In today's business environment, as organizations constantly seek to growth and develop through the optimization of their innovative and creative potential, understanding the critical issues and management practices in R & D is essential. This book provides a critical revaluation of the state of the art issues and concepts in R&D management. The views expressed are those of leading French researchers and professionals in this field, fed by empirical studies in national and international firms.
This book explores how the technical upheavals of the 21st century have changed the structures and architecture of the creation, sharing and regulation of knowledge. From the new economic and technical models of production and dissemination of knowledge, the book deals with all new forms of valorisation. It also explains how the legislative deficit in the world and in Europe, around digital is being filled by new initiatives, such as the law for a Digital Republic, in France. It is therefore a book that provides a valuable follow-up to the book "The New Challenges of Knowledge", of which it constitutes the continuation and operational deepening.
Intelligence is defined by the ability to optimize, manage and reconcile the currents of physical, economic and even social flows. The strong constraint of immediacy proves to be an opportunity to imagine, propose and deliver solutions on the common basis of optimization techniques. Metaheuristics for Intelligent Electrical Networks analyzes the use of metaheuristics through independent applications but united by the same methodology.
This book deals with the management and valuation of energy storage in electric power grids, highlighting the interest of storage systems in grid applications and developing management methodologies based on artificial intelligence tools. The authors highlight the importance of storing electrical energy, in the context of sustainable development, in "smart cities" and "smart transportation", and discuss multiple services that storing electrical energy can bring. Methodological tools are provided to build an energy management system storage following a generic approach. These tools are based on causal formalisms, artificial intelligence and explicit optimization techniques and are presented throughout the book in connection with concrete case studies.
This book presents new guidelines for the control of cracking in massive reinforced and prestressed concrete structures. Understanding this behavior during construction allows engineers to ensure properties such as durability, reliability, and water- and air-tightness throughout a structure's lifetime. Based on the findings of the French national CEOS.fr project, the authors extend existing engineering standards and codes to advance the measurement and prediction of cracking patterns. Various behaviors of concrete under load are explored within the chapters of the book. These include cracking of ties, beams and in walls, and the simulation and evaluation of cracking, shrinkage and creep. The authors propose new engineering rules for crack width and space assessment of cracking patterns, and provide recommendations for measurement devices and protocols. Intended as a reference for design and civil engineers working on construction projects, as well as to aid further work in the research community, applied examples are provided at the end of each chapter in the form of expanded measurement methods, calculations and commentary on models.
The purpose of this book is to present the main metaheuristics and approximate and stochastic methods for optimization of complex systems in Engineering Sciences. It has been written within the framework of the European Union project ERRIC (Empowering Romanian Research on Intelligent Information Technologies), which is funded by the EU's FP7 Research Potential program and has been developed in co-operation between French and Romanian teaching researchers. Through the principles of various proposed algorithms (with additional references) this book allows the reader to explore various methods of implementation such as metaheuristics, local search and populationbased methods. It examines multi-objective and stochastic optimization, as well as methods and tools for computer-aided decision-making and simulation for decision-making.
The main properties that make carbon nanotubes (CNTs) a promising technology for many future applications are: extremely high strength, low mass density, linear elastic behavior, almost perfect geometrical structure, and nanometer scale structure. Also, CNTs can conduct electricity better than copper and transmit heat better than diamonds. Therefore, they are bound to find a wide, and possibly revolutionary use in all fields of engineering.
The interest in CNTs and their potential use in a wide range of commercial applications; such as nanoelectronics, quantum wire interconnects, field emission devices, composites, chemical sensors, biosensors, detectors, etc.; have rapidly increased in the last two decades. However, the performance of any CNT-based nanostructure is dependent on the mechanical properties of constituent CNTs. Therefore, it is crucial to know the mechanical behavior of individual CNTs such as their vibration frequencies, buckling loads, and deformations under different loadings.
This title is dedicated to the vibration, buckling and impact behavior of CNTs, along with theory for carbon nanosensors, like the Bubnov-Galerkin and the Petrov-Galerkin methods, the Bresse-Timoshenko and the Donnell shell theory.
