This book provides a unique source for expert witnesses and underwriters in engineering litigation of a range of case examples that can be used to plan their future litigation. It will help them develop their own winning lines of arguments. The examples are based on the author 's 30-year experience in engineering litigation. Students in forensic engineering and risk engineering will find the book an ideal introduction to the subject.

Since the German edition of this book, the topic of risk has experienced even greater attention, not only in the world of science but also in other fields, such as economics and politics. Therefore, many new publications have evolved. To keep with the idea of an encyclopedia for the topic of risk, this book has been completely reworked. Not only are many updated examples included in chapter "Risks and disasters" but also new chapters have been introduced, such as the chapter "Indetermination and risk." This new chapter was developed since the question "Is it possible for risks to be completely eliminated, and if not why?" has become a major point of c- cern. Therefore, especially in this chapter, the focus of the book has - tended from a simple mathematical or engineering point of view to include much broader concepts. Here, not only aspects of system theory have to be considered, but also some general philosophical questions start to inf- ence the considerations of the topic of risk. The main goal of this edition, however, is not only the extension and revision of the book, but also the translation into the English language to allow more readers access to the ideas of the book. The author deeply hopes that the success the book made in the German edition continues and that readers experience a major gain from reading the book.

In teaching an elementary course in stochastic processes it was noticed that many seemingly deep results in point processes are readily accessible by the device of representing them in terms of random gap lengths between points. The possibility of representing point processes in terms of sequences of random variables rather than probability measures makes them mathemati cally simpler than general stochastic processes. Point processes can be studied using only the tools of elementary probability, that is the joint distributions of finitely many random variables. Given the wide applicability of point process models and the difficulty of access by the measure-theoretic route, it was determined that the simpler representation is of sufficient expository im portance to deserve emphasis. The present book is the result: it is specialized and short and therefore is called a monograph. In its development the material has been taught to several classes with pleasing results. Students have apparently understood theorems which by other methods appear difficult and deep. A few of the results, particularly on reliability, safety assessment and clustering, are original applied research. An alternative title for this monograph might be 'Point processes: What they are and what they are good for."

Failure of welded components can occur during service as well as during fabrication. Most common, analyses of the resistance of welded components against failure are targeted at crack avoidance. Such evaluations are increasingly carried out by modern weldability studies, i. e. considering interactions between the selected base and filler materials, structural design and welding process. Such weldability investigations are particularly targeted to prevent hot cracking, as one of the most common cracking phenomena occurring during weld fabrication. To provide an international information and discussion platform to combat hot cracking, an international workshop on Hot Cracking Phenomena in Welds has been created, based on an initiative of the Institute for Materials and Joining Technology at the Otto-von-Guericke University in Magdeburg and the Division V. 5 - Safety of Joined Components at the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) in Berlin, Germany. The first workshop was organized in Berlin under the topics mechanisms and phenomena, metallurgy and materials, modelling and simulations as well as testing and standardization. It consisted of 20 individual contributions from eight countries, which were compiled in a book that found a very ready market, not only in the welding community. As a consequence of increasing interest, it has been decided to establish the Workshop on Hot Cracking Phenomena in Welds as a regular event every three years embedded in the International Institute of Welding (IIW). Attached to the IIW Commission IX and II Spring intermediate meetings, the second workshop was organized in March 2007.

were published in the series as the contributed volume, Process Control Performance Assessment: From Theory to Implementation with Andrzej Ordys, Damian Uduehi, and Michael Johnson as Editors (ISBN 978-1-84628-623-0, 2007). Along with this good progress in process controller assessment methods, researchers have also been investigating techniques to diagnose what is causing the process or control loop degradation. This requires the use of on-line data to identify faults via new diagnostic indicators of typical process problems. A significant focus of some of this research has been the issue of valve problems; a research direction that has been motivated by some industrial statistics that show up to 40% of control loops having performance degradation attributable to valve problems. Shoukat Choudhury, Sirish Shah, and Nina Thornhill have been very active in this research field for a number of years and have written a coherent and consistent presentation of their many research results as this monograph, Diagnosis of Process Nonlinearities and Valve Stiction. The Advances in Industrial Control series is pleased to welcome this new and substantial contribution to the process diagnostic literature. The reader will find the exploitation of the extensive process data archives created by today's process computer systems one theme in the monograph. From another viewpoint, the use of higher-order statistics could be considered to provide a continuing link to the earlier methods of the statistical process control paradigm.

