Systems engineering is a mandatory approach in some industries, and is gaining wider acceptance for complex projects in general. However, under the imperative of delivering these projects on time and within budget, the focus has been mainly on the management aspects, with less attention to improving the core engineering activity - design. This book addresses the application of the system concept to design in several ways: by developing a deeper understanding of the system concept, by defining design and its characteristics within the process of engineering, and by applying the system concept to the early stage of design, where it has the greatest impact. A central theme of the book is that the purpose of engineering is to be useful in meeting the needs of society, and that therefore the ultimate measure of the benefit of applying the system concept should be the extent to which it advances the achievement of that purpose. Consequently, any consistent, top-down development of the functionality required of a solution to the problem of meeting a defined need must proceed from such a measure, and it is agued that a generalised form of Return on Investment is an appropriate measure. A theoretical framework for the development of functionality based on this measure and utilising the system concept is presented, together with some examples and practical guidelines.

Fundamentals of Switching Theory and Logic Design discusses the basics of switching theory and logic design from a slightly alternative point of view and also presents links between switching theory and related areas of signal processing and system theory. Switching theory is a branch of applied mathematic providing mathematical foundations for logic design, which can be considered as a part of digital system design concerning realizations of systems whose inputs and outputs are described by logic functions.

Featuring original research from well-known experts in the field of sliding mode control, this book presents new design schemes for a useful and practical optimal control with very few impractical assumptions. The results presented allow optimal control theory to grow in its applicability to real-world systems. On the cutting-edge of optimal control research, this book is an excellent resource for both graduate students and researchers in engineering, mathematics, and optimal control.

Ultra-thin chips are the "smart skin" of a conventional silicon chip. This book shows how very thin and flexible chips can be fabricated and used in many new applications in microelectronics, Microsystems, biomedical and other fields. It provides a comprehensive reference to the fabrication technology, post processing, characterization and the applications of ultra-thin chips.

This book presents novel research techniques, algorithms, methodologies and experimental results for high level power estimation and power aware high-level synthesis. Readers will learn to apply such techniques to enable design flows resulting in shorter time to market and successful low power ASIC/FPGA design.

Digital factory is a comprehensive approach providing methodologies, models and tools that support manufacturing enterprises in the rearrangement of their organizational structures to deal with expected changes in manufacturing processes and markets. Digital Factory for Human-oriented Production Systems investigates the impact of the digital factory through a consideration of the entire product/process lifecycle, and the broad network of product engineering, material and component suppliers, manufacturing equipment suppliers, and customers involved in current and next generation manufacturing. It covers the utilization and integration of: human body ergonomics models; production system discrete event simulation; 3D/virtual and augmented reality visualization; collaborative design tools; automatic data capture; and knowledge management systems based on semantic web ontologies integrated by a continuous data management. The coverage of various types of factory and manufacturing phases, representations and simulations allows researchers in academia and industry to perform a dynamic analysis and up-to-date modeling of the processes involved. Digital Factory for Human-oriented Production Systems describes the tools that allow a move towards the integrated digital factory and underlines the business impact that companies can obtain by adopting these tools. As well as benefiting international organizations, the proposed methodologies and technologies have also been developed in order to facilitate their adoption by small or medium-sized businesses, making them relevant to all product engineers and managers who want improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their enterprises.

This book details the state-of-the-art of research and development in design computing and design cognition. It features more than 35 papers that were presented at the Sixth International Conference on Design Computing and Cognition, DCC'14, held at University College, London, UK. Inside, readers will find the work of expert researchers and practitioners that explores both advances in theory and application as well as demonstrates the depth and breadth of design computing and design cognition. This interdisciplinary coverage, which includes material from international research groups, examines design synthesis, design cognition, design creativity, design processes, design theory, design grammars, design support and design ideation. Overall, the papers provide a bridge between design computing and design cognition. The confluence of these two fields continues to build the foundation for further advances and leads to an increased understanding of design as an activity whose influence continues to spread. As a result, the book will be of particular interest to researchers, developers and users of advanced computation in design and those who need to gain a better understanding of designing that can be obtained through empirical studies.

