The changing role of industry, the trend towards automation, the in creased cost of raw materials and labour rates all emphasize the need for improved quality of manufacture which will lead to better reliability, reduced maintenance costs and incidence of failure, as well as greater consumer confidence. Many countries, including Japan, are noted for their high quality of manufacture. This has helped them monopolize the world radio and television market and achieve great in-roads into the motor industry. If other economies are to compete effectively against such competition, then improvements in quality and performance of products are necessary. The need for control of quality embraces many fields from design, manufacture, function testing and inspection, through to an understand ing of sampling procedures and sampling theory, embracing both employee and management responsibilities to the maintenance of quality. The aim of this book is to give an understanding of industrial quality control. The techniques described have been selected so that they may be applied to industrial problems. It is hoped and expected that these methods will lead to improvements in quality and economics of manufac ture, thus leading to increased productivity and profitability. 9 1 The Need for Quality Control The major goals for quality control are manifold and include a need to determine the real functional tolerances required for engineering specifications and to provide a plan for control of the quality of the results of a process related to time. This is normally achieved by statistical or control chart methods."

When data is collected on failure or survival a list of times is obtained. Some of the times are failure times and others are the times at which the subject left the experiment. These times both give information about the performance of the system. The two types will be referred to as failure and censoring times (cf. Smith section 5). * A censoring time, t, gives less information than a failure time, for it is * known only that the item survived past t and not when it failed. The data is tn and of censoring thus collected as a list of failure times t , . . . , l * * * times t , t , . . . , t * 1 z m 2. 2. Classical methods The failure times are assumed to follow a parametric distribution F(t;B) with and reliability R(t;B). There are several methods of estimating density f(t;B) the parameter B based only on the data in the sample without any prior assumptions about B. The availability of powerful computers and software packages has made the method of maximum likelihood the most popular. Descriptions of most methods can be found in the book by Mann, Schafer and Singpurwalla (1974). In general the method of maximum likelihood is the most useful of the classical approaches. The likelihood approach is based on constructing the joint probability distrilmtion or density for a sample.

With the end of the Cold War, new opportunities for interaction have opened up between the United States and the countries of the Former Soviet Union. Many of these important initiatives involve the US Department of Energy (DOE) and the Ministry of the Russian Federation for Atomic Energy (MINA TOM). Currently, collaboration is under way which involves reactor safety, the disposition of fissile materials from the weapons program, radioactive waste disposal, and the safety of nuclear warheads. Another fruitful area of interchange resulted from the radiochemical storage tank accident at the site of the Siberian Chemical Compound at Tomsk-7 in 1993. DOE and MINATOM agreed to meet and exchange information about the accident for the purposes of improving safety. A meeting on the Tomsk tank accident was held in Hanford, Washington in 1993, followed by a second meeting in st. Petersburg, Russia in 1994 in which the agenda expanded to include radiochemical processing safety. A third exchange took place in 1995 in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and additional papers were presented on nonreactor nuclear safety. Following a planning session in 1996 in Seattle, Washington, it was decided to hold a fourth technical exchange on the broader subject of nuclear materials safety management. Through a grant from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Disarmament Programme, the meeting took place on March 17- 21, 1997, in Amarillo, Texas as a NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) through grant no. DISRM 961315.

This book contains a selection of papers presented at the "European Robotics and Intelligent Systems Conference" (EURISCON '91) held in Corfu. Greece (June 23-28. 1991). It is devoted to the analysis. design and applications of technological systems with built-in intelligence achieved through appropriate blending of mathematical, symbolic. sensing. computer processing. and feedback control concepts. methods and software / hardware tools. System intelligence includes human-like capabilities such as learning. observation. perception. interpretation. reasoning. planning. decision making. and action. Integrated intelligent decision and control systems obey Saridis' prinCiple of Increasing Precision with Decreasing Intelligence (IPDI). and have a hierarchical structure with three basic levels. namely Organization. Coordination. and Execution Levels. As we proceed from the organization to the execution level. the precision about the jobs to be completed increases and accordingly the intelligence reqUired for these jobs decreases. As an example. it is mentioned here that in an intelligent robotic system the organization tasks can be realized using a neural net. the coordination tasks by a Petri net. and the execution tasks by local sensors and actuators. The field of intelligent systems is a new interdisciplinary field with continuously increasing interest and expansion. It is actually the outcome of the synergetic interaction and cooperation of classical fields such as system theory. control theory. artificial intelligence. operational research. information theory. electronics. communications. and others.