For over 200 years, practitioners have been developing parametric families of probability distributions for data analysis. More recently, an active development of nonparametric and semiparametric families has occurred. This book includes an extensive discussion of a wide variety of distribution families nonparametric, semiparametric and parametric some well known and some not. An all-encompassing view is taken for the purpose of identifying relationships, origins and structures of the various families. A unified methodological approach for the introduction of parameters into families is developed, and the properties that the parameters imbue a distribution are clarified. These results provide essential tools for intelligent choice of models for data analysis. Many of the results given are new and have not previously appeared in print. This book provides a comprehensive reference for anyone working with nonnegative data."

Intended for wire-bonding and flip-chip packaging professionals and for scientists and engineers working in the field of mechanical microsensors, this practical monograph introduces novel measurement technologies that allow for in situ and real-time examination of physical processes during the packaging process or during subsequent reliability tests. The measurement system presented here makes possible measurements at formerly inaccessible packaging interconnects. For the first time it becomes possible to describe the wire-bonding process window in terms of the physical forces at the contact zone instead of the applied machine settings. This is significant for a deeper understanding and future development of these packaging processes. Applications of the sensor in the field of wire bonding and flip-chip characterization are also illustrated. The reader will gain much insight into the important field of interconnection technology in semiconductor packaging.

Introduction This book includes terms of reference and offers an augmented volume of relevant work initiated within the comprehensive concept of "Knowledge Management and Risk Governance." The latter stood for the initial title of an ad-hoc meeting held in Ascona, Switzerland, organized by the Technological Risk Management Unit of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC) and the KOVERS Centre of Excellence in Risk and Safety Sciences of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich. Background Risk governance, in addition to the continuous interest of researchers, has recently attracted the attention of policy-makers and the media and the concern of the public. New and emerging risks in various fields and a number of risk-related issues increased the public interest and prompted for a new framework in dealing with risks. The Conference on Science and Governance organized by the European Commission in October 2000 is one of the international forums addressing this issue. Other recent events such as the establishment of the International Risk Governance Council outline the importance of the governance concept in relation to that of risk management (see www.irgc.org). At the same time noticeable progress has been made in Information Technologies and Decision Support, passing from the process of information PREFACE xvi to the process of knowledge. In this context new tools and methods became available, whose application in risk management may be beneficial.

In April 1990 a conference was held at the Cracow Institute of Technology, Cracow, Poland. The title of that conference was "Residual Stresses in Rails - Effects on Rail Integrity and Railroad Economics" and its themes were the measurement and prediction of residual stresses in rails, but, as the sub-title suggests, the intention was also to provide a link between research and its application to the practical railway world. At the Cracow conference there were 40 participants with 5 railways and 5 rail makers being represented and 25 papers were given. The Cracow conference was a success, and by March 1991 its off-spring, "The International Conference on Rail Quality and Maintenance for Modern Railway Operations", was conceived and birth was ultimately given in June 1992 at the Technical University, Delft. It turned out to be some baby, with 112 delegates from 24 countries taking part! As with its predecessor, the conference was to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas between research investigators, rail makers and railway engineers. A cursory examination of the list of participants suggests that about 57% were from the railway industry, 34% from universities and other research institutions and 9% from the steel industry. Bearing in mind that some of the railway industry participants were from their respective research and development organisations the balance of interests was about right.

Well written textbook on industrial applications of Statistical Measurement Theory. It deals with the principal issues of measurement theory, is concise and intelligibly written, and to a wide extent self-contained. Difficult theoretical issues are separated from the mainstream presentation. Each topic starts with an informal introduction followed by an example, the rigorous problem formulation, solution method, and a detailed numerical solution. Chapter are concluded with a set of exercises of increasing difficulty, mostly with solutions. Knowledge of calculus and fundamental probability and statistics is assumed.

Conjugate direction methods were proposed in the early 1950s. When high speed digital computing machines were developed, attempts were made to lay the fo- dations for the mathematical aspects of computations which could take advantage of the ef?ciency of digital computers. The National Bureau of Standards sponsored the Institute for Numerical Analysis, which was established at the University of California in Los Angeles. A seminar held there on numerical methods for linear equationswasattendedbyMagnusHestenes, EduardStiefel andCorneliusLanczos. This led to the ?rst communication between Lanczos and Hestenes (researchers of the NBS) and Stiefel (of the ETH in Zurich) on the conjugate direction algorithm. The method is attributed to Hestenes and Stiefel who published their joint paper in 1952 [101] in which they presented both the method of conjugate gradient and the conjugate direction methods including conjugate Gram-Schmidt processes. A closelyrelatedalgorithmwasproposedbyLanczos[114]whoworkedonalgorithms for determiningeigenvalues of a matrix. His iterative algorithm yields the similarity transformation of a matrix into the tridiagonal form from which eigenvalues can be well approximated.Thethree-termrecurrencerelationofthe Lanczosprocedurecan be obtained by eliminating a vector from the conjugate direction algorithm scheme. Initially the conjugate gradient algorithm was called the Hestenes-Stiefel-Lanczos method [86].