Product Realization: A Comprehensive Approach is based on selected papers presented at the International Conference on Comprehensive Product Realization 2007 (ICCPR2007). The extended papers will provide the opportunity for scholars from all around the world to discuss their academic programs, identify research opportunities, and initiate joint research programs in the area of comprehensive product realization. Engineering design has evolved from an isolated semi-empirical activity to a highly interconnected, multidisciplinary product realization collaborative process.

The scope of the book will focus on a number of themes within the framework of the conference that are deemed essential to educating the next generation of students and practicing engineers in the area of product realization.

This illuminating text/reference presents a review of the key aspects of the modeling and simulation (M&S) life cycle, and examines the challenges of M&S in different application areas. The authoritative work offers valuable perspectives on the future of research in M&S, and its role in engineering complex systems. Topics and features: reviews the challenges of M&S for urban infrastructure, healthcare delivery, automated vehicle manufacturing, deep space missions, and acquisitions enterprise; outlines research issues relating to conceptual modeling, covering the development of explicit and unambiguous models, communication and decision-making, and architecture and services; considers key computational challenges in the execution of simulation models, in order to best exploit emerging computing platforms and technologies; examines efforts to understand and manage uncertainty inherent in M&S processes, and how these can be unified under a consistent theoretical and philosophical foundation; discusses the reuse of models and simulations to accelerate the simulation model development process. This thought-provoking volume offers important insights for all researchers involved in modeling and simulation across the full spectrum of disciplines and applications, defining a common research agenda to support the entire M&S research community.

A comprehensive review of international and national standards and guidelines, this handbook consists of 32 chapters divided into nine sections that cover standardization efforts, anthropometry and working postures, designing manual material, human-computer interaction, occupational health and safety, legal protection, military human factor standards, and sources for human factors and ergonomics standards. The book delineates the role standards and guidelines play in facilitating the design and optimal working conditions in regards to occupational safety and health as well as system performance in the context of technological advances and opportunities for economic development worldwide.

"Research into gastrointestinal motility has received renewed interest in part due to recent advances in the techniques for measuring the structure and function of gastrointestinal cells, tissue and organs. The integration of this wealth of data into biophysically based computation models can aid in interpretation of experimental and clinical measurements and the refinement of measurement techniques."

"The contents of this book span multiple scales - from cell, tissue, organ, to whole body and is divided into four broad sections covering: i) gastrointestinal cellular activity and tissue structure; (ii) techniques for measuring, analyzing and visualizing high-resolution extra-cellular recordings; (iii) methods for sensing gastroelectrical activity using non-invasive bio-electro-magnetic fields and for modulating the underlying gastric electrical activity and finally (iv) methods for assessing manometric and videographic motility patterns and the application of these data for predicting the flow and mixing behavior of luminal contents by using computational fluid dynamic techniques. "

"This book aims to provide both an overview of historical and existing research techniques as well as to highlight future directions and challenges for the community as a whole. It will be suitable for clinicians to understand the cellular and biophysical underpinnings of gastric emptying, gastroenterologists, surgeons, bioengineers and all scientists with interests in gastrointestinal motility research."

This volume is a sequel to our 1996 compilation, Computational and Constructive Design Theory. Again we concentrate on two closely re lated aspects of the study of combinatorial designs: design construction and computer-aided study of designs. There are at least three classes of constructive problems in design theory. The first type of problem is the construction of a specific design. This might arise because that one particular case is an exception to a general rule, the last remaining case of a problem, or the smallest unknown case. A good example is the proof that there is no projective plane of parameter 10. In that case the computations involved were not different in kind from those which have been done by human brains without electronic assistance; they were merely longer. Computers have also been useful in the study of combinatorial spec trum problems: if a class of design has certain parameters, what is the set of values that the parameters can realize? In many cases, there is a recursive construction, so that the existence of a small number of "starter" designs leads to the construction of infinite classes of designs, and computers have proven very useful in finding "starter" designs."

