This excellent book highlights all aspects of the analysis and design of buildings subject to impact, explosion and fire. It is a definitive reference book and contains 10 chapters from a wide international prospective. Three-dimensional finite element and discrete element techniques are included. They are applied to buildings such as the World Trade Center (WTC Twin Towers) and the Federal Building in Oklahoma on the basis of the designers drawings, data and other information. Many small case studies are also included. The book has a comprehensive bibliography and a large appendix providing background analysis and computer subroutines of recently developed programs.

We are very pleased to be asked to co-author this book for a variety of reasons, one of which was that it gave us further opportunity to work together. The scope proposed was very wide with the only significant proviso being that the book should be in a mongraph-style and not a teaching text. This require­ ment has given us the opportunity to compile a wide range of relevant material relating to present-day knowledge and application in power system reliability. As many readers will be aware, we have collaborated in many ways over a relatively long period and have co-authored two other books on reliability evaluation. Both of these previous books were structured as teaching texts. This present book is not a discourse on "how to do reliability evaluation" but a discussion on "why it should be done and what can be done and achieved" and as such does not replace or conflict with the previous books. The three books are complementary and each enhances the others. The material contained in this book is not specifically original since it is based on information which we have published in other forms either jointly or as co­ authors with various other people, particularly our many research students. We sincerely acknowledge the important contributions made by all these students and colleagues. There are too many to mention individually in this preface but their names appear frequently in the references at the end of each chapter.

Since 2004 the Springer Handbook of Nanotechnology has established itself as the definitive reference in the Nanoscience field. It integrates the knowledge from nanofabrication, nanomechanics, materials science, and reliability engineering in just one volume. Reflecting further developments, the new edition has grown from six to eight parts and from 38 to 58 chapters. Existing chapters have been thoroughly updated and new material has been added to cover developing fields such as bionanotechnology, nanorobotics, and NEMS/MEMS reliability. This classic reference book addresses mechanical and electrical engineers, materials scientists, physicists and chemists who work either in the nano area or in a field that is or will be influenced by this new key technology.

In Space Debris Models and Risk Analysis the authors will provide the reader with a comprehensive background to understand the various sources of space debris, and to assess associated risks due to the current and future space debris environment. Apart from the non-trackable objects produced by historic on-orbit fragmentation events, several other sources of space debris will be outlined. Models will be described to allow the generation and propagation of the different debris families and permit the assessment of the associated collision risk on representative target orbits for present and future conditions. Using traffic models and possible mitigation practices, the future evolution of the space debris environment will be forecast. For large-size, trackable objects methods will be described for conjunction event predictions and related risk assessments. For hazardous re-entry objects, procedures will be outlined to enable the prediction of re-entry times and likely impact areas, to assess uncertainties in these factors, and to quantify the risk due to ground impact. Models will also be described for meteoroids, which prevail over space debris at small particle sizes.

Power system reliability is in the focus of intensive study due to its critical role in providing energy supply to the modern society. This book is not aimed at providing the overview of the state of the art in power system reliability. On the contrary, it describes application of some new specific techniques: universal generating function method and its combination with Monte Carlo simulation and with random processes methods, Semi-Markov and Markov reward models and genetic algorithm. The book can be considered as complementary to power system reliability textbooks. It is suitable for different types of readers. It primarily addresses practising reliability engineers and researchers who have an interest in reliability and performability analysis of power systems. It can also be used as a textbook for senior undergraduate or graduate courses in electrical engineering.

This book is intended to give a general overview of reliability, faults, fault models, nanotechnology, nanodevices, fault-tolerant architectures and reliability evaluation techniques. Additionally, the book provides an in depth state-of-the-art research results and methods for fault tolerance as well as the methodology for designing fault-tolerant systems out of highly unreliable components.

This book presents the most recent state-of-the-art algorithms on robust environmental perception and reliability control for intelligent vehicle systems. By integrating object detection, semantic segmentation, trajectory prediction, multi-object tracking, multi-sensor fusion, and reliability control in a systematic way, this book is aimed at guaranteeing that intelligent vehicles can run safely in complex road traffic scenes.