Bayesian Reliability presents modern methods and techniques for analyzing reliability data from a Bayesian perspective. The adoption and application of Bayesian methods in virtually all branches of science and engineering have significantly increased over the past few decades. This increase is largely due to advances in simulation-based computational tools for implementing Bayesian methods.

The authors extensively use such tools throughout this book, focusing on assessing the reliability of components and systems with particular attention to hierarchical models and models incorporating explanatory variables. Such models include failure time regression models, accelerated testing models, and degradation models. The authors pay special attention to Bayesian goodness-of-fit testing, model validation, reliability test design, and assurance test planning. Throughout the book, the authors use Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms for implementing Bayesian analyses -- algorithms that make the Bayesian approach to reliability computationally feasible and conceptually straightforward.

This book is primarily a reference collection of modern Bayesian methods in reliability for use by reliability practitioners. There are more than 70 illustrative examples, most of which utilize real-world data. This book can also be used as a textbook for a course in reliability and contains more than 160 exercises.

Noteworthy highlights of the book include Bayesian approaches for the following:

• Goodness-of-fit and model selection methods
• Hierarchical models for reliability estimation
• Fault tree analysis methodology that supports data acquisition at all levels in the tree
• Bayesian networks in reliability analysis
• Analysis of failure count and failure time data collected from repairable systems, and the assessment of various related performance criteria
• Analysis of nondestructive and destructive degradation data
• Optimal design of reliability experiments
• Hierarchical reliability assurance testing

Over the years I have worked with or consulted for many managers throughout the world at all levels of industry and government. I have seen who succeeded, achieved goals, and made progress, and who failed or crashed. I have studied their methods of operation and their decision-making approach, as well as the range of people involved in the decision-making. I similarly personally managed large industrial and service organizations and their operations, and found that to succeed and have a content team of collaborators, decision-making had to be joint and delegated to the lowest competent and informed level. Using this approach not only improved the performance of the organization or firm, but also resulted in a more content, professional, cooperative, happy, and competent workforce. In general, people like to assume responsibility, particularly of functions with which they are intimately familiar. They enjoy the role of de- sion-maker and the use of their knowledge and experience in guiding their and related work. Delegation of decision-making not only infuses pride and conte- ment but also assures more informed, timely, and effective implementation of de- sions. It also adds to worker training and education as workers inquire, develop information and use of their own experience in improving their decision-making. Worker pride and feeling of control and involvement lead to contentment and s- isfaction which, in return, pays dividends in worker productivity, morale, retention, and resulting low turnover.

In today's industrial companies, sensory evaluation is widely used in quality inspection of products, in marketing study and in many other fields such as risk evaluation, investment evaluation and safety evaluation. This book collects a number of representative methods on sensory evaluation. The book reports recent research results and provides a state of the art on intelligent techniques-based sensory evaluation in industrial applications. The focus is especially on theoretical/analytical solutions to the problems of real interest in intelligent techniques with applications to engineers and managers of different industrial departments such as production, quality inspection, product design and development and marketing.

This book provides a training course for I and C maintenance engineers in power, process, chemical, and other industries. It summarizes all the scattered literature in this field. The book compiles 30 years of knowledge gained by the author and his staff in testing the I and C systems of nuclear power plants around the world. It focuses on process temperature and pressure sensors and the verification of these sensors' calibration and response time.

Fuzzy logic is a relatively new concept in science applications. Hitherto, fuzzy logic has been a conceptual process applied in the field of risk management. Its potential applicability is much wider than that, however, and its particular suitability for expanding our understanding of processes and information in science and engineering in our post-modern world is only just beginning to be appreciated.

Written as a companion text to the author's earlier volume "An Introduction to Fuzzy Logic Applications," the book is aimed at professional engineers and students and those with an interest in exploring the potential of fuzzy logic as an information processing kit with a wide variety of practical applications in the field of engineering science and develops themes and topics introduced in the author's earlier text.

This book covers the recent applications of computational intelligence techniques in reliability engineering. This volume contains a survey of the contributions made to the optimal reliability design literature in recent years. It also contains chapters devoted to different applications of a genetic algorithm in reliability engineering and to combinations of this algorithm with other computational intelligence techniques.

