~ Pergamon Computing Systems in Engineering, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 295 296, 1994

Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain.

BOOK REVIEWS

Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Engineering VII, Edited by D. E. GRIERSON and R. A. ADEY

This book contains papers from the Seventh International Conference on the Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Engineering held in Waterloo, Canada in the summer of 1992. This conference was seventh in a series and was the pioneering conference in this area until a few years ago when a number of other conferences started being organized with similar themes. There are fifteen sections altogether covering various specialized sessions at the conference. One important feature of this book is that it provides a centralized source of information in research into artificial intelligence (AI) applications in various engineering disciplines. The papers are mostly state-of-the-art research papers.

One noteworthy feature of this particular volume in the series is that there are at least three new sections, viz con- struction, water resources and water and related environ- mental problems. This is quite well-timed as these subjects are becoming increasingly important. This should be a welcome development for civil engineers particularly who traditionally are under-represented in these conferences. This book contains a fairly even spread of papers from all engineering disciplines. There is also an emphasis on papers relating to machine learning, object-oriented methodologies and neural networks. All these areas have been becoming increasingly popular due to their relevance in various branches of engineering and this is reflected in the book. A short section on robotics has quite interesting papers on product sequencing, a program for geometrical reasoning and a mobile robot.

It is interesting to note that there are two sections on knowledge-based systems, viz knowledge-based systems and expert system applications, containing some fifteen papers.

This shows the sustained interest in these topics. The papers include applications ranging from a tutoring system to a real-time control system. This shows the breadth of relevance of knowledge-based system technology. In addition there is a separate section on knowledge-based systems in control engineering. Control engineering comes across as another focal area of this book. The different areas covered by the book are Object-oriented Model in Engineering, Learning Techniques for Autonomous Systems and Knowledge Organization, Knowledge-based Systems, Expert System Applications, Neural Network Applications, Applications of AI Technology to Water Related and Environmental Problems, AI in Process Systems Engineering, Knowledge- based Systems in Control Engineering, AI Applications in Engineering Design, Robotics and Related Applications, AI Applications in Civil Engineering and Construction, AI Applications in Real-time Problems, AI Applications in Water Resources Engineering, Reasoning in Manufacturing and Inspection Processes and AI Applications to Engineer- ing Problem Solving. It is clear that the book covers a very wide range of applications of artificial intelligence. One notable feature, though, is the relatively smaller number of papers on applications in engineering design. Perhaps this might be due to the fact that there are other conferences almost completely devoted to design.

Overall, this book should form a good reference material for primarily researchers in the various areas mentioned above. It is hard to see much relevance of the book to wider industry at large.

Department of Civil Engineering UniversiO, of Strathclyde, Glasgow U.K.

BIMAL KUMAR

Solving Large Scale Problems in Mechanics, Edited by MAROLIS PAPADRAKAKIS, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0471 93809 2.

With the acceptance of automated computations in both research and industrial design applications, the quest has been for more accurate and refined analyses. Thus, although computer memory and power have increased dramatically, so also has the scale of the numerical analyses which are required to be solved. The challenges of speed and storage so obviously pertinent 30 years ago in the infancy of computing are still largely with us today.

The book under review brings together a dozen or more authors, expert in various aspects of the field of large scale computational problems, in order to give the reader a state of the art view of the subject. This is not a book for the uninitiated in computational mechanics and should have its appeal to those already immersed in the problems associated with large scale computations. Each chapter, written by a particular author, sets out the state of the art of computa-

tional techniques in the chosen field, giving a resume of the theory, examples of the use of the various algorithms presented and a useful reference list. On a quick reading of the book one must be impressed by the frequent recurrence of the Lanczos Method both for iterative solution of linear equations and for calculation of eigen values. There are chapters on large scale eigen value problems, non-linear problems in solid mechanics, time integration methods, coupled field problems, optimization, boundary element methods and automatic mesh generation to name but a few. Because the scope of the book is wide, the reader will possibly need to consult the reference lists for a complete understanding of the topics discussed. The great value of the book lies in the breadth of the ideas presented and in this regard I think that it will have a wide appeal among the select group of numerical analysts to whom the subject matter is addressed. In summary, this is an advanced reference book which fills a very useful purpose in presenting new ideas to the informed reader.

J. L. MEEK

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