All-Hazards Risk and Resilience: Prioritizing Critical Infrastructures Using the RAMCAP Plus Approach
ASME Innovative Technologies Institute, LLC. ASME Press, Three Park Ave. New York, NY 10016-5990. 2009. 160 pages. Softcover. ASME members, $60; list, $75. ISBN: 978-0-7918-0287-8.

RAMCAP (for “Risk Analysis and Management for Critical Asset Protection”) is a service mark of ASME. It is a method of applying the engineering principles of risk analysis to a wide range of industries and other assets to protect them from attack or natural hazards. After September 11, 2001, ASME convened more than one hundred industry leaders, at the request of the White House, to discuss the requirements for protecting the U.S. critical infrastructure. That group’s recommendations led ASME to assemble a team of risk assessment experts to develop RAMCAP. ASME Innovative Technologies Institute, LLC, a non-profit subsidiary of ASME, was established to work on the application of RAMCAP. This book describes the process in its current stage, dubbed RAMCAP Plus, and defines a seven-step method of applying it. The text includes formulas and tables, and describes each step of the process in detail. The RAMCAP Plus process is being developed as an American National Standard.

THERMAL ENGINEERING IN POWER SYSTEMS
R.S. Amano and B. Sundén, Editors. WIT Press, c/o Computational Mechanics Inc., 25 Bridge St., Billerica, MA 01821. 2008. 416 pages. $274. ISBN 978-1-84564-062-0.

Volume 22 in the WIT Press Developments in Heat Transfer series looks at the research and development in thermal engineering for power systems that are of significant importance to many scientists who work in power-related industries and laboratories. To be competitive in today’s market, the editors say, power systems need to reduce operating costs, increase capacity, and deal with many other tough issues. Among the topics the book covers are: relevance of heat transfer and heat exchangers for development of sustainable energy systems; advanced technologies for clean and efficient energy conversion in power systems; virtual engineering and the design of power systems; and innovative gas turbine cooling techniques.

NEW PRODUCT BLUEPRINTING: THE HANDBOOK FOR B2B ORGANIC GROWTH
Dan Adams. AIM Press, 2206 20th St., Cuyahoga Falls, OH 44223. 2008. 208 pages. $35. ISBN 978-0-9801123-4-4.

According to author Dan Adams, a chemical engineer who is the founder of his company, New Product Blueprinting, most business-to-business companies rely on the same books, conferences, and experts to improve their new product development. But if you are a B2B supplier, he says, “You have enormous advantages over consumer goods producers: Your customers are more insightful, rational, interested, and fewer in number. When you develop products for other companies—rather than end-consumers—you can have an intelligent, peer-to-peer dialogue about their needs. If you make hose, for instance, you could have one conversation with a homeowner about his garden hose … but quite a different one with an engineer about his hydraulics hose.” Adams says that this B2B difference allows you to uncover customers’ unspoken needs and engage them so they’re primed to buy your new product.

The aim of Vibration Testing is to help engineers avoid the pitfalls inherent in using modern instruments and methods, and to build an understanding of the theory through practical applications in laboratory and field environments. This step-by-step guide shows how to obtain meaningful experimental results with the proper use of modern instrumentation, vibration exciters, and signal processing equipment, with particular emphasis on how different types of signals are processed with a frequency analyzer. This edition contains new material on laser-based testing, stationary and non-stationary rotating machines, earthquake simulators, and six degrees of freedom exciters.

Unifying important methodology in the field, this book explores existing approximation methods and develops new ones for the approximate solution of large-scale dynamical system problems. It brings together a wide set of material from classical orthogonal function approximation, neural network input-output approximation, finite element methods for distributed parameter systems, and various approximation methods used in adaptive control and learning theory. The text features benchmark problems throughout to offer insights and illustrate some of the computational implications.

The Springer Handbook documents the traditional techniques as well as the new methods for experimental studies of materials, components, and structures. New topics are included, covering biological materials, MEMS and NEMS, nanoindentation, digital photomechanics, photoacoustic characterization, and atomic force microscopy in experimental solid mechanics. An interesting aspect of the book is that 20 of the 36 chapters are on topics that have arisen or matured in the 15 years since the last edition, and, in most cases, these chapters have been written by relatively young researchers and practitioners. MEMS is but one example.

This text is intended for a first undergraduate course in materials science and engineering with an emphasis on mechanical and electrical properties. Author William F. Hosford starts out with phases and phase diagrams. This is followed by a chapter on diffusion, which treats diffusion in multiphase as well as single-phase systems. The next several chapters on mechanical behavior and failure should be of particular interest to mechanical engineers. There is an emphasis on manufacturing, including modern techniques such as photolithography, vapor deposition, and the use of lasers.