Book reviews

Exporting Democracy: Fulfilling America's Destiny. By Joshua Muravchik, American Enterprise Institute (1991) ISSN 0–8447–3734–8. $12.95.

Generals in the Palacio. By Roderick Ai Camp. Oxford University Press, (1992), ISBN 0–19–507300–2, £45.

L'Armement en France. Genèse, Ampleur et Coût d'une Industrie By François Chesnais and Claude Serfati, Editions Nathan, Collection Economie/Sciences Sociales, Paris (1992), ISBN 2–09–190086–9.

The Têt Offensive. Intelligence Failure in War. By James Wirtz, Cornell University Press, New York (1991), ISBN 0–8014–2486–0. $38.50.

Restructuring of arms producton in Western Europe. Edited by Michael Brzoska and Peter Lock. Oxford University Press, Oxford (1992), ISBN 0–1982–9147–7. £25.00.

What is Proper Soldiering? A study of new perspectives for the future uses of the Armed Forces of the 1990s. By Michael Harbottle. The Centre for International Peacebuilding, Chipping Norton (1992), £3.50.

The Strategic Defence Initiative By Edward Reiss, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1992), ISBN 0–521–41097–5. £30.00.     

State-dependent gap acceptance

This paper considers a traffic problem in which vehicles queue up according to a Poisson process on a single-lane entrance ramp prior to merging into a major stream of vehicular traffic. In order to then prevent the ramp queue from becoming too large, a model is proposed which considers a lowering of the critical gap as the ramp queue size increases. With the critical gap assumed to be a nonincreasing function of the number of vehicles on the ramp at instances that correspond to departure times of lead vehicles from the ramp queue, the resultant model is an M/G/1 queue with state-dependent service times. Some general results are obtained for this model and a specific case discussed in moderate detail.     

A note on testing for exponentiality

In this note some extensions are made to previous work by a number of authors on the development of tests for exponentiality. The most recent example is due to Fercho and Ringer in which they compare the small sample powers of a few well-known test statistics for the hypothesis of a constant failure rate. It is the primary intent of this current work to extend Gnedenko's F test to situations with hypercensoring and to provide guidance for its use, particularly when a log-normal distribution is the alternative.     

A theory of war economies

This article presents a proposed theory of how war economies are formed and maintained, as well as an integrated policy framework to guide the dismantling of war economies emanating from the proposed theory. Additionally, six potential areas for future research pertaining to the dismantling of war economies are also presented.     

A note on a difficulty inherent in estimating reliability from stress–strength relationships

This note calls attention to a difficulty which arises frequently in the application of stress-strength methods in reliability theory. This difficulty has led to unanticipated catastrophic failures in a number of applications.     

On queues with state-dependent Erlang service

Some general results are derived for single-channel queues with Poisson input and state-dependent Erlang service times in view of the possible use of this model to approximate arbitrary M/G/1-like state-dependent queues in a manner similar to that suggested by Rosenshine, and by Kendall, and Kotiah, Thompson, and Waugh for the M/G/1. Numerical procedures are indicated for the evaluation of stationary state probabilities, expected system sizes and waiting times, and parameter estimation.     

岩土材料屈服准则的可靠度解析

视岩土材料强度参数为正态分布随机变量,以可靠度理论为基础,推导了Drucker-Prager准则和Mohr-Coulomb准则可靠度判别的解析表达式,并通过Monte-Carlo法和一次可靠度方法验证了其正确性.应用所得到的可靠度解析公式分析了岩土材料强度参数的均值和变异性对屈服准则判别结果的影响.结果表明,强度参数的变异性对Drucker-Prager准则和Mohr-Coulomb准则可靠概率的影响程度不尽相同,在变异系数较大的情况下,它们对可靠概率的影响显著,不可忽略.该研究结果为岩土材料屈服的可靠度判别提供了一条新思路.     

Sequential tests for hypotheses concerning the product of poisson parameters with applications to problems in reliability and biometry

Sequential tests for the product of Poisson parameters based on the generalized incomplete modified Bessel (g.i.m.B.) distributions are given. Applications to reliability and biometry are indicated.     

British Armour and rearmament in the 1930s

This paper considers the contribution of military publishing to the nineteenth-century military revolution leading to the Great War. The subject is addressed in four contexts. The first is informational, analyzing the role of military publications in making available data and ideas that increased military effectiveness. The second is syncretic, evaluating the effect of military publications on cohesion within increasingly large, complex armies, and between armies and their societies. The third is internal. It discusses the contributions to professional insecurity generated by print, and by its electronic extensions the telegraph and the telephone. Finally, the paper considers the print revolution's influence on actual war-fighting     

Effects of nano-sized aluminum on detonation characteristics and metal acceleration for RDX-based aluminized explosive

Nano-sized aluminum(Nano-Al)powders hold promise in enhancing the total energy of explosives and the metal acceleration ability at the same time.However,the near-detonation zone effects of reaction between Nano-Al with detonation products remain unclear.In this study,the overall reaction process of 170 nm Al with RDX explosive and its effect on detonation characteristics,detonation reaction zone,and the metal acceleration ability were comprehensively investigated through a variety of experiments such as the detonation velocity test,detonation pressure test,explosive/window interface velocity test and confined plate push test using high-resolution laser interferometry.Lithium fluoride(LiF),which has an inert behavior during the explosion,was used as a control to compare the contribution of the reaction of aluminum.A thermochemical approach that took into account the reactivity of aluminum and ensuing detonation products was adopted to calculate the additional energy release by afterburn.Combining the numerical simulations based on the calculated afterburn energy and experimental results,the param-eters in the detonation equation of state describing the Nano-Al reaction characteristics were calibrated.This study found that when the 170 nm Al content is from 0％to 15％,every 5％increase of aluminum resulted in about a 1.3％decrease in detonation velocity.Manganin pressure gauge measurement showed no significant enhancement in detonation pressure.The detonation reaction time and reaction zone length of RDX/Al/wax/80/15/5 explosive is 64 ns and 0.47 mm,which is respectively 14％and 8％higher than that of RDX/wax/95/5 explosive(57 ns and 0.39 mm).Explosive/window interface velocity curves show that 170 nm Al mainly reacted with the RDX detonation products after the detonation front.For the recording time of about 10 μs throughout the plate push test duration,the maximum plate velocity and plate acceleration time accelerated by RDX/Al/wax/80/15/5 explosive is 12％and 2.9 μs higher than that of RDX/LiF/wax/80/15/5,respectively,indicating that the aluminum reaction energy significantly increased the metal acceleration time and ability of the explosive.Numerical simulations with JWLM explosive equation of state show that when the detonation products expanded to 2 times the initial volume,over 80％of the aluminum had reacted,implying very high reactivity.These results are significant in attaining a clear understanding of the reaction mechanism of Nano-Al in the development of aluminized explosives.