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.

In today's global economy, operations strategy in supply chains must assume an ever-expanding and strategic role of risks. These operational and strategic facets entail a brand new set of operational problems and risks that have not always been understood or managed very well. This book provides the means to understand, to model and to analyze these outstanding issues and problems that are the essential elements in managing supply chains today.

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."

The papers in this volume integrate results from current research efforts in earthquake engineering with research from the larger risk assessment community. The authors include risk and hazard researchers from the major U.S. hazard and earthquake centers. The volume lays out a road map for future developments in risk modeling and decision support, and positions earthquake engineering research within the family of risk analysis tools and techniques.

This book is intended for students and practitioners who have had a calculus-based statistics course and who have an interest in safety considerations such as reliability, strength, and duration-of-load or service life. Many persons studying statistical science will be employed professionally where the problems encountered are obscure, what should be analyzed is not clear, the appropriate assumptions are equivocal, and data are scant. In this book there is no disclosure with many of the data sets what type of investigation should be made or what assumptions are to be used.

This book presents models and statistical methods for the analysis of recurrent event data. The authors provide broad, detailed coverage of the major approaches to analysis, while emphasizing the modeling assumptions that they are based on. More general intensity-based models are also considered, as well as simpler models that focus on rate or mean functions. Parametric, nonparametric and semiparametric methodologies are all covered, with procedures for estimation, testing and model checking.

The establishment of the International Risk Governance Council (IRGC) was the direct result of widespread concern that the complexity and interdependence of health, environmental, and technological risks facing the world was making the development and implementation of adequate risk governance strategies ever more difficult. This volume details the IRGC developed and proposed framework for risk governance and covers how it was peer reviewed as well as tested

Solder joints are ubiquitous in electronic consumer products. The European Union has a directive to ban the use of Pb-based solders in these products on July 1st, 2006. There is an urgent need for an increase in the research and development of Pb-free solders in electronic manufacturing. For example, spontaneous Sn whisker growth and electromigration induced failure in solder joints are serious issues. These reliability issues are quite complicated due to the combined effect of electrical, mechanical, chemical, and thermal forces on solder joints. To improve solder joint reliability, the science of solder joint behavior under various driving forces must be understood. In this book, the advanced materials reliability issues related to copper-tin reaction and electromigration in solder joints are emphasized and methods to prevent these reliability problems are discussed.

This volume includes chapters presenting applications of different metaheuristics in reliability engineering, including ant colony optimization, great deluge algorithm, cross-entropy method and particle swarm optimization. It also presents chapters devoted to cellular automata and support vector machines, and applications of artificial neural networks, a powerful adaptive technique that can be used for learning, prediction and optimization. Several chapters describe aspects of imprecise reliability and applications of fuzzy and vague set theory.

The International Section on Machine and System Safety was founded in 1975 to deal with questions on occupational risks in this ?eld at the inter- tional level. It is a member of the Special Commission on Prevention of the International Social Security Association (ISSA). The Special Commission is a body within ISSA that focuses on work-related risks. It has 11 inter- tional Sections as members. ISSA was founded in 1927 with its headquarters in Geneva. It is working worldwide in over 150 countries with nearly 370 member institutions from all ?elds of social security. TheSection on Machine and System Safety, when it was founded, had its focus on machine safety, particularly on the ma- facturing of safe machinery, on assisting developing countries to be able to buy safe used machinery, and on delivering clear operating instructions. Our members and partners are: * institutions for safety and health at work; * insurance companies dealing with work-related risks; * research institutions; and * various enterprises, e.g. manufacturers, importers and users of machines and systems/installations. We thus bring together the experiences of our members and partners. The role of the operators soon grew in importance, and their capability for ha- ling machinery became an important factor for the safety and success of enterprises. The growing importance and complexity of handling different man-machine-environment situations created new challenges and led to - larging the Section's tasks to machine and system safety.