Condition Monitoring Using Computational Intelligence Methods promotes the various approaches gathered under the umbrella of computational intelligence to show how condition monitoring can be used to avoid equipment failures and lengthen its useful life, minimize downtime and reduce maintenance costs. The text introduces various signal-processing and pre-processing techniques, wavelets and principal component analysis, for example, together with their uses in condition monitoring and details the development of effective feature extraction techniques classified into frequency-, time-frequency- and time-domain analysis. Data generated by these techniques can then be used for condition classification employing tools such as:

fuzzy systems; rough and neuro-rough sets; neural and Bayesian networks;hidden Markov and Gaussian mixture models; and support vector machines."

Classes of socio-technical hazards allow a characterization of the risk in technology innovation and clarify the mechanisms underpinning emergent technological risk. "Emerging Technological Risk" provides an interdisciplinary account of risk in socio-technical systems including hazards which highlight:

. How technological risk crosses organizational boundaries,

. How technological trajectories and evolution develop from resolving tensions emerging between social aspects of organisations and technologies and

. How social behaviour shapes, and is shaped by, technology.

Addressing an audience from a range of academic and professional backgrounds, " Emerging Technological Risk" is a key source for those who wish to benefit from a detail and methodical exposure to multiple perspectives on technological risk. By providing a synthesis of recent work on risk that captures the complex mechanisms that characterize the emergence of risk in technology innovation, "Emerging Technological Risk" bridges contributions from many disciplines in order to sustain a fruitful debate.

"Emerging Technological Risk" is one of a series of books developed by the Dependability Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

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The use of tritium as a basic fuel material in a thermonuclear fusion reactor raises particular safety issues due to the combined effects of its physicochemical properties and its radioactive nature. Furthermore, the possibility of attaining further significant progress in developing and demonstrating the feasibility of tritium burning devices relies on the handling of tritium macroquantities, say tens of grams, in a safe and reliable manner. It is also certain that, apart from technological constraints, any validation and exploitation of thermonuclear fusion as a source of energy will be strongly conditioned by the application of stringent operational and environmental safety criteria derived from the norms of modern legislation and public acceptance considerations. This publication illustrates the most prominent safety aspects associated with the safe operation, maintenance and experimental utilization of a tritium handling facility. Besides the need for safe and reliable systems for tritium containment, monitoring and storage, particular attention is devoted to problems linked with tritium--material interaction and tritium processing, according to the different options applicable both to the tritium handling laboratory and future fusion devices. Selected topics, such as biological hazard, dosimetry, radiological protection and environmental safety are reviewed with particular attention to implications for operators and general public. Finally, outstanding experience gained during the recent JET operation and after many years of dismantling tritiated facilities at CEN--Valduc are illustrated. The book is principally addressed to scientists concerned with tritium R&D activities, as well as to designers and operators of tritium handling plants.

The series Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage technology transfer in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology has an impact on all areas of the control discipline. New theory, new controllers, actuators, sensors, new industrial processes, computer methods, new applications, new philosophies. . . , new challenges. Much of this development work resides in industrial reports, feasibility study papers and the reports of advanced collaborative projects. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of such new work in all aspects of industrial control for widerand rapid dissemination. Benchmarking is a technique first applied by Rank Xerox in the late 1970s for business processes. As a subject in the commercial arena, benchmarking thrives with, for example, a European Benchmarking Forum. It has taken rather longer for benchmarking to make the transfer to the technical domain and even now the subject is making a slow headway. Akey research step in this direction was taken by Harris (1989) who used minimum variance control as a benchmark for controller loop assessment. This contribution opened up the area and a significant specialist literature has now developed. Significant support for the methodologywas given by Honeywell who have controller assessment routines in their process control applications software; therefore, it is timely to welcome a (first) monograph on controller performance assessment by Biao Huang and Sirish Shah to the Advances in Industrial Control series.

Nonlinearity and stochastic structural dynamics is of common interest to engineers and applied scientists belonging to many disciplines. Recent research in this area has been concentrated on the response and stability of nonlinear mechanical and structural systems subjected to random escitation. Simultaneously the focus of research has also been directed towards understanding intrinsic nonlinear phenomena like bifurcation and chaos in deterministic systems. These problems demand a high degree of sophistication in the analytical and numerical approaches. At the same time they arise from considerations of nonlinear system response to turbulence, earthquacke, wind, wave and guidancy excitations. The topic thus attracts votaries of both analytical rigour and practical applications. This books gives important and latest developments in the field presenting in a coherent fashion the research findings of leading international groups working in the area of nonlinear random vibration and chaos.

