Textbook for A- and AS-level, but also useful for first-year undergraduates and students following BTEC courses

Covering all the new design and technology specifications for AS and A level in one text, this is an accessible entrance point for students, regardless of their knowledge and experience.

In a presentation that balances theory and practice, Drills: Science and Technology of Advanced Operations details the basic concepts, terminology, and essentials of drilling. The book addresses important issues in drilling operations, and provides help with the design of such operations. It debunks many old notions and beliefs while introducing scientifically and technically sound concepts with detailed explanations. The book presents a nine-step drilling tool failure analysis methodology that includes part autopsy and tool reconstruction procedure. A special feature of the book is the presentation of special mechanisms of carbide (e.g. cobalt leaching) and polycrystalline (PCD) tool wear and failure presented and correlated with the tool design, manufacturing, and implementation practice. The author also introduces the system approach to the design of the drilling system formulating the coherency law. Using this law as the guideline, he shows how to formulate the requirement to the components of such a system, pointing out that the drilling tool is the key component to be improved. Teaching how to achieve this improvement, the book provides the comprehensive scientific and engineering foundations for drilling tool design, manufacturing, and applications of high-performance tools. It includes detailed explanations of the design features, tool manufacturing and implementation practices, metrology of drilling and drilling tools, and the tool failure analysis. It gives you the information needed for proper manufacturing and selection of a tool material for any given application.

Hundreds of millions of people use social technologies like Wikipedia, Facebook and YouTube every day, but what makes them work? And what is the next step? The Social Design of Technical Systems explores the path from computing revolution to social evolution. Based on the assumption that it is essential to consider social as well as technological requirements, as we move to create the systems of the future, this book explores the ways in which technology fits, or fails to fit, into the social reality of the modern world. Important performance criteria for social systems, such as fairness, synergy, transparency, order and freedom, are clearly explained for the first time from within a comprehensive systems framework, making this book invaluable for anyone interested in socio-technical systems, especially those planning to build social software. This book reveals the social dilemmas that destroy communities, exposes the myth that computers are smart, analyses social errors like the credit meltdown, proposes online rights standards and suggests community-based business models. If you believe that our future depends on merging social virtue and technology power, you should read this book.

This popular compendium of system design details for everything from water meters to specialty systems, originally written by the author has been completely revised and updated for today's plumbing engineers.