Up-to-date documentation on the current scope of the research of Rapid Prototyping, Tooling and Manufacturing.

Explains and details the latest techniques and materials used for RP, RT and RM.

Develops methodologies and technologies to support in a customer-focused product design and mass customization approach to production.

Environmental Ergonomics addresses the problems of maintaining human comfort, activity and health in stressful environments. Its subject areas include thermal environments, illumination, noise and hypo- and hyperbaric environments. The book concentrates fundamentally on the way the thermal environment has affected human comfort, health and performance from the age of cave-dwellings to our age of skyscrapers.
This book contains only papers selected from the 10th ICEE held in Japan 23-27 September 2002. The ICEE has been held biannually since 1982, and has firmly established itself as the world's most distinguished conference in its field, offering the ideal forum for research scientists, medical doctors, engineers, administrators, technicians, healthcare professionals and students to share their work and ideas.
Selected papers from the 10th International Conference on Environmental Ergonomics held in Japan, 23-27 September 2002. They have been revised and peer-reviewed.
Papers included in this text have been widely recognised as the catalyst for the recent advances witnessed in Environmental Ergonomics in Asia. They strike a balance between academia and industries' views on environmental ergonomics.
Add this volume to your copy of the Elsevier Ergonomics Book Series.

This book offers a brief review of and investigations into the power quality problem in the new technology of co-phase high-speed traction power supplies, which benefits for higher locomotive speed. In addition, it presents detailed design procedures and discusses the chief concerns in connection with a newly proposed solution: compensation in co-phase traction power using a co-phase railway hybrid power quality conditioner (Railway HPQC). Further, it provides essential information on the modeling of power quality in co-phase, high-speed traction power supplies, and on power quality compensation algorithm derivations. Lastly, it delineates the design of railway HPQC and analyzes the effect of different parameters on its performance to accommodate different priorities. All design is supported by simulations and the results of experimental verification.

This book examines how theories of human emotion can be applied to engineering in order to improve product design and value. 'Emotional Engineering Vol. 3' establishes the idea that customer satisfaction can be maximised by using knowledge and experience in a more flexible manner to respond to a fast-changing world. This integration of emotion and knowledge introduces the reader to the concept of Wisdom Engineering. It also highlights the importance of emotion in creating value for the customer, and how this can be achieved by acknowledging a customer's creativity and by facilitating the customization of products for their needs and preferences. As has been identified by neuroscientists, emotion and reason are strongly interconnected, and the increasing complexities and diversification found in the products we use demonstrates the growing significance of emotion when designing these products. Society is comprised of humans and artificial products; their integration is important when considering product design, and improving quality-of-life for the customer. 'Emotional Engineering Vol. 3' builds on Dr Fukuda's previous books, 'Emotional Engineering' and 'Emotional Engineering Vol. 2', and is intended for researchers and professionals in engineering, psychology, management of technology, economics.

The Cambridge Workshops on Universal Access and Assistive Technology (CWUAAT) are a series of workshops held at a Cambridge University College every two years. The workshop theme: "Designing inclusion for real-world applications" refers to the emerging potential and relevance of the latest generations of inclusive design thinking, tools, techniques, and data, to mainstream project applications such as healthcare and the design of working environments. Inclusive Design Research involves developing tools and guidance enabling product designers to design for the widest possible population, for a given range of capabilities.

