The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) has been an especially active and fertile area of research. Over the past five to seven years, there have been numerous technological advances and exciting ...challenges that are of considerable interest to students, teachers, and researchers. The Vehicle Routing Problem: Latest Advances and New Challengeswill focus on a host of significant technical advances that have evolved over the past few years for modeling and solving vehicle routing problems and variants. New approaches for solving VRPs have been developed from important methodological advances. These developments have resulted in faster solutions algorithms, more accurate techniques, and an improvement in the ability to solve large-scale complex problems.
Power Generation from Solid Fuels introduces the different technologies to produce heat and power from solid fossil (hard coal, brown coal) and renewable (biomass, waste) fuels, such as combustion ...and gasification, steam power plants and combined cycles etc. The book discusses technologies with regard to their efficiency, emissions, operational behavior, residues and costs. Besides proven state of the art processes, the focus is on the potential of new technologies currently under development or demonstration. The main motivation of the book is to explain the technical possibilities for reducing CO2 emissions from solid fuels. The strategies which are treated are: more efficient power and heat generation technologies, processes for the utilisation of renewable solid fuels, such as biomass and waste, and technologies for carbon capture and storage. Power Generation from Solid Fuels provides, both to academia and industry, a concise treatment of industrial combustion of all types of solid, hopefully inspiring the next generation of engineers and scientists. TOC:Motivation.- Solid Fuels.- Thermodynamics Fundamentals.- Steam Power Stations for Electricity and Heat Generation.- Combustion Systems for Solid Fossil Fuels.- Power Generation from Biomass and Waste.- Coal-Fuelled Combined Cycle Power Plants.- Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS).
Grain boundaries are important structural components of polycrystalline materials used in the vast majority of technical applications. Because grain boundaries form a continuous network throughout ...such materials, their properties may limit their practical use. One of the serious phenomena which evoke these limitations is the grain boundary segregation of impurities. It results in the loss of grain boundary cohesion and consequently, in brittle fracture of the materials. The current book deals with fundamentals of grain boundary segregation in metallic materials and its relationship to the grain boundary structure, classification and other materials properties.
This practically oriented book presents a comprehensive, up-to-date description of multi-state system (MSS) reliability as a natural extension of classical binary-state reliability. It presents all ...essential theoretical achievements in the field.
Manufacturing is the backbone of any industrialized nation. Recent worldwide advances in manufacturing technologies have brought about a metamorphism in the industry. Fast-changing technologies on ...the product front have created a need for an equally fast response from manufacturing industries. To meet these challenges, manufacturing industries have to select appropriate manufacturing strategies, product designs, manufacturing processes, work piece and tool materials, and machinery and equipment. The selection decisions are complex as decision making is more challenging today. Decision makers in the manufacturing sector frequently face the problem of assessing a wide range of options and selecting one based on a set of conflicting criteria. Decision Making in the Manufacturing Environment demonstrates how graph theory and matrix approach, and fuzzy multiple attribute decision making methods can be effectively used for decision making in various situations of the manufacturing environment. Divided into two parts, Part I introduces the decision making situations in the manufacturing environment and presents decision making methods, Part II uses case studies to present the applications of these methods in real manufacturing situations. Decision Making in the Manufacturing Environment will be very useful to decision makers in the manufacturing sector as it makes decision making easier, more logical, systematic, efficient and effective. It is intended for designers, manufacturing engineers, practitioners, managers, institutes involved in design and manufacturing related projects, applied research workers, academics, and graduate students in mechanical, industrial, and manufacturing engineering.
Product design is characterized by a steady increase in complexity. The main focus of this book is a structural approach on complexity management. This means, system structures are considered in ...order to address the challenge of complexity in all aspects of product design. Structures arise from the complex dependencies of system elements. Thus, the identification of system structures provides access to the understanding of system behavior in practical applications. The book presents a methodology that enables the analysis, control and optimization of complex structures, and the applicability of domain-spanning problems. The methodology allows significant improvements on handling system complexity by creating improved system understanding on the one hand and optimizing product design that is robust for system adaptations on the other hand. Developers can thereby enhance project coordination and improve communication between team members and as a result shorten development time. The practical application of the methodology is described by means of two detailed examples.
