Engineering: Books

Prepared by the Minimum Design Loads and Associated Criteria for Buildings and Other Structures Standards Committee of the Codes and Standards Activity Division of the Structural Engineering Institute of ASCE Minimum Design Loads and Associated Criteria for Buildings and Other Structures, ASCE/SEI 7-22, provides the most up-to-date and coordinated loading provisions for general structural design.

Instant Access to Civil Engineering Formulas Fully updated and packed with more than 500 new formulas, this book offers a single compilation of all essential civil engineering formulas and equations in one easy-to-use reference. Practical, accurate data is presented in USCS and SI units for maximum convenience. Follow the calculation procedures inside Civil Engineering Formulas, Second Edition, and get precise results with minimum time and effort. Each chapter is a quick reference to a well-defined topic, including: Beams and girders Columns Piles and piling Concrete structures Timber engineering Surveying Soils and earthwork Building structures Bridges and suspension cables Highways and roads Hydraulics, drams, and waterworks Power-generation wind turbines Stormwater Wastewater treatment Reinforced concrete Green buildings Environmental protection

An Introduction to Design for Civil Engineers is a concise book that provides the reader with the necessary background on terminology used in design. With this book as a guide, entry-level students of civil engineering will better understand from the outset lectures on detailed subject areas. Drawing on a wealth of experience, the authors present a largely qualitative treatment of the subject matter with little mathematics. Descriptions are amplified with numerous illustrations. This book will be a useful aid for entry-level students of civil engineering and related disciplines such as structural engineering, building engineering and architecture. It will also prove beneficial for newly qualified professionals and others who want a concise guide to everyday design technology.

In this new edition of his pioneering book Tomorrow's Energy, Peter Hoffmann makes the case for hydrogen as the cornerstone of a new energy economy. Hoffmann covers the major aspects of hydrogen production, storage, transportation, fuel use, and safety. He explains that hydrogen is not an energy source but a carrier, like electricity, and introduces the concept of "hydricity," the essential interchangeability of electricity and hydrogen. He brings the hydrogen story up to date, reporting on the latest developments, including new hydrogen and fuel-cell cars from GM, Daimler, BMW, Honda, and Toyota. He describes recent political controversies, including Obama administration Energy Secretary (and Nobel laureate in Physics) Steven Chu's inexplicable dismissal of hydrogen--which puts him at odds with major automakers, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and others. Our current energy system is a complex infrastructure, and phasing in hydrogen will take effort and money. But if we consider the real costs of fossil fuels--pollution and its effects, international tensions over gas and oil supplies, and climate change--we would be wise to promote its development.

Originally perceived as a cheap and plentiful source of power, the commercial use of nuclear energy has been controversial for decades. Worries about the dangers that nuclear plants and their radioactive waste posed to nearby communities grew over time, and plant construction in the United States virtually died after the early 1980s. The 1986 disaster at Chernobyl only reinforced nuclear power's negative image. Yet in the decade prior to the Japanese nuclear crisis of 2011, sentiment about nuclear power underwent a marked change. The alarming acceleration of global warming due to the burning of fossil fuels and concern about dependence on foreign fuel has led policymakers, climate scientists, and energy experts to look once again at nuclear power as a source of energy. In this accessible overview, Charles D. Ferguson provides an authoritative account of the key facts about nuclear energy. What is the origin of nuclear energy? What countries use commercial nuclear power, and how much electricity do they obtain from it? How can future nuclear power plants be made safer? What can countries do to protect their nuclear facilities from military attacks? How hazardous is radioactive waste? Is nuclear energy a renewable energy source? Featuring a discussion of the recent nuclear crisis in Japan and its ramifications, Ferguson addresses these questions and more in Nuclear Energy: What Everyone Needs to Know®, a book that is essential for anyone looking to learn more about this important issue.

The book will extract the most important information on fuel cells, analyze this information, and assess its scientific value and technical importance. It will provide a full yet concise description of all important aspects of fuel cells. The introduction will establish what a fuel cell is and its economic significance. The book will then discuss the working principle of a fuel cell, its history, types of fuel cells, problems, applications, and its place and outlook in internationally.

The second edition of this handbook provides a state-of-the-art overview on the various aspects in the rapidly developing field of robotics. Reaching for the human frontier, robotics is vigorously engaged in the growing challenges of new emerging domains. Interacting, exploring, and working with humans, the new generation of robots will increasingly touch people and their lives. The credible prospect of practical robots among humans is the result of the scientific endeavour of a half a century of robotic developments that established robotics as a modern scientific discipline. The ongoing vibrant expansion and strong growth of the field during the last decade has fueled this second edition of the Springer Handbook of Robotics. 

Bracing for Disaster is a fresh appraisal of a city responding to repeated devastation. In the language of a skilled teacher, Tobriner examines what really happened during the city's earthquakes--which buildings were damaged, which survived, and who were the unsung heroes. Filled with more than two hundred photographs, diagrams, and illustrations, this is a revealing look at the history of buildings by a true expert, and it offers lessons not just for San Francisco but for any city beset by natural disasters.