Technology & Engineering - General

Wood composites have shown very good performance, and substantial service lives when correctly specified for the exposure risks present. Selection of an appropriate product for the job should be accompanied by decisions about the appropriate protection, whether this is by design, by preservative treatment...

The massive increase in energy demand and the related rapid development of unconventional reservoirs has opened up exciting new energy supply opportunities along with new, seemingly intractable engineering and research challenges. The energy industry has primarily depended on a heuristic approach--rather than a systematic...

Nowadays, the sustainable built environment planning in most cities has come to a turning point as the growth in traffic and population has become a serious concern and put tremendous pressure on both the environment and people in these cities. It is therefore important...

This book presents interesting samples of theoretical and practical advances of symmetry in multidisciplinary engineering applications. It covers several applications, such as accessibility and traffic congestion management, path planning for mobile robots, analysis of shipment service networks, fault diagnosis methods in electrical circuits and...

With increasing power levels and power densities in electronics systems, thermal issues are becoming more and more critical. The elevated temperatures result in changing electrical system parameters, changing the operation of devices, and sometimes even the destruction of devices. To prevent this, the thermal...

Energy efficiency and low-carbon technologies are key contributors to curtailing the emission of greenhouse gases that continue to cause global warming. The efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions also strongly affect electrical power systems. Renewable sources, storage systems, and flexible loads provide new system...

Bionanoparticles such as microorganisms and exosomes are recoganized as important targets for clinical applications, food safety, and environmental monitoring. Other nanoscale biological particles, includeing liposomes, micelles, and functionalized polymeric particles are widely used in nanomedicines. The recent deveopment of microfluidic and nanofluidic technologies has...

Wind turbine aerodynamics is one of the central subjects of wind turbine technology. To reduce the levelized cost of energy (LCOE), the size of a single wind turbine has been increased to 12 MW at present, with further increases expected in the near future....

The editors of this Special Issue titled "Intelligent Control in Energy Systems" have attempted to create a book containing original technical articles addressing various elements of intelligent control in energy systems. In response to our call for papers, we received 60 submissions. Of those...

In recent years, wireless communications have significantly evolved due to the advanced technology of smartphones;, portable devices; and the rapid growth of Internet of Things, e-Health, and intelligent transportation systems . Moreover, there is anare increasing need fors of emerging intelligent services like positioning...

Riverbank filtration (RBF) schemes for the production of drinking water are increasingly challenged by new constituents of concern, such as organic micropollutants and pathogens in the source water and hydrological flow variations due to weather extremes. RBF and new technology components are integrated and...

Photovoltaics, among the different renewable energy sources (RES), has become more popular. In recent years, however, many research topics have arisen as a result of the problems that are constantly faced in smart-grid and microgrid operations, such as forecasting of the output of power...

Fluid flow and heat transfer processes play an important role in many areas of science and engineering, from the planetary scale (e.g., influencing weather and climate) to the microscopic scales of enhancing heat transfer by the use of nanofluids; understood in the broadest possible...

The fluid flow in fracture porous media plays a significant role in the assessment of deep underground reservoirs, such as through CO2 sequestration, enhanced oil recovery, and geothermal energy development. Many methods have been employed--from laboratory experimentation to theoretical analysis and numerical simulations--and allowed...

There are many regions worldwide which are susceptible to extreme loads such as earthquakes. These can cause loss of life and adverse impacts on civil infrastructures, the environment, and communities. A series of methods and measures have been used to mitigate the effects of...

As computer and space technologies have been developed, geoscience information systems (GIS) and remote sensing (RS) technologies, which deal with the geospatial information, have been rapidly maturing. Moreover, over the last few decades, machine learning techniques including artificial neural network (ANN), deep learning, decision...

HVAC systems, load shifting, indoor climate, and energy and ventilation performance analyses are the key topics when improving energy performance in new and renovated buildings. This development has been boosted by the recently established nearly zero energy building requirements that will soon be in...