Advances in information technology provide opportunities for the development of computer systems that support risk managers in complex tasks. Leading experts report on the potentials and limitations concerning the use of computer systems in risk management. Their reports are based on many years of experience in their fields which include: risk analysis, systems engineering, geographic information systems, decision support systems, human--machine systems, and psychology. The book addresses four major issues in computer supported risk management: Conceptual aspects: the role, design, and use of computers in risk management Planning and policy analysis: transportation, equity analysis, emergency management, group decision making Operational decision making: nuclear power monitoring, emergency response, public safety warning, satellite tracking Commercial applications: GIS from IIASA, InterClair from IAEA, EPA software, cleanup decision support software survey. This book is meant for researchers, who will find the emerging issues in risk management that are motivated by the encounter of new tasks and novel technology; practitioners who will have descriptions and references of the state-of-the-art models and software; and students who will learn the basic concepts needed to develop advanced information and decision support systems in risk management.

Reliability theory is of fundamental importance for engineers and managers involved in the manufacture of high-quality products and the design of reliable systems. In order to make sense of the theory, however, and to apply it to real systems, an understanding of the basic stochastic processes is indispensable. As well as providing readers with useful reliability studies and applications, Stochastic Processes also gives a basic treatment of such stochastic processes as: the Poisson process, the renewal process, the Markov chain, the Markov process, and the Markov renewal process. Many examples are cited from reliability models to show the reader how to apply stochastic processes. Furthermore, Stochastic Processes gives a simple introduction to other stochastic processes such as the cumulative process, the Wiener process, the Brownian motion and reliability applications. Stochastic Processes is suitable for use as a reliability textbook by advanced undergraduate and graduate students. It is also of interest to researchers, engineers and managers who study or practise reliability and maintenance.

This collection of papers is a state of the art presentation of theories and methods related to the problem of the behaviour of mechanical structures under variable loads beyond their elastic limit In particular, the problems of shakedown, ratchetting, transient and asymptotic cyclic states are addressed. The volume is composed of four chapters devoted to material modelling for cyclic loading conditions; general theory of accommodated states of structures; effects of changes of the geometry on the inelastic structural response; and numerical techniques with applications to particular engineering problems. It was aimed to provide a unified approach in order to understand both inelastic material and structural response under variable loading conditions. The attempt to extend the classical shakedown theory of Melan and Koiter to geometrically non-linear problems is presented in several papers. The industrial application of cyclic plasticity to the analysis and the design of pressure bellows, compensators, turbine disks, or flange connections under thermal and pressure cycles illustrates the great potential of the numerical techniques developed for this purpose using mostly min-max approaches. The treatment of railway problems and the analysis and optimisation of pavements are further examples of important areas of applications. Emphasis was laid on approaches that take into account the fact that loading histories are often not precisely known Therefore, the center of interest lies in other than step by step calculation methods.

In this global wake-up call, nuclear physicist Jeff Eerkens explores remedies for the impending energy crisis, when oil and natural gas are depleted. The Nuclear Imperative demonstrates that solar, wind, and biomass power are incapable of supplying the enormous quantities of electricity and heat needed for manufacturing portable synthetic fuels to replace our current use of fossil fuels. It offers a fresh look at uranium-produced energy as the optimal affordable solution.

Industrial development is essential to improvement of the standard of living in all countries. People's health and the environment can be affected, directly or indirectly by routine waste discharges or by accidents. A series of recent major industrial accidents and the effect of pollution highlighted, once again, the need for better management of routine and accidental risks. Moreover, the existence of natural hazards complicate even more the situation in any given region. In the past effort to cope with these risks, if made at all, have been largely on a plant by plant basis; some plants are well equipped to manage environmental and health hazards, while others are not. Managing the hazards of modern technological systems has become a key activity in highly industrialised countries. Decision makers are often confronted with complex issues concerning economic and social development, industrialisation and associated infrastructure needs, population and land use planning. Such issues have to be addressed in such a way that ensures that public health will not be disrupted or substantially degraded. Due to the increasing complexity of technological systems and the higher geographical density of punctual hazard sources, new methodologies and a novel approach to these problems are challenging risk managers and regional planers. Risks from these new complex technological systems are inherently different form those addressed by the risk managers for decades ago.