There are five main themes:

Designing for the Real-World

Measuring Demand And Capabilities

Designing Cognitive Interaction with Emerging Technologies

Design for Inclusion

Designing Inclusive Architecture

In the tradition of CWUAAT, we have solicited and accepted contributions over a wide range of topics, both within individual themes and also across the workshop's scope. We ultimately hope to generate more inter-disciplinary dialogues based on focused usage cases that can provide the discipline necessary to drive further novel research, leading to better designs. The aim is to impact industry and end-users as well governance and public design, thereby effectively reducing exclusion and difficulty in peoples' daily lives and society.
"

Evolutionary algorithms are successful biologically inspired meta-heuristics. Their success depends on adequate parameter settings. The question arises: how can evolutionary algorithms learn parameters automatically during the optimization? Evolution strategies gave an answer decades ago: self-adaptation. Their self-adaptive mutation control turned out to be exceptionally successful. But nevertheless self-adaptation has not achieved the attention it deserves.

This book introduces various types of self-adaptive parameters for evolutionary computation. Biased mutation for evolution strategies is useful for constrained search spaces. Self-adaptive inversion mutation accelerates the search on combinatorial TSP-like problems. After the analysis of self-adaptive crossover operators the book concentrates on premature convergence of self-adaptive mutation control at the constraint boundary. Besides extensive experiments, statistical tests and some theoretical investigations enrich the analysis of the proposed concepts.

To derive rational and convincible solutions to practical decision making problems in complex and hierarchical human organizations, the decision making problems are formulated as relevant mathematical programming problems which are solved by developing optimization techniques so as to exploit characteristics or structural features of the formulated problems. In particular, for resolving con?ict in decision making in hierarchical managerial or public organizations, the multi level formula tion of the mathematical programming problems has been often employed together with the solution concept of Stackelberg equilibrium. However, weconceivethatapairoftheconventionalformulationandthesolution concept is not always suf?cient to cope with a large variety of decision making situations in actual hierarchical organizations. The following issues should be taken into consideration in expression and formulation of decision making problems. Informulationofmathematicalprogrammingproblems, itistacitlysupposedthat decisions are made by a single person while game theory deals with economic be havior of multiple decision makers with fully rational judgment. Because two level mathematical programming problems are interpreted as static Stackelberg games, multi level mathematical programming is relevant to noncooperative game theory; in conventional multi level mathematical programming models employing the so lution concept of Stackelberg equilibrium, it is assumed that there is no communi cation among decision makers, or they do not make any binding agreement even if there exists such communication. However, for decision making problems in such as decentralized large ?rms with divisional independence, it is quite natural to sup pose that there exists communication and some cooperative relationship among the decision maker

Dimensional metrology is an essential part of modern manufacturing technologies, but the basic theories and measurement methods are no longer sufficient for today's digitized systems. The information exchange between the software components of a dimensional metrology system not only costs a great deal of money, but also causes the entire system to lose data integrity.

"Information Modeling for Interoperable Dimensional Metrology" analyzes interoperability issues in dimensional metrology systems and describes information modeling techniques. It discusses new approaches and data models for solving interoperability problems, as well as introducing process activities, existing and emerging data models, and the key technologies of dimensional metrology systems.

Written for researchers in industry and academia, as well as advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, this book gives both an overview and an in-depth understanding of complete dimensional metrology systems. By covering in detail the theory and main content, techniques, and methods used in dimensional metrology systems, "Information Modeling for Interoperable Dimensional Metrology" enables readers to solve real-world dimensional measurement problems in modern dimensional metrology practices. "

