GeoEngineerings

Language: English - ISBN-10: 354069966X - ISBN-13: 978-3540699668 

This book documents the First World Landslide Forum, which was jointly organized by the International Consortium on Landslides (ICL), eight UN organizations (UNESCO, WMO, FAO, UN/ISDR, UNU, UNEP, World Bank, UNDP) and four NGOs (International Council for Science, World Federation of Engineering Organizations, Kyoto Univ. and Japan Landslide Society) in Tokyo in 2008.

The material consists of four parts: The Open Forum "Progress of IPL Activities; Four Thematic Lectures in the Plenary Symposium "Global Landslide Risk Reduction"; Six Keynote Lectures in the Plenary session; and the aims and overviews of eighteen parallel sessions (dealing with various aspects necessary for landslide disaster risk reduction such as: observations from space; climate change and slope instability; landslides threatening heritage sites; the economic and social impact of landslides; monitoring, prediction and early warning; and risk-management strategies in urban area, etc.)

Thus it enables the reader to benefit from a wide range of research intended to reduce risk due to landslide disasters as presented in the first global multi-disciplinary meeting.

The ability to understand the area of fluid mechanics is enhanced by using equations to mathematically model those phenomena encountered in everyday life. Helping those new to fluid mechanics make sense of its concepts and calculations, Introduction to Fluid Mechanics, Fourth Edition makes learning a visual experience by introducing the types of problems that students are likely to encounter in practice – and then presenting methods to solve them. A time-tested book that has proven useful in various fluid mechanics and turbomachinery courses, this volume assumes knowledge of calculus and physics in its use of mathematics to model physical principles in fluid mechanics. Among its many useful features, this book:

Contents: Updates advances and relevant examples + Introduces concepts of fluid statics and control/volume approach of determining flow + Carefully explains topics using step-by-step examples + Emphasizes applications areas, with extensive resources for design problems  + Uses both SI units and British gravitational units + Includes computer and design problems formulated for use with a spreadsheet in any of the traditional programming languages.

The author includes open-ended chapter-end problems designed to systematically improve the students’ ability to understand and apply the equations of fluid mechanics to various practical problems associated with scenarios such as flow from a draining coffee pot or drag force exerted on a bicycle-rider combination. Problems are arranged so that the easier ones are presented first, to build students’ confidence and aid learning, and these problems are grouped by topic, making them easier to use for both instructors and students. With an abundance of new material, this book is a thorough and comprehensible presentation of fluid mechanics from a practical viewpoint, rather than an encyclopedic and inaccessible volume.

Generating a quality finite element mesh is difficult and often very time-consuming. Mesh-free methods operations can also be complicated and quite costly in terms of computational effort and resources. Developed by the authors and their colleagues, the smoothed finite element method (S-FEM) only requires a triangular/tetrahedral mesh to achieve more accurate results, a generally higher convergence rate in energy without increasing computational cost, and easier auto-meshing of the problem domain. Drawing on the authors’ extensive research results, Smoothed Finite Element Methods presents the theoretical framework and development of various S-FEM models.

After introducing background material, basic equations, and an abstracted version of the FEM, the book discusses the overall modeling procedure, fundamental theories, error assessment matters, and necessary building blocks to construct useful S-FEM models. It then focuses on several specific S-FEM models, including cell-based (CS-FEM), node-based (NS-FEM), edge-based (ES-FEM), face-based (FS-FEM), and a combination of FEM and NS-FEM (αFEM). These models are then applied to a wide range of physical problems in solid mechanics, fracture mechanics, viscoelastoplasticity, plates, piezoelectric structures, heat transfer, and structural acoustics.

Requiring no previous knowledge of FEM, this book shows how computational methods and numerical techniques like the S-FEM help in the design and analysis of advanced engineering systems in rapid and cost-effective ways since the modeling and simulation can be performed automatically in a virtual environment without physically building the system. Readers can easily apply the methods presented in the text to their own engineering problems for reliable and certified solutions.