The popular, easily accessible guide to the design of reinforced concrete structures—now updated and revised

Structural Concrete, Fifth Edition provides complete guidance to the analysis and design of reinforced and prestressed concrete structures. This new edition brings all material up to date while maintaining the book's practical, logical, easy-to-follow approach. Coverage includes the latest ACI 318 - 11 code rules, emphasizing the code's strength approach and strain limits. Additional codes, standards, and specifications, as well as material properties and specific loads and safety provisions are also examined in detail.

Drawing on decades of experience in industry and academia, the authors include numerous SI unit examples and design tables along with step-by-step instructions on how to analyze and design for each type of structural member. They clearly explain all key concepts one should know before tackling design formulas, and supplement the discussion with helpful end-of-chapter summaries, references, and problems. New and updated material in this edition includes:

• The application of shear design to beams with variable length in actual structure

• The design of deep beams employing ACI and AASHTO strut-and-tie approach

• The design of stepped-type reinforced concrete stairs, not covered anywhere else

• Seismic design and analysis utilizing the IBC 2012 and ASCE 7-10 code

• The design of curved beams subject to flexure, shear, and torsion

• Prestressed concrete bridge design according to AASHTO specifications

• Examples for predicting shrinkage and creep of concrete in both U.S. and SI units

Structural Concrete, Fifth Edition arms civil and structural engineers with a complete set of tools for designing concrete structures with confidence. It is also an excellent resource for students of civil engineering.

Ideal for anyone without prior legal knowledge who needs to understand the patent system, this book enables nonspecialists to make well-informed decisions affecting new and patentable products. The third edition covers the new patent law, the America Invents Act, which was recently passed by Congress and signed by the President. This is the first major change to the patent law in almost 60 years and is receiving a great deal of attention. The text provides a detailed analysis and description of the new patent law and how it will affect engineers. All chapters have been updated and include new sidebar case studies. A supporting website features videos and interviews that further explain the patent process.

This book includes updated theoretical considerations which provide an insight into avenues of research most likely to result in further improvements in material performance. It details the latest techniques for the preparation of thermoelectric materials employed in energy harvesting, together with advances in the thermoelectric characterisation of nanoscale material. The book reviews the use of neutron beams to investigate phonons, whose behaviour govern the lattice thermal conductivity and includes a chapter on patents.

An exciting inside look into missions to Mars

In the next decade, NASA, by itself and in collaboration with the European Space Agency, is planning a minimum of four separate missions to Mars. Clearly, exciting times are ahead for Mars exploration.

In Destination Mars, award-winning science writer and documentary producer Rod Pyle provides an insider's look into the amazing projects now being developed here and abroad to visit the legendary red planet. Drawing on his contacts at NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pyle provides stunning insights into the history of Mars exploration and the difficulties and dangers of traveling there.

After an entertaining survey of the human fascination with Mars over the centuries, the author offers an introduction to the geography, geology, and water processes of the planet. He then briefly describes the many successful missions by NASA and others to that distant world. But failure and frustration also get their due. As Pyle makes clear, going to Mars is not, and never will be, easy. Later in the book, he describes in detail what each upcoming mission will involve.

In the second half of the book, he offers the reader a glimpse inside the world of Earth-based Mars analogs, places on Earth where scientists are conducting research in hostile environments that are eerily Martian. Finally, he constructs a probable scenario of a crewed expedition to Mars, so that readers can see how earlier robotic missions and human Earth simulations will fit together.

All this is punctuated by numerous firsthand interviews with some of the finest Mars explorers of our day, including Stephen Squyres (Mars Exploration Rover), Bruce Murray (former director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory), and Peter Smith (chief of the Mars Phoenix Lander and the upcoming OSIRIS-REx missions). These stellar individuals give us an insider's view of the difficulties and rewards of roaming the red planet.

The author's infectious enthusiasm and firsthand knowledge of the international space industry combine to make a uniquely appealing and accessible book about Mars.

