This book conceives, presents and exemplifies a contemporary, general systems methodology that is straightforward and accessible, providing guidance in practical application, as well as explaining concept and theory. The book is presented both as a text for students, with topic assignments, and as a reference for practitioners, through case studies. Utilizing recent research and developments in systems science, methods and tools, Hitchins has de ...
Computational Intelligence: An Introduction, Second Edition offers an in-depth exploration into the adaptive mechanisms that enable intelligent behaviour in complex and changing environments. The main focus of this text is centred on the computational modelling of biological and natural intelligent systems, encompassing swarm intelligence, fuzzy systems, artificial neutral networks, artificial immune systems and evolutionary computation. Engelbr ...
Conversational informatics investigates human behaviour with a view to designing conversational artifacts capable of interacting with humans in a conversational fashion. It spans a broad array of topics including linguistics, psychology and human-computer interaction. Until recently research in such areas has been carried out in isolation, with no attempt made to connect the various disciplines. Advancements in science and technology have change ...
This title explores the issue of innovation engineering, a feature that is essential to the continuation of growth and development in the commercial world. Discussion is divided into three parts: Part I covers the historical basis of innovation, noting that diversity rests upon a duality between concepts in theory and applications put into practice, as well as discussing how innovation has resulted from the interaction of numerous factors, be th ...
Fault tree analysis is an important technique in determining the safety and dependability of complex systems. Fault trees are used as a major tool in the study of system safety as well as in reliability and availability studies. The basic methods – construction, logical analysis, probability evaluation and influence study – are described in this book. The following extensions of fault trees, non-coherent fault trees, fault trees with delay and m ...
The definitive reference on electromagnetic shielding materials, configurations, approaches, and analyses This reference provides a comprehensive survey of options for the reduction of the electromagnetic field levels in prescribed areas. After an introduction and an overview of available materials, it discusses figures of merit for shielding configurations, the shielding effectiveness of stratified media, numerical methods for shielding analyse ...
Describes the configuration and principles of a reflectarray antenna, its advantages over other antennas, the history of its development, analysis techniques, practical design procedures, bandwidth issues and wideband techniques, as well as applications and recent developments. Both authors are well respected practitioners who have build these antennas and developed them for space flight. ...
Rapid Manufacturing is a new area of manufacturing developed from a family of technologies known as Rapid Prototyping. These processes have already had the effect of both improving products and reducing their development time; this in turn resulted in the development of the technology of Rapid Tooling, which implemented Rapid Prototyping techniques to improve its own processes. Rapid Manufacturing has developed as the next stage, in which the ne ...
Based on the results of a more than two-year study, Lead-Free Electronics: iNEMI Projects Lead to Successful Manufacturing is the first practical, primary reference to cover Pb-free solder assembly as well as the analysis and reasoning behind the selection of Sn-Ag-Cu as the recommended Pb-free replacement for Sn-Pb. Reflecting the results of a two-year study, Lead-Free Electronics: iNEMI Projects Lead to Successful Manufacturing provides full c ...