Reliability, Maintainability, and Supportability play a crucial role in achieving a competitive product. While manufacturing costs are important for the success of a product, they are not the sole domains in realizing its competitive edge. Improved manufacturing and operating quality and performance coupled with reduced acquisition cost and in-service cost of ownership are important in achieving business success. It is the early phase of design which offers the greatest opportunity to address these requirements, and thus create life cycle effectiveness. The main objective of Reliability, Maintenance and Logistic Support - A Life Cycle Approach is to provide an integrated approach to reliability, maintainability, maintenance and logistic support analysis. We not only look at the ways we can improve the design process to ensure the product offers value for money, but we also consider how the owners can get the most from these products once they have entered service. The approach provides a meaningful way of integrating reliability, maintenance and supportability to enhance the product performance and sales opportunities. Hence, the book covers the following objectives: (1) Introduce the concepts of reliability, maintainability and supportability and their role in the system life cycle and effectiveness. (2) Introduce the basic probability and statistical techniques that are essential for modelling reliability, maintainability and supportability problems. (3) Introduce reliability measures: how to predict them; how to determine from in-service real-world data; how to use them. (4) Analysis of advanced models in Reliability. (5) Discuss basic and advanced concepts in both maintainability and maintenance including preventive, corrective and condition based maintenance. (6) Discuss maintenance management and optimization concepts, such as reliability-centered maintenance and age-related maintenance. (7) Provide basic concepts in supportability and Integrated logistic support. (8) Discuss techniques for design for reliability, maintainability and supportability. (9) Analysis of simple and advanced models in spares forecasting and optimization. (10) Discuss data analysis, data management and data mining techniques.

This book provides an overview of key topics related to space business and management. Case studies and an integrative section are included to illustrate the fundamental concepts and to build intuition. Key topics in the field, such as risk management and cost management, are covered in detail.

These are the papers presented at the Fib-RILEM workshop held in Madrid, Spain, in November 2010. The assessment of deterioration and aging of concrete structures, most commonly through reinforcement corrosion, is not considered in current structural codes or standards. Some guidelines manuals exist, and research has been done, but there is as yet no accepted methodology nor models that could be used by engineers. This book deals with all aspects related to modelling of corroding structures and provides state-of-the-art information on structural models for corroding structures.

This book is designed for the chemist, formulator, student, teacher, forensic scientist, or others who wish to investigate the composition of polymeric materials. Theinformationwithinthesepagesisintendedtoarmthereaderwiththenecessary workingknowledgetoanalyze,characterize, anddeformulatematerials. ThestructureoftheContentsisintendedtoassistthereaderinquicklylocating the subject of interest and proceed to it with a minimum of expended time and effort. The Contents provides an outline of major topics and relevant materials char- terizedforthereader'sconvenience. Anintroductiontoanalysisanddeformulation is provided in Chapter 1 to acquaint the reader with analytical methods and their applications. Extensive references are provided as additional sources ofinfor- tion. All tables arelocatedin theAppendix, beginning onp. 235. GUIDE FOR USE This is a practical book structured to efficiently use the reader's time with a minimum effort of searching for entries and information by following these brief instructions: 1. Searchthe Contents and/orIndex fora subject withinthe text. 2. Analysis/deformulation principles are discussed at the outset to familiarize the reader with analysis methods and instruments; followed by formu- tions, materials, and analysis ofpaint, plastics, adhesives, and inks; and finally reformulation methods to test the results of analysis. 3. Materials and a wide assortment of formulations are discussed within the text by chapter/section number. 4. Materials are referred toby various names (trivial, trade, and scientific), and these are listed in tables and cross-referenced to aid the reader.

Modern society depends heavily upon a host of systems of varying complexity to perform the services required. The importance of reliability assumes new dimensions, primarily because of the higher cost of these highly complex machines required by mankind and the implication of their failure. This is why all industrial organizations wish to equip their scientists, engineers, managers and administrators with a knowledge of reliability concepts and applications. Based on the author's 20 years experience as reliability educator, researcher and consultant, Reliability Engineering introduces the reader systematically to reliability evaluation, prediction, allocation and optimization. It also covers further topics, such as maintainability and availability, software reliability, economics of reliability, reliability management, reliability testing, etc. A reliability study of some typical systems has been included to introduce the reader to the practical aspects. The book is intended for graduate students of engineering schools and also professional engineers, managers and reliability administrators as it has a wide coverage of reliability concepts.

Managing safety in a professional environment requires constant negotiation with other competitive dimensions of risk management (finances, market and political drivers, manpower and social crisis). This is obvious, although generally not said in safety manuals. The book provides a unique vision of how to best find these compromises, starting with lessons learnt from natural risk management by individuals, then applying them to the craftsman industry, complex industrial systems (civil aviation, nuclear energy) and public services (like transportation and medicine). It offers a unique, illustrated, easy to read and scientifically based set of original concepts and pragmatic methods to revisit safety management and adopt a successful system vision. As such, and with illustrations coming from many various fields (aviation, fishing, nuclear, oil, medicine), it potentially covers a broad readership.