The term “Peak Oil” was born in January 2001 when Colin Campbell formed the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas (ASPO). Now, Peak Oil is used thousands of times a  day by journalists, politicians, industry leaders, economists, scientists and countless others around the globe. Peak Oil is not the end of oil but it tells us the end is in sight. Anyone interested in food production, economic growth, climate change or global security needs to understand this new reality. In Peeking at Peak Oil Professor Kjell Aleklett, President of ASPO International and head of the world’s leading research group on Peak Oil, describes the decade-long journey of Peak Oil from extremist fringe theory to today’s accepted fact: Global oil production is entering terminal decline. He explains everything you need to know about Peak Oil and its world-changing consequences from an insider’s perspective. In simple steps, Kjell tells us how oil is formed, discovered and produced. He uses science to reveal the errors and deceit of national and international oil authorities, companies and governments  too terrified to admit the truth. He describes his personal involvement in the intrigues of the past decade. What happens when a handful of giant oil fields containing two thirds of our planet’s oil become depleted? Will major oil consumers such as the EU and US face rationing within a decade? Will oil producing nations conserve their own oil when they realize that no one can export oil to them in the future? Does Peak Oil mean Peak Economic Growth? If you want to know the real story about energy today and what the future has in store, then you need to be “Peeking at Peak Oil”.

A best seller since 1966, Purification of Laboratory Chemicals keeps engineers, scientists, chemists, biochemists and students up to date with the purification of the chemical reagents with which they work, the processes for their purification, and guides readers on critical safety and hazards for the safe handling of chemicals and processes. The Seventh Edition is fully updated and provides expanded coverage of the latest commercially available chemical products and processing techniques, safety and hazards: over 200 pages of coverage of new commercially available chemicals since the previous edition. It will be accompanied by a CD-ROM database of all the substances in the book, fully searchable by chemical name, chemical group, CAS registry number, Beilstein number, etc.

This book describes the technology, history, and future of rocket planes. Michel van Pelt journies into this exciting world, examining the exotic concepts and actual flying vehicles that have been devised over the last hundred years. He recounts the history of rocket airplanes, from the early pioneers who attached simple rockets onto their wooden glider airplanes to the modern world of high-tech research vehicles. The author visits museums where rare examples of early rocket planes are kept and modern laboratories where future spaceplanes are being developed. He explains the technology in an easily understandable way, describing the various types of rocket airplanes and looking at the possibilities for the future. Michel van Pelt considers future spaceplanes, presenting various modern concepts and developments. He describes the development from cutting edge research via demonstrator vehicles to operational use. He also evaluates the replacement of the Space Shuttle with a seemingly old-fashioned capsule system, the parallel developments in suborbital spaceplanes such as SpaceShipOne and SpaceShipTwo, piloted versus automatic flight, and related developments in airliners and military aircraft.

April 12, 2011 is the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering journey into space. To commemorate this momentous achievement, Springer-Praxis is producing a mini series of books that reveals how humanity’s knowledge of flying, working, and living in space has grown in the last half century. “Tragedy and Triumph” focuses on the 1980s and early 1990s, a time when relations between the United States and the Soviet Union swung like a pendulum between harmony and outright hostility. The glorious achievements of the shuttle were violently arrested by the devastating loss of Challenger in 1986, while the Soviet program appeared to prosper with the last Salyut and the next-generation Mir orbital station. This book explores the continued rivalry between the two superpowers during this period, with each attempting to outdo the other – the Americans keen to build a space station, the Soviets keen to build a space shuttle – and places their efforts in the context of a bitterly divisive decade, which ultimately led them into partnership.

Updated for use with the latest version of Autodesk Inventor software, AUTODESK INVENTOR ESSENTIALS PLUS: 2013 AND BEYOND demonstrates critical CAD concepts, from basic sketching and modeling through advanced modeling techniques, as it equips readers with the skills to master this powerful professional tool. The book walks users through every component of the software, including the user interface, toolbars, dialogue boxes, sketch tools, drawing views, assembly modeling, and more. Its unique modular organization puts key information at reader's fingertips, while step-by-step tutorials make it an ideal resource for self-learning.

The Brooklyn Bridge, London's Tower Bridge, San Francisco's Golden Gate--bridges can be breathtakingly monumental structures, magnificent works of art, and vital arteries that make life vastly easier. In Bridges, eminent structural engineer David Blockley takes readers on a fascinating guided tour of bridge construction, ranging from the primitive rope bridges (now mainly found in adventure movies), to Roman aqueducts and the timber trestle railway bridges of the American West, to today's modern marvels, such as the Akashi-Kaiky? Bridge, which has the largest span in the world. Blockley outlines the forces at work on a bridge--tension, compression, and shear--and the basic structural elements that combat these forces--beams, arches, trusses, and suspensions (or BATS). As he does so, he explores some of the great bridges around the world, including such lesser-known masterpieces as the Forth Railway Bridge (featured in Alfred Hitchcock's The Thirty-Nine Steps), and describes some spectacular failures, such as the recent bridge collapse in Minnesota or the famous failure of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940.