In 1989 the time was hot to create a workshop series dedicated to the dicussion of the latest results in the automatic processing of fringe patterns. This idea was promoted by the insight that automatic and high precision phase measurement techniques will play a key role in all future industrial applications of optical metrology. However, such a workshop must take place in a dynamic environment. The- fore the main topics of the previous events were always adapted to the most interesting subjects of the new period. In 1993 new prin- ples of optical shape measurement, setup calibration, phase unwr- ping and nondestructive testing were the focus of discussion, while in 1997 new approaches in multi-sensor metrology, active measu- ment strategies and hybrid processing technologies played a central role. 2001, the first meeting in the 21st century, was dedicated to - tical methods for micromeasurements, hybrid measurement te- nologies and new sensor solutions for industrial inspection. The fifth workshop takes place in Stuttgart, the capital of the state of Baden- Wurttemberg and the centre of a region with a long and remarkable tradition in engineering. Thus after Berlin 1989, Bremen 1993, 1997 and 2001, Stuttgart is the third Fringe city where international - perts will meet each other to share new ideas and concepts in optical metrology. This volume contains the papers presented during FRINGE 2005."

Foresight in an engineering business can make the difference between success and failure, and can be vital to the effective control of industrial systems. The authors of this book harness the power of intelligent technologies individually and in combination.

This utterly comprehensive work is thought to be the first to integrate the literature on the physics of the failure of complex systems such as hospitals, banks and transport networks. It has chapters on particular aspects of maintenance written by internationally-renowned researchers and practitioners. This book will interest maintenance engineers and managers in industry as well as researchers and graduate students in maintenance, industrial engineering and applied mathematics.

This book is a carefully developed integration of mathematical models that relate Six Sigma and reliability measures for the first time. Several case studies are used throughout the book to illustrate the application of the models discussed. The strength of Six Sigma is the way in which it structures the problem and the solution methodology to solve the problem. This is probably the only concept to attract the attention of almost all companies across the world irrespective of their business mission.

As an overview of reliability performance and specification in new product development, Product Reliability is suitable for managers responsible for new product development. The methodology for making decisions relating to reliability performance and specification will be of use to engineers involved in product design and development. This book can be used as a text for graduate courses on design, manufacturing, new product development and operations management and in various engineering disciplines.

Reliability theory is a major concern for engineers and managers engaged in making high quality products and designing highly reliable systems. "Advanced Reliability Models and Maintenance Policies" is a survey of new research topics in reliability theory and optimization techniques in reliability engineering. The book introduces partition and redundant problems within reliability models, and provides optimization techniques. The book also indicates how to perform maintenance in a finite time span and at failure detection, and to apply recovery techniques for computer systems. New themes such as reliability complexity and service reliability in reliability theory are theoretically proposed, and optimization problems in management science using reliability techniques are presented. The book is an essential guide for graduate students and researchers in reliability theory, and a valuable reference for reliability engineers engaged both in maintenance work and in management and computer systems.

From its origins in the malachite mines of ancient Egypt, mining has grown to become a global industry which employs many hundreds of thousands of people. Today, the mining industry makes use of various types of complex and sophisticated equipment, for which reliability, maintainability and safety has become an important issue. Mining Equipment Reliability, Maintainability and Safety is the first book to cover these three topics in a single volume.

Mining Equipment Reliability, Maintainability and Safety will be useful to a range of individuals from administrators and engineering professionals working in the mining industry to students, researchers and instructors in mining engineering, as well as design engineers and safety professionals. All topics covered in the book are treated in such a manner that the reader requires no previous knowledge to understand the contents. Examples, solutions and test problems are also included to aid reader comprehension.

This book is an attempt to provide a uni?ed methodology to derive models for fatigue life. This includes S-N, ?-N and crack propagation models. This is not a conventional book aimed at describing the fatigue fundamentals, but rather a book in which the basic models of the three main fatigue approaches, the stress-based, the strain-based and the fracture mechanics approaches, are contemplated from a novel and integrated point of view. On the other hand, as an alternative to the preferential attention paid to deterministic models based on the physical, phenomenological and empirical description of fatigue, their probabilistic nature is emphasized in this book, in which stochastic fatigue and crack growth models are presented. This book is the result of a long period of close collaborationbetween its two authors who, although of di?erent backgrounds, mathematical and mechanical, both have a strong sense of engineering with respect to the fatigue problem. When the authors of this book ?rst approached the fatigue ?eld in 1982 (twenty six years ago), they found the following scenario: 1. Linear, bilinear or trilinear models were frequently proposed by relevant laboratoriesandacademiccenterstoreproducetheW] ohler?eld. Thiswas the case of well known institutions, which justi?ed these models based on clientrequirementsorpreferences. Thisledtotheinclusionofsuchmodels and methods as, for example, the up-and-down, in standards and o?cial practical directives (ASTM, Euronorm, etc.), which have proved to be unfortunate."