Looks at quality management in a new way; Offers a very different mathematical tool set than traditionally employed for quality control problems; Yao is a leading researcher in the area of stochastic modeling and the author of a previous Springer book

Margot P. C. Weijnen, Zofia Lukszo and Geert Deconinck Abstract The infrastructures for electric power and information and telecommunication services are critical enablers for all economic activity. Both of these infrastructure systems evolved over time as networks-of-networks in an institutionally fr- mented landscape. In understanding and steering the emergent behaviour of these infrastructure systems both their physical network complexity and their social n- work complexity pose a formidable challenge. On top of the socio-technical c- plexity of the electricity infrastructure and the information and telecommunication infrastructure as such, the two infrastructure systems show unprecedented mutual interdependency. Unravelling this multi-level interdependency and identifying strategies to curb the new risks and vulnerabilities it implies for the reliability of electric power services is the goal of this book. It clearly shows that technical so- tions alone will not suffice to ensure the future reliability and security of electricity infrastructure operations. Keywords Cybersecurity * infrastructure vulnerability * infrastructure depend- cies * power systems 1. 1 Infrastructures Are Critical Infrastructures are the backbone of the economy and society. Especially the network bound infrastructures operated by public utilities and network industries provide essential services that are enabling for almost every economic and social activity. M. P. C. Weijnen (*) and Z. Lukszo Technology Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, P. O. Box 5015, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands e-mail: M. P. C. Weijnen@tudelft. nl; Z. Lukszo@tudelft. nl G. Deconinck K. U.

In recent years, rapid changes and improvements have been witnessed in the field of transformer condition monitoring and assessment, especially with the advances in computational intelligence techniques. Condition Monitoring and Assessment of Power Transformers Using Computational Intelligence applies a broad range of computational intelligence techniques to deal with practical transformer operation problems. The approaches introduced are presented in a concise and flowing manner, tackling complex transformer modelling problems and uncertainties occurring in transformer fault diagnosis. Condition Monitoring and Assessment of Power Transformers Using Computational Intelligence covers both the fundamental theories and the most up-to-date research in this rapidly changing field. Many examples have been included that use real-world measurements and realistic operating scenarios of power transformers to fully illustrate the use of computational intelligence techniques for a variety of transformer modelling and fault diagnosis problems. Condition Monitoring and Assessment of Power Transformers Using Computational Intelligence is a useful book for professional engineers and postgraduate students. It also provides a firm foundation for advanced undergraduate students in power engineering.

Simulation Methods for Reliability and Availability of Complex Systems discusses the use of computer simulation-based techniques and algorithms to determine reliability and availability (R and A) levels in complex systems. The book: shares theoretical or applied models and decision support systems that make use of simulation to estimate and to improve system R and A levels, forecasts emerging technologies and trends in the use of computer simulation for R and A and proposes hybrid approaches to the development of efficient methodologies designed to solve R and A-related problems in real-life systems. Dealing with practical issues, Simulation Methods for Reliability and Availability of Complex Systems is designed to support managers and system engineers in the improvement of R and A, as well as providing a thorough exploration of the techniques and algorithms available for researchers, and for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Risk has become one of the main topics in fields as diverse as engineering, medicine and economics, and it is also studied by social scientists, psychologists and legal scholars. This Springer Essentials version offers an overview of the in-depth handbook and highlights some of the main points covered in the Handbook of Risk Theory. The topic of risk also leads to more fundamental questions such as: What is risk? What can decision theory contribute to the analysis of risk? What does the human perception of risk mean for society? How should we judge whether a risk is morally acceptable or not? Over the last couple of decades questions like these have attracted interest from philosophers and other scholars into risk theory. This brief offers the essentials of the handbook provides for an overview into key topics in a major new field of research and addresses a wide range of topics, ranging from decision theory, risk perception to ethics and social implications of risk. It aims to promote communication and information among all those who are interested in theoretical issues concerning risk and uncertainty. The Essentials of Risk Theory brings together internationally leading philosophers and scholars from other disciplines who work on risk theory. The contributions are accessibly written and highly relevant to issues that are studied by risk scholars. The Essentials of Risk Theory will be a helpful starting point for all risk scholars who are interested in broadening and deepening their current perspectives.