, also collectively called rapid prototyping (RP) technologies, has emerged in the last two decades or so to meet these requirements. Early technologies merely aimed to produce single part look-alikes. However, intense R&D efforts are taking place around the world to go beyond mere look alike' single part prototyping, into functional, multi-part assemblies.
RP technologies are different from other modern manufacturing technologies in many ways. In RP, material is usually added incrementally in a layered manner and, occasionally, subtracted. Some technologies depend upon layers of resin cured under the influence of one or more CNC controlled laser beams. Others use lasers to selectively sinter layers of powdered metal. There are also RP technologies that do not use lasers at all. Indeed, RP is turning out to be a potent arena for technological creativity.
This book provides an updated overview of RP technologies at a level of detail that university engineering students taking courses on RP as well R&D and operating professionals from industry interested in RP are likely to find attractive. While the emphasis is on laser-based technologies, other processesare also discussed. With respect to each important RP process, the part/assembly modeling techniques, the materials used, process itself, advantages and disadvantages, accuracy and finish issues as well as application potential are discussed.

The safe management of the complex distributed systems and critical infrastructures which constitute the backbone of modern industry and society entails identifying and quantifying their vulnerabilities to design adequate protection, mitigation, and emergency action against failure. In practice, there is no fail-safe solution to such problems and various frameworks are being proposed to effectively integrate different methods of complex systems analysis in a problem-driven approach to their solution. Vulnerable Systems reflects the current state of knowledge on the procedures which are being put forward for the risk and vulnerability analysis of critical infrastructures. Classical methods of reliability and risk analysis, as well as new paradigms based on network and systems theory, including simulation, are considered in a dynamic and holistic way. Readers of Vulnerable Systems will benefit from its structured presentation of the current knowledge base on this subject. It will enable graduate students, researchers and safety and risk analysts to understand the methods suitable for different phases of analysis and to identify their criticalities in application.

'Optimization Day' (OD) has been a series of annual mini-conferences in Aus tralia since 1994. The purpose of this series of events is to gather researchers in optimization and its related areas from Australia and their collaborators, in order to exchange new developments of optimization theories, methods and their applications. The first four OD mini-conferences were held in The Uni versity of Ballarat (1994), The University of New South Wales (1995), The University of Melbourne (1996) and Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (1997), respectively. They were all on the eastern coast of Australia. The fifth mini-conference Optimization Days was held at the Centre for Ap plied Dynamics and Optimization (CADO), Department of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Western Australia, Perth, from 29 to 30 June 1998. This is the first time the OD mini-conference has been held at the west ern coast of Australia. This fifth OD preceded the International Conference on Optimization: Techniques and Applications (ICOTA) held at Curtin Uni versity of Technology. Many participants attended both events. There were 28 participants in this year's mini-conference and 22 presentations in the mini conference. The presentations in this volume are refereed contributions based on papers presented at the fifth Optimization Days mini-conference. The volume is di vided into the following parts: Global Optimization, Nonsmooth Optimization, Optimization Methods and Applications."

This book presents selected papers from the 10th International Workshop of Advanced Manufacturing and Automation (IWAMA 2020), held in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province, China, on October 12-13, 2020. Discussing topics such as novel techniques for manufacturing and automation in Industry 4.0 and smart factories, which are vital for maintaining and improving economic development and quality of life, it offers researchers and industrial engineers insights into implementing the concepts and theories of Industry 4.0, in order to effectively respond to the challenges posed by the 4th industrial revolution and smart factories.

The primary aim of this volume is to provide researchers and engineers from both academia and industry with up-to-date coverage of recent advances in the fields of robotic welding, intelligent systems and automation. It gathers selected papers from the 2017 International Workshop on Intelligentized Welding Manufacturing (IWIWM'2017), held June 23-26, 2017 in Shanghai, China. The contributions reveal how intelligentized welding manufacturing (IWM) is becoming an inescapable trend, just as intelligentized robotic welding is becoming a key technology. The volume is divided into four main parts: Intelligent Techniques for Robotic Welding, Sensing in Arc Welding Processing, Modeling and Intelligent Control of Welding Processing, and Intelligent Control and its Applications in Engineering.

This book covers the latest developments in life cycle assessment LCA both in terms of methodology and its application in various research areas. It includes methodological questions as well as case studies concerning energy and mobility, materials and engineering, sustainable construction and future technologies. With numerous research articles from leading German and Austrian research institutes, the book is a valuable source for professionals working in the field of sustainability assessment, researchers interested in the current state of LCA research, and advanced university students in various scientific and technical fields. Chapter "Life Cycle Assessment of a Hydrogen and Fuel Cell RoPax Ferry Prototype" is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.