The aim of this Special Issue is to present the latest theoretical and experimental achievements concerning the mechanisms of microstructural change in metallic materials subject to different processing methods, and their effect on mechanical properties. It is my pleasure to present a series of...

This book presents an interesting sample of the latest advances in optimization techniques applied to electrical power engineering. It covers a variety of topics from various fields, ranging from classical optimization such as Linear and Nonlinear Programming and Integer and Mixed-Integer Programming to the...

Challenging problems arise in all segments of energy industries--generation, transmission, distribution and consumption. Optimization models and methods play a key role in offering decision/policy makers better information to assist them in making sounder decisions at different levels, ranging from operational to strategic planning. This...

The book features contributions that report original research in the theoretical, technological, and social aspects of geoinformation methods, as applied to supporting citizen science. Specifically, the book focuses on the technological aspects of the field and their application toward the recruitment of volunteers and...

This Special Issue contains a series of excellent research works on telecommunications and signal processing, selected from the 2018 41st International Conference on Telecommunications and Signal Processing (TSP) which was held on July 4-6, 2018, in Athens, Greece. The conference was organized in cooperation...

This Special Issue covers symmetry and asymmetry phenomena occurring in real-life problems. We invited authors to submit their theoretical or experimental research presenting engineering and economic problem solution models dealing with the symmetry or asymmetry of different types of information. The issue gained interest...

A topic of utmost importance in civil engineering is finding optimal solutions throughout the life cycle of buildings and infrastructural objects, including their design, manufacturing, use, and maintenance. Operational research, management science, and optimization methods provide a consistent and applicable groundwork for engineering decision-making....

Agriculture requires technical solutions for increasing production while lessening environmental impact by reducing the application of agro-chemicals and increasing the use of environmentally friendly management practices. A benefit of this is the reduction of production costs. Sensor technologies produce tools to achieve the abovementioned...

The Special Issue on Advances in Water Distribution Networks (WDNs) explores four important topics of research in the framework of WDNs, namely simulation and optimization modelling, topology and partitioning, water quality, and service effectiveness. With regard to the first topic, the following aspects are...

This issue of Proceedings gathers papers presented at XOVETIC2018 (A Coruña, Spain, 27-28 September 2018), a conference with the main goal of bringing together young researchers working in big data, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, HPC (high-performance computing), cybersecurity, bioinformatics, natural language processing, 5G,...

Micro-bioreactors offer unique opportunities to study biological systems under fluidic conditions. The concept of micro-bioreactors suggests that biological reaction conditions at a large scale can be scaled down to micro-volumes while maintaining performance and functionality. Models and operation principles can be simulated at a...

Semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) are considered a key enabling technology for the design and implementation of photonic circuits, subsystems, and networks. Owing to the attractive features of low power consumption, compactness, broad gain bandwidth and ability for integration with affordable cost, SOAs enjoy continuous...

The 2017 International Conference on Micro/Nanomachines (http: //www.icmnm.org/) was held in Wuhan, China, 25-28 August, 2017. Micro/nanomotors (MNMs), which are defined as micro/nanodevices capable of converting energy into autonomous motion, can be used to pick up, transport, and release various cargoes within a liquid...

A comprehensive overview of sensors technology is provided in specific leading areas. Researchers, engineers and professionals on industries can find advanced technologies, devices, insights and solutions for a broad range of applications, including: - Piezoelectric power transducers - Multisensory for veins detection for robotic-based...

The information fusion technique can integrate a large amount of data and knowledge representing the same real-world object and obtain a consistent, accurate and useful representation of that object. The data may be independent or redundant, and can be obtained by different sensors at...

Solid-state lasers offer unique qualities in terms of flexibility, robustness, efficiency, and wavelength diversity. For these reasons, they are nowadays irreplaceable tools in many scientific and industrial applications. The engineering of new materials, the advances in photonics technologies, and the increasing demand for speed,...