This book addresses different algorithms and applications based on the theory of multiobjective goal attainment optimization. In detail the authors show as the optimal asset of the energy hubs network which (i) meets the loads, (ii) minimizes the energy costs and (iii) assures a robust and reliable operation of the multicarrier energy network can be formalized by a nonlinear constrained multiobjective optimization problem. Since these design objectives conflict with each other, the solution of such the optimal energy flow problem hasn't got a unique solution and a suitable trade off between the objectives should be identified. A further contribution of the book consists in presenting real-world applications and results of the proposed methodologies developed by the authors in three research projects recently completed and characterized by actual implementation under an overall budget of about 23 million EUR.
This book presents a new fracturing technique that should be considered as a potential alternative, or a companion technique, to hydraulic fracturing of tight gas reservoirs and low permeability rock masses. As opposed to hydraulic fracturing which generates a few numbers of large cracks, electro-hydraulic fracturing induces diffuse micro-cracking and fragmentation of rocks. Laboratory tests demonstrate that increases of permeability by two orders of magnitude can be reached, without major cracking in tested specimens. This book discusses the principles of this new technique, reports experiments which have been developed is order to prove the concept and finally describes the numerical model from which the potentialities of this technique in representative reservoir conditions can be assessed.
This book addresses the multiple technical aspects of the distribution of synchronization in new generation telecommunication networks, focusing in particular on synchronous Ethernet and IEEE1588 technologies. Many packet network engineers struggle with understanding the challenges that precise synchronization distribution can impose on networks. The usual "why", "when" and particularly "how" can cause problems for many engineers. In parallel to this, some other markets have identical synchronization requirements, but with their own design requirements, generating further questions. This book attempts to respond to the different questions by providing background technical information. Invaluable information on state of-the-art packet network synchronization and timing architectures is provided, as well as an unbiased view on the synchronization technologies that have been internationally standardized over recent years, with the aim of providing the average reader (who is not skilled in the art) with a better understanding of this topic. The book focuses specifically on synchronous Ethernet and IEEE 1588 PTP-based technologies, both key developments in the world of synchronization over the last 10 years. The authors address the needs of engineers and technical managers who are struggling with the subject of synchronization and provide an engineering reference for those that need to consider synchronization in NGN. The market applications that are driving the development of packet network synchronization and timing architectures are also discussed. This book provides a wide audience with everything they need to know when researching, implementing, buying and deploying packet synchronization architectures in telecommunication networks.
Energy and environmental issues have caused a marked increase in electricity production from renewable energy sources since the beginning of the 21st Century. The concept of sustainable development and concern for future generations challenge us every day to produce new technologies for energy production, and new patterns of use for these energies. Their rapid emergence can make the understanding and therefore the perception of these new technologies difficult. This book aims to contribute to a better understanding of the new electricity generation technologies by addressing a diverse audience. It presents the issues, sources and means of conversion into electricity using a general approach and develops scientific concepts to understand their main technical characteristics.
Systems of electricity generation from renewable energy resources of small to medium powers are presented. The basic electrical concepts necessary for understanding the operating characteristics of these energy converters are introduced, and the constraints and problems of integration in the electrical networks of those means of production are discussed. Several exercises are provided to the reader for evaluation purposes. Contents 1. Decentralized Electricity Production from Renewable Energy, Benoît Robyns.
2. Solar Photovoltaic Power, Arnaud Davigny.
3. Wind Power, Bruno Francois and Benoît Robyns.
4. Terrestrial and Marine Hydroelectricity: Waves and Tides, Benoît Robyns and Antoine Henneton.
5. Thermal Power Generation, Jonathan Sprooten.
6. Integration of the Decentralized Production into the Electrical Network, Benoît Robyns.
This book deals with air-ground aeronautical communications. The main goal is to give the reader a survey of the currently deployed, emerging and future communications systems dedicated to digital data communications between the aircraft and the ground, namely the data link. Those communication systems show specific properties relatively to those commonly used for terrestrial communications. In this book, the system architectures are more specifically considered from the access to the application layers as radio and physical functionalities have already been addressed in detail in others books. The first part is an introduction to aeronautical communications, their specific concepts, properties, requirements and terminology. The second part presents the currently used systems for air ground communications in continental and oceanic area. The third part enlightens the reader on the emerging and future communication systems and some leading research projects focused on this scope. Finally, before the conclusion, the fourth part gives several main challenges and research directions currently under investigation.