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

Solder Joint Reliability Prediction for Multiple Environments will provide industry engineers, graduate students and academic researchers, and reliability experts with insights and useful tools for evaluating solder joint reliability of ceramic area array electronic packages under multiple environments. The material presented here is not limited to ceramic area array packages only, it can also be used as a methodology for relating numerical simulations and experimental data into an easy-to-use equation that captures the essential information needed to predict solder joint reliability. Such a methodology is often needed to relate complex information in a simple manner to managers and non-experts in solder joint who work with computer server applications as well as for harsh environments such as those found in the defense, space, and automotive industries.

This superb study offers insights into the methods and techniques that enable the implementation of a Collaborative Engineering concept on product design. It does so by integrating capabilities for intelligent information support and group decision-making, utilizing a common enterprise network model and knowledge interface through shared ontologies. The book is also a collection of the latest applied methods and technology from selected experts in this area.

Verification is too often approached in an ad hoc fashion. Visually inspecting simulation results is no longer feasible and the directed test-case methodology is reaching its limit. Moore's Law demands a productivity revolution in functional verification methodology.

Writing Testbenches Using SystemVerilog offers a clear blueprint of a verification process that aims for first-time success using the SystemVerilog language. From simulators to source management tools, from specification to functional coverage, from I's and O's to high-level abstractions, from interfaces to bus-functional models, from transactions to self-checking testbenches, from directed testcases to constrained random generators, from behavioral models to regression suites, this book covers it all.

Writing Testbenches Using SystemVerilog presents many of the functional verification features that were added to the Verilog language as part of SystemVerilog. Interfaces, virtual modports, classes, program blocks, clocking blocks and others SystemVerilog features are introduced within a coherent verification methodology and usage model.

Writing Testbenches Using SystemVerilog introduces the reader to all elements of a modern, scalable verification methodology. It is an introduction and prelude to the verification methodology detailed in the Verification Methodology Manual for SystemVerilog. It is a SystemVerilog version of the author's bestselling book Writing Testbenches: Functional Verification of HDL Models.

Even though the effect of lead contamination on human health has been known for decades, very little attention has been paid to lead-based solders used in electronics until recently. This comprehensive book examines all the important issues associated with lead-free electronic solder. It collects the work of researchers recognized for their significant scientific contributions in the area.

Experts from academia and government who are actively engaged in research in the area of risk communication present a compendium of cases that give information and allow the development of strategies to improve the communication of scientific information to the public. The cases span Western, Central and Eastern Europe, covering such areas as nuclear waste, heavy metal contamination, landfill siting, risk perception, global warming, international health for all, and more. The conclusions and recommendations presented here are being used to develop future activities to further explore this area of risk communication as an international study. Audience: Scientists, risk communicators, psychologists, toxicologists, health professionals, and anyone who has an interest in public communication on scientific uncertainty.

MOX fuel, a mixture of weapon-grade plutonium and natural or depleted uranium, may be used to deplete a portion of the world's surplus of weapon-grade plutonium. A number of reactors currently operate in Europe with one-third MOX cores, and others are scheduled to begin using MOX fuels in both Europe and Japan in the near future. While Russia has laboratory-scale MOX fabrication facilities, the technology remains under study. No fuels containing plutonium are used in the U.S. The 25 presentations in this book give an impressive overview of MOX technology. The following issues are covered: an up to date report on the disposition of ex-weapons Pu in Russia; an analysis of safety features of MOX fuel configurations of different reactor concepts and their operating and control measures; an exchange of information on the status of MOX utilisation in existing power plants, the fabrication technology of various MOX fuels and their behaviour in practice; a discussion of the typical national approaches by Russia and the western countries to the utilisation of Pu as MOX fuel; an introduction to new ideas, enhancing the disposition option of MOX fuel exploitation and destruction in existing and future advanced reactor systems; and the identification of common research areas where defined tasks can be initiated in cooperative partnership.