Heat exchange processes in steady flows have been studied extensively over the last two hundred years, and are now a part of undergraduate syllabi in most engineering courses. However, heat transfer processes in oscillatory flow conditions are still not very well understood. Their importance...

The depletion of fossil fuels, the increase of energy demands, and the concerns over climate change are the major driving forces for the development of renewable energy, such as solar energy and wind power. However, the intermittency of renewable energy has hindered the deployment...

Ultrafine-grained metallic materials produced by severe plastic deformation methods are at the cutting edge of modern materials science. UFG-metals exhibit outstanding properties which make them very interesting for structural or functional engineering applications. Fifteen articles in this special issue address a broad variety of...

The discovery of monolayer graphene led to a Nobel Prize in Physics being awarded in 2010. This has stimulated further research on a wide variety of two-dimensional (2D) layered materials. The coupling of metallic graphene, semiconducting 2D transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) and black phosphorus...

With global urbanization rapidly rising and the increasing need of high-quality built environments, the requirement of achieving improved sound quality, both for outdoor and indoor environments, has received a lot of attention. This Special Issue collection reflects the current state of the art, with...

In this Special Issue, readers will find selected works pertaining to the integration and intensification methods that are currently adopted for carbon capture, stemming from the generation of waste gasses. Novel optimization methods achieved through modeling as well as numerical studies are also reported...

Tissue engineering emerged back in the 1990s as a new concept to overcome the problem of tissue and organ failure. Over recent decades, there has been incredible progress towards the regeneration of tissues such as bone, heart valves, cartilage, cornea, and retina. In terms...

The idea of an intelligent machine has fascinated humans for centuries. Intelligence can be defined as the capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, or the aptitude for grasping truths, relationships, facts, or meanings. Any of these perspectives requires the capacity to acquire data from the...

To date, many challenges have been faced in the production of mineral raw materials to provide necessary supplies in almost any production chain. In addition to the traditional search for more efficient processes, cleaner and safer operations, and higher levels of social acceptance, there...

As a biocompatible semiconductor composed of abundant elements, ZnO, in the form of nanowires, exhibits remarkable properties, mainly originating from its wurtzite structure and correlated with its high aspect ratio at nanoscale dimensions. ZnO nanowires have thus received increasing interest in the community and...

Energy and power are playing an increasingly pivotal role in our modern life and are transforming the way we utilize energy and the way we live. This special issue brought together the latest innovations and knowledge in energy and power engineering such as new...

The Internet's great success has been essentially based on the simplicity and versatility of its TCP/IP architecture, as it imposes almost no restrictions on either the underlying network technology or the data being transmitted. In essence, applications built on top of TCP/IP get a...

Explore "About an Important Phenomenon-Water Hammer", a groundbreaking Special Issue featuring insights from leading experts. When pressurized pipe flow is disrupted, water hammer-a once overlooked phenomenon-creates waves of importance in engineering, driving a dangerous surge.Dedicated to modeling water hammer and experimental verification, this Special...

I am very happy to have this Special Issue of the journal Energies on the topic of Design and Control of Electrical Motor Drives published. Electrical motor drives are widely used in the industry, automation, transportation, and home appliances. Indeed, rolling mills, machine tools,...

The Special Issue "Soft Actuators and Robotics" presents a curated collection of innovative research papers that delve into the design, fabrication, and application of soft actuators and soft robotics. This issue captures the interdisciplinary nature of soft robotics, blending principles from engineering, materials science,...

The integration of information technologies with industry has marked the beginning of the fourth industrial revolution and promoted the development of industrial engineering. However, the depletion of resources and industrial waste caused by increasing amounts of industrial production pose a huge threat to nature....

This Special Issue presents computational techniques used to examine the social, spatial, and functional characteristics of buildings and cities. Focused on two renowned computational methods in architectural and urban analytics-Shape Grammar and Space Syntax-this reprint demystifies the 'grammar', 'syntax', and 'style' of space and...