Statistical Models and Methods for Reliability and Survival Analysis brings together contributions by specialists in statistical theory as they discuss their applications providing up-to-date developments in methods used in survival analysis, statistical goodness of fit, stochastic processes for system reliability, amongst others. Many of these are related to the work of Professor M. Nikulin in statistics over the past 30 years. The authors gather together various contributions with a broad array of techniques and results, divided into three parts - Statistical Models and Methods, Statistical Models and Methods in Survival Analysis, and Reliability and Maintenance. The book is intended for researchers interested in statistical methodology and models useful in survival analysis, system reliability and statistical testing for censored and non-censored data.
This title focuses on two significant problems in the field of automatic control, in particular state estimation and robust Model Predictive Control under input and state constraints, bounded disturbances and measurement noises. The authors build upon previous results concerning zonotopic set-membership state estimation and output feedback tube-based Model Predictive Control. Various existing zonotopic set-membership estimation methods are investigated and their advantages and drawbacks are discussed, making this book suitable both for researchers working in automatic control and industrial partners interested in applying the proposed techniques to real systems.
The authors proceed to focus on a new method based on the minimization of the P-radius of a zonotope, in order to obtain a good trade-off between the complexity and the accuracy of the estimation. They propose a P-radius based set-membership estimation method to compute a zonotope containing the real states of a system, which are consistent with the disturbances and measurement noise. The problem of output feedback control using a zonotopic set-membership estimation is also explored. Among the approaches from existing literature on the subject, the implementation of robust predictive techniques based on tubes of trajectories is developed.
Contents 1. Uncertainty Representation Based on Set Theory.
2. Several Approaches on Zonotopic Guaranteed Set-Membership Estimation.
3. Zonotopic Guaranteed State Estimation Based on P-Radius Minimization.
4. Tube Model Predictive Control Based on Zonotopic Set-Membership Estimation. About the Authors Vu Tuan Hieu Le is a Research Engineer at the IRSEEM/ESIGELEC Technopôle du Madrillet, Saint Etienne du Rouvray, France.
Cristina Stoica is Assistant Professor in the Automatic Control Department at SUPELEC Systems Sciences (E3S), France.
Teodoro Alamo is Professor in the Department of Systems Engineering and Automatic Control at the University of Seville, Spain.
Eduardo F. Camacho is Professor in the Department of Systems Engineering and Automatic Control at the University of Seville, Spain.
Didier Dumur is Professor in the Automatic Control Department, SUPELEC Systems Sciences (E3S), France.
This book covers local search for combinatorial optimization and its extension to mixed-variable optimization. Although not yet understood from the theoretical point of view, local search is the paradigm of choice for tackling large-scale real-life optimization problems. Today's end-users demand interactivity with decision support systems. For optimization software, this means obtaining good-quality solutions quickly. Fast iterative improvement methods, like local search, are suited to satisfying such needs. Here the authors show local search in a new light, in particular presenting a new kind of mathematical programming solver, namely LocalSolver, based on neighborhood search. First, an iconoclast methodology is presented to design and engineer local search algorithms. The authors' concern regarding industrializing local search approaches is of particular interest for practitioners. This methodology is applied to solve two industrial problems with high economic stakes. Software based on local search induces extra costs in development and maintenance in comparison with the direct use of mixed-integer linear programming solvers. The authors then move on to present the LocalSolver project whose goal is to offer the power of local search through a model-and-run solver for large-scale 0-1 nonlinear programming. They conclude by presenting their ongoing and future work on LocalSolver toward a full mathematical programming solver based on local search.
Due to the consequences of globa l warming and significant greenhouse gas emissions, several ideas have been studied to reduce these emissions or to suggest solut ions for pollutant remov al. The most promising ideas are reduced consumption, waste recovery and waste treatment by biological systems. In this latter category, studies have demonstrated that the use of microalgae is a very promising solution for the biofixation of carbon dioxide. In fact, these micro-organisms are able to offset high levels of CO2 thanks to photosynthesis. Microalgae are also used in various fields (food industry, fertilizers, biofuel, etc.). To obtain a n optimal C O2 sequestration us ing micr oal gae, their cul tivatio n has to be c arried ou t in a f avorable e nvironment, corresponding to optimal operating conditions (temperature, nutrients, pH, light, etc.). Therefore, microalgae are grown in an enclosure, i.e. photobioreactors, which notably operate in continuous mode. This type of closed reactor notably enables us to reduce culture contamination, to improve CO2 transfer and to better control the cultivation system. This last point involves the regulation of concentrations (biomass, substrate or by-product) in addition to conventional regulations (pH, temperature).