This book reviews problems associated with rare events arising in a wide range of circumstances, treating such topics as how to evaluate the probability an insurance company will be bankrupted, the lifetime of a redundant system, and the waiting time in a queue. Well-grounded, unique mathematical evaluation methods of basic probability characteristics concerned with rare events are presented, which can be employed in real applications, as the volume also contains relevant numerical and Monte Carlo methods. The various examples, tables, figures and algorithms will also be appreciated. Audience: This work will be useful to graduate students, researchers and specialists interested in applied probability, simulation and operations research.

Each year billions of dollars are being spent to develop, manufacture, and operate transportation systems such as aircraft, ships, trains, and motor vehicles throughout the world. During their operation thousands of lives are lost annually due to various types accidents. Needless to say, approximately 70 to 90 percent of transportation crashes are the result of human error to a certain degree. Moreover, it may be added that human errors contribute significantly to most transportation crashes across all modes of transportation.

Human Reliability and Error in Transportation Systems is the first book to cover the subject of human reliability across all types of transportation system. The material will be accessible to readers with no previous knowledge in the field, and is supported with a full explanation of the necessary mathematical concepts together with numerous examples and test problems.

Computer software reliability has never been so important. Computers are used in areas as diverse as air traffic control, nuclear reactors, real-time military, industrial process control, security system control, biometric scan-systems, automotive, mechanical and safety control, and hospital patient monitoring systems. Many of these applications require critical functionality as software applications increase in size and complexity. This book is an introduction to software reliability engineering and a survey of the state-of-the-art techniques, methodologies and tools used to assess the reliability of software and combined software-hardware systems. Current research results are reported and future directions are signposted. This text will interest: graduate students as a course textbook introducing reliability engineering software; reliability engineers as a broad, up-to-date survey of the field; and researchers and lecturers in universities and research institutions as a one-volume reference.

The only recent book to cover "Stage 3" warranty management, linking strategic and operational aspects for manufactured products.

Shows how to make warranty management an effective tool for enhancing customer satisfaction.

Uses minimal mathematics and presents accounting and legal aspects of warranty management in an easily understandable style.

Written by two of the world 's leading experts in warranty management.

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.

Many real systems are composed of multi-state components with different performance levels and several failure modes. These affect the whole system's performance.

Most books on reliability theory cover binary models that allow a system only to function perfectly or fail completely.

"The Universal Generating Function in Reliability Analysis and Optimization" is the first book that gives a comprehensive description of the universal generating function technique and its applications in binary and multi-state system reliability analysis.

Features:
- an introduction to basic tools of multi-state system reliability and optimization;
- applications of the universal generating function in widely used multi-state systems;
- examples of the adaptation of the universal generating function to different systems in mechanical, industrial and software engineering.

This monograph will be of value to anyone interested in system reliability, performance analysis and optimization in industrial, electrical and nuclear engineering.

This is the first monograph which presents shock and damage models in reliability from introduction to application. Stochastic processes are introduced before current developments are surveyed. The practical applications of shock and damage models are demonstrated using case studies. The author is a leading researcher in this field with more than thirty years of experience. Reliability engineers and managers of maintenance work will find this book a broad reference.

Failure Rate Modeling for Reliability and Risk focuses on reliability theory, and to the failure rate (hazard rate, force of mortality) modeling and its generalizations to systems operating in a random environment and to repairable systems. The failure rate is one of the crucial probabilistic characteristics for a number of disciplines; including reliability, survival analysis, risk analysis and demography. The book presents a systematic study of the failure rate and related indices, and covers a number of important applications where the failure rate plays the major role. Applications in engineering systems are studied, together with some actuarial, biological and demographic examples. The book provides a survey of this broad and interdisciplinary subject which will be invaluable to researchers and advanced students in reliability engineering and applied statistics, as well as to demographers, econometricians, actuaries and many other mathematically oriented researchers.