One cannot overemphasize the importance of studying fluids in motion or at rest for a variety of scientific and engineering endeavors. Fluid mechanics as an art reaches back into antiquity, but its rational formulation is a relatively recent undertaking. Much of the physics of a particular flow situation can be understood by conducting appropriate experiments. Flow visualization techniques offer a useful tool to establish an overall picture of a flow field and to delineate broadly its salient features before embarking on more detailed quantitative measurements. Among the single-point...

Proceedings of an International Seminar Organized by Deutsche Forschungsanstalt fur Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) Bonn, June 1989

The Proceedings contain 30 papers presented at the 2nd Working Conference on "Relia.bility and Optimization of Structural Systems," London, UK, September 26 - 28, 1988. The Working conference was organized by the IFIP Working Group 7.5. The Proceedings also include 3 papers which were submitted, but for various reasons not presented at the Working Conference. The Working Conference was attended by 47 participants from 15 countries. The Conference was the second scientific meeting of a new IFIP Working Group 7.5 on "Reliability and Optimization of Structural Systems." The purpose of the...

Dynamical systems theory and flow control are two research areas of great current interest. These and other special situations are among the topics covered in this volume. Each article emphasizes the use of experiments to achieve better physical understanding of a particular class of flow problems. The topics covered were chosen because of their importance to the field, recent appeal, and potential for future development. The articles are comprehensive and coverage is pedagogical with a bias towards recent developments.

The goal of this book is to teach spectral methods for solving boundary value, eigenvalue, and time-dependent problems. Although the title speaks only of Chebyshev polynomials and trigonometric functions, the book also discusses Hermite, Laguerre, rational Chebyshev, sinc, and spherical harmonic functions. These notes evolved from a course I have taught the past five years to an audience drawn from half a dozen different disciplines at the University of Michigan: aerospace engineering, meteorology, physical oceanography, mechanical engineering, naval architecture, and nuclear engineering....

This volume constitutes an important addition in our Lecture Notes in Engineering Series. The search for optimal structural shapes is at the fourtdation of all engineering analysis. Furthermore el)gineering as a whole can be seen as a process of looking for optimum solutions. The importance of Dr Chibani's work is that it deals with the integrated process of analysing and designing the optimum structure in a single operation. The design shape as well as the usual structural constraints are incQr.porated into the mathematical problem. This approach which is more suitable to computer...

The Boundary Element Method (BEM) has been established as a powerful numerical tool for the analysis of continua in recent years. The method is based on an attempt to transfer the governing differential equations into integral equations over the boundary. Thus, the discretization scheme or the intro duction of any approximations must be done over the boundary. This book presents a BEM for two-dimensional elastic, thermo -elastic and body-force contact problems. The formulation is implemented for the general case of contact with various fric tional conditions. The analysis is limited to linear...

The aim of this book is to provide a new angle on the analysis of slope stability with the Boundary Element Method. The main advantages of BEM are the reduction of the dimensionality of the problem to be solved and accurate selective calculation of internal stresses. This makes it possible, as shown in the book, to develop the algorithms of slip surface analysis of slope more accurate, more rigorous and more easy to be used than in the conventional limit equilibrium methods. The full elastoplastic analysis of slope is also investigated. Besides, the interested reader can find a detailed study...

Structural safety of industrial systems and components raises a steadily growing public, scientific and engineering interest, and causes permanent development of methods and techniques used for its assessment. In addition to the well established engineering methods, applied in the field, several new methods and tools have emerged recently. Among them, the most novel ones are probably those related to expert system applica tions, appearing as an important possible improvement of the current engineering practice. The issue has been addressed by the international course EXPERT SYSTEMS IN...

Current interest in a variety of low Reynolds number applications has focused attention on the design and evaluation of efficient airfoil sections at chord Reynolds numbers from about 100,000 to about 1,000,000. These applications include remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs) at high altitudes, sailplanes, ultra-light man-carrying/man powered aircraft, mini-RPVs at low altitudes and wind turbines/propellers. The purpose of this conference was to bring together those researchers who have been active in areas closely related to this subject. All of the papers presented are research type papers. Main...