To do this, we have to establish a model of the system and to identify its parameters; to put in place estimators in order to rebuild variables that are not measured online (software sensor); and finally to implement a control law, in order to maintain the system in optimal conditions despite modeling errors and environmental disturbances that can have an influence on the system (pH variations, temperature, light, biofilm appearance, etc.).
Engineering structures may be subjected to extreme high-rate loading conditions, like those associated with natural disasters (earthquakes, tsunamis, rock falls, etc.) or those of anthropic origin (impacts, fluid-structure interactions, shock wave transmissions, etc.). Characterization and modeling of the mechanical behavior of materials under these environments is important in predicting the response of structures and improving designs.
This book gathers contributions by eminent researchers in academia and government research laboratories on the latest advances in the understanding of the dynamic process of damage, cracking and fragmentation. It allows the reader to develop an understanding of the key features of the dynamic mechanical behavior of brittle (e.g. granular and cementitious), heterogeneous (e.g. energetic) and ductile (e.g. metallic) materials.
Triangulations, and more precisely meshes, are at the heart of many problems relating to a wide variety of scientific disciplines, and in particular numerical simulations of all kinds of physical phenomena. In numerical simulations, the functional spaces of approximation used to search for solutions are defined from meshes, and in this sense these meshes play a fundamental role. This strong link between meshes and functional spaces leads us to consider advanced simulation methods in which the meshes are adapted to the behaviors of the underlying physical phenomena. This book presents the basic elements of this vision of meshing.
These mesh adaptations are generally governed by a posteriori error estimators representing an increase of the error with respect to a size or metric. Independently of this metric of calculation, compliance with a geometry can also be calculated using a so-called geometric metric. The notion of mesh thus finds its meaning in the metric of its elements.
Triangulations, and more precisely meshes, are at the heart of many problems relating to a wide variety of scientific disciplines, and in particular numerical simulations of all kinds of physical phenomena. In numerical simulations, the functional spaces of approximation used to search for solutions are defined from meshes, and in this sense these meshes play a fundamental role. This strong link between meshes and functional spaces leads us to consider advanced simulation methods in which the meshes are adapted to the behaviors of the underlying physical phenomena. This book presents the basic elements of this vision of meshing.
These mesh adaptations are generally governed by a posteriori error estimators representing an increase of the error with respect to a size or metric. Independently of this metric of calculation, compliance with a geometry can also be calculated using a so-called geometric metric. The notion of mesh thus finds its meaning in the metric of its elements.
Enterprises and organizations of any kind embedded in today's economic environment are deeply dependent on their ability to take part in collaborations. Consequently, it is strongly required for them to get actively involved for their own benefit in emerging, potentially opportunistic collaborative enterprise networks. The concept of "interoperability" has been defined by INTEROP-VLab as "The ability of an enterprise system or application to interact with others at a low cost in a flexible approach". Consequently, interoperability of organizations appears as a major issue to succeed in building on the fly emerging enterprise networks. The International Conference on Interoperability for Enterprise Systems and Applications (I-ESA 2014) was held under the motto "interoperability for agility, resilience and plasticity of collaborations" on March 26-28, 2014 and organized by the Ecole des Mines d'Albi-Carmaux, France on behalf of the European Laboratory for Enterprise Interoperability (INTEROP-VLab). On March 24-25, co-located with the conference eight workshops and one doctoral symposium were held in four tracks complementing the program of the I-ESA'14 conference. The workshops and the doctoral symposium address areas of greatest current activity focusing on active discussions among the leading researchers in the area of Enterprise Interoperability. This part of the conference helps the community to operate effectively, building co-operative and supportive international links as well as providing new knowledge of on-going research to practitioners. The workshops and doctoral symposium aimed at exploiting new issues, challenges and solutions for Enterprise Interoperability (EI) and associated domains of innovation such as Smart Industry, Internet-Of-Things, Factories of the Future, EI Applications and Standardisation. These proceedings include the short papers from the I-ESA'14 workshops and the doctoral symposium. The book is split up into 9 sections, one for each workshop and one for the doctoral symposium. All sections were organized following four tracks: (1) EI and Future Internet / Factory of the