Engineering Systems

by De Weck, Olivier L.; Roos, Daniel; Magee, Christopher L.; Vest, Charles M.

• ISBN13: 9780262016704
• ISBN10: 0262016702
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-10-21
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

Engineering, for much of the twentieth century, was mainly about artifacts and inventions. Now, it's increasingly about complex systems. As the airplane taxis to the gate, you access the Internet and check email with your PDA, linking the communication and transportation systems. At home, you recharge your plug-in hybrid vehicle, linking transportation to the electricity grid. Today's large-scale, highly complex sociotechnical systems converge, interact, and depend on each other in ways engineers of old could barely have imagined. As scale, scope, and complexity increase, engineers consider technical and social issues together in a highly integrated way as they design flexible, adaptable, robust systems that can be easily modified and reconfigured to satisfy changing requirements and new technological opportunities.Engineering Systems offers a comprehensive examination of such systems and the associated emerging field of study. Through scholarly discussion, concrete examples, and history, the authors consider the engineer's changing role, new ways to model and analyze these systems, the impacts on engineering education, and the future challenges of meeting human needs through the technologically enabled systems of today and tomorrow.

Table of Contents

Series Foreword	p. vii
Foreword	p. ix
Preface	p. xi
From Inventions to Systems	p. 1
What Is an Engineering System?	p. 23
(Re)Thinking about Systems	p. 45
Life-Cycle Properties of Engineering Systems: The Ilities	p. 65
Modeling and Analyzing Engineering Systems	p. 97
Partially Designed, Partially Evolved	p. 123
Engineering Systems Research and Education	p. 147
What the Future Holds	p. 167
Appendix: Engineering Systems Terms and Definitions	p. 185
Notes	p. 193
Index	p. 207
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