Stress and strain analysis of rotors subjected to surface and body loads, as well as to thermal loads deriving from temperature variation along the radius, constitutes a classic subject of machine design. Nevertheless attention is limited to rotor profiles for which governing equations are solvable in closed form. Furthermore very few actual engineering issues may relate to structures for which stress and strain analysis in the linear elastic field and, even more, under non-linear conditions (i.e. plastic or viscoelastic conditions) produces equations to be solved in closed form. Moreover, when a product is still in its design stage, an analytical formulation with closed-form solution is of course simpler and more versatile than numerical methods, and it allows to quickly define a general configuration, which may then be fine-tuned using such numerical methods.
In this view, all subjects are based on analytical-methodological approach, and some new solutions in closed form are presented. The analytical formulation of problems is always carried out considering actual engineering applications. Moreover, in order to make the use of analytical models even more friendly at the product design stage, a function is introduced whereby it is possible to define a fourfold infinity of disk profiles, solid or annular, concave or convex, converging or diverging. Such subjects, even derived from scientific authors contributions, are always aimed at designing rotors at the concept stage, i.e. in what precedes detailed design. Among the many contributions, a special mention is due for the following: linear elastic analysis of conical disks and disks with variable profile along its radius according to a power of a linear function, also subjected to thermal load and with variable density; analysis of a variable-profile disk subjected to centrifugal load beyond the material's yield point, introducing the completely general law expressed by a an n-grade polynomial; linear elastic analysis of hyperbolic disk, subjected to thermal load along its radius; linear elastic analysis of a variable-thickness disk according to a power of a linear function, subjected to angular acceleration; etc."

This book provides extensive information on the key technical design disciplines, education programs, international best practices and modes of delivery that are aimed at preparing a trans-disciplinary design workforce for the future. It also presents a comprehensive overview of the scope of, and state of the art in, design education. The book highlights signature design education programs from around the globe and across all levels, in both traditional and distance learning settings. Additionally, it discusses professional societies for designers and design educators, as well as the current standards for professional registration, and program accreditation. Reflecting recent advances and emerging trends, it offers a valuable handbook for design practitioners and managers, curriculum designers and program leaders alike. It will also be of interest to students and academics looking to develop a career related to the more technical aspects of design.

Rapid prototyping is used to design and develop medical devices and instrumentation. This book details research in rapid prototyping of bio-materials for medical applications. It provides a wide variety of examples of medical applications using rapid prototyping, including tissue engineering, dental applications, and bone replacement. Coverage also discusses the emergence of computer aided design in the development of prosthetic devices.

The impact of design development on the overall success of a business positions the area as an important performance improvement opportunity. However, design development is exemplified by novelty and non-repeatability, characteristics which provide particular challenges in the definition, measurement and management of performance with a view to improvement.

Design Performance scrutinizes the support for improvement in design development provided by research into general business processes and design in particular. The nature of design development in industrial practice is explored and requirements for its modelling and analysis are highlighted. The methods employed encapsulate a formalism composed of three models: E2 formalises and relates the effectiveness and efficiency of a design; Design Activity Management distinguishes design and design management in terms of the knowledge processed in each activity; Performance Measurement and Management describes how these activities relate to each other within the milieu of measurement and management. A computer-based tool that enables the industrial implementation of the PERFORM approach (analysing the influence of resources on an aspect of design performance) and the identification of appropriate means of design improvement is presented.

Design Performance illustrates its methodological principles with worked examples and details of industrial practice making it suitable for an academic teaching and research readership as well as for commercial designers and managers.

The impact of design development on the overall success of a business positions the area as an important performance improvement opportunity. However, designdevelopment is exemplified by novelty and non-repeatability, characteristics which provide particular challenges in the definition, measurement and management of performance with a view to improvement.

Design Performance scrutinizes the support for improvement in design development provided by research into general business processes and design in particular. The nature of design development in industrial practice is explored and requirements for its modelling and analysis are highlighted. The methods employed encapsulate a formalism composed of three models: E2 formalises and relates the effectiveness and efficiency of a design; Design Activity Management distinguishes design and design management in terms of the knowledge processed in each activity; Performance Measurement and Management describes how these activities relate to each other within the milieu of measurement and management. A computer-based tool that enables the industrial implementation of the PERFORM approach (analysing the influence of resources on an aspect of design performance) and the identification of appropriate means of design improvement is presented.

Design Performance illustrates its methodological principles with worked examples and details of industrial practice making it suitable for an academic teaching and research readership as well as for commercial designers and managers.