Future; (2) EI Application Domains and IT; (3) EI Standards; (4) EI Doctoral Symposium. For each section, a workshop report is provided summarizing the content and the issues discussed during the sessions. The goal of the first track was to offer a discussion opportunity on interoperability issues regarding the use of Internet of Things on manufacturing environment (Workshops 1 and 3) on one hand, and regarding the potential of innovation derived from the use of digital methods, architectures and services such as Smart Networks (Workshops 2 and 4) on the other hand. The second track focused on particular application domains that are looking for innovative solutions to support their strong collaborative needs. Thus, the track developed one workshop on the use of EI solution for Future City-Logistics (Workshop 5) and one on the use of EI solutions for Crisis / Disaster Management (Workshop 6). The third track studied the recent developments in EI standardization. Two workshops were dedicated to this issue. The first one has proposed to focus on the management of standardization (Workshop 8) and the second one has chosen to work on the new knowledge on standardization developments in the manufacturing service domain (Workshop 9). The last track, the doctoral symposium presented research results from selected dissertations. The session discussed EI knowledge issues, notably in terms of gathering through social networks or Internet of Things and of exploitation through innovative decision support systems.
This book analyzes stochastic processes on networks and regular structures such as lattices by employing the Markovian random walk approach. Part 1 is devoted to the study of local and non-local random walks. It shows how non-local random walk strategies can be defined by functions of the Laplacian matrix that maintain the stochasticity of the transition probabilities. A major result is that only two types of functions are admissible: type (i) functions generate asymptotically local walks with the emergence of Brownian motion, whereas type (ii) functions generate asymptotically scale-free non-local "fractional" walks with the emergence of Lévy flights. In Part 2, fractional dynamics and Lévy flight behavior are analyzed thoroughly, and a generalization of Pólya's classical recurrence theorem is developed for fractional walks. The authors analyze primary fractional walk characteristics such as the mean occupation time, the mean first passage time, the fractal scaling of the set of distinct nodes visited, etc. The results show the improved search capacities of fractional dynamics on networks.
Information Systems Management is intended to sensitize the heads of organizations to the issues raised by information systems (IS). Through its pedagogical presentation, the book ensures that issues related to IS are not left solely to the experts in the field.
The book combines and analyzes three key concepts of IS: governance, urbanization and alignment. While governance requires the implementation of a number of means, bodies and procedures to manage IS more effectively, urbanization involves visualization methods to enable the manager to take into account the different levels of the organization of an IS and their coherence. Finally, alignment assesses the ability of the IS to make a significant contribution to the organization's strategy.
Localization for underwater robots remains a challenging issue. Typical sensors, such as Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers, cannot be used under the surface and other inertial systems suffer from a strong integration drift. On top of that, the seabed is generally uniform and unstructured, making it difficult to apply Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) methods to perform localization. Reliable Robot Localization presents an innovative new method which can be characterized as a raw-data SLAM approach. It differs from extant methods by considering time as a standard variable to be estimated, thus raising new opportunities for state estimation, so far underexploited. However, such temporal resolution is not straightforward and requires a set of theoretical tools in order to achieve the main purpose of localization. This book not only presents original contributions to the field of mobile robotics, it also offers new perspectives on constraint programming and set-membership approaches. It provides a reliable contractor programming framework in order to build solvers for dynamical systems. This set of tools is illustrated throughout this book with realistic robotic applications.
As new information and communication technologies (NICTs) increasingly reorganize our practices and influence our daily lives, there is a pressing need to study their impact in the field of hospital logistics and to question their future use. Hospital Logistics and e-Management presents an inventory of the health information system, and deals with informational and logistical issues with regard to medical information. Through two case studies of hospital logistics systems which have drawn on academic research, this book examines how powerful decision support tools can improve the quality of patient service and logistics organization. The first case study deals with the influx of patients to emergency services and service organization, and the second with the optimization of product collection and distribution flows.
