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This book covers the fundamentals and applications of carbon dioxide vapor compression refrigeration thermodynamic cycles. In particular, it presents new application areas, such as making ice and snow in the Winter Olympic Games, food cooling and refrigeration. The book explores the physical and chemical characteristics of CO2 fluid, and the unique traits of its thermodynamic cycle. The contributors explain how CO2 refrigeration is a developing, eco-friendly technology, and emphasize its importance for refrigeration and air-conditioning in the current and future market.This book is a valuable source of information for researchers, engineers and policy makers looking to expand their applicable knowledge of high-potential refrigeration technology using carbon dioxide. It is also of interest to postgraduate students and practitioners looking for an academic insight into the industry's latest eco-friendly technologies.

This book develops several novel foam-filled structures and steel-concrete-steel (SCS) sandwich structures, which provides more alternatives for ensuring the safety of buildings and infrastructures under extreme loading, like impact and blast. In the first part of this book, the aluminium foam- and polyurethane foam-filled structures have been developed for dissipating impact and blast energy. Experimental and numerical studies have been conducted to obtain their behaviours under impact loading. In addition, analytical models have also been proposed to assess their energy absorption performances and facilitate the impact and blast design when using the proposed foam-filled structures. In the second part of this book, SCS sandwich structures with novel shear connectors have been developed and their behaviours under impact and blast loading have been experimentally, numerically and analytical studied. Analytical models for predicting the impact and blast responses of SCS sandwich structures have also been developed. In the third part of this book, a new steel-polyurethane foam-steel-concrete-steel (SPUFSCS) panel (i.e. the combination of foam material and SCS panel) has been developed to achieve a higher impact resistant capacity. Owing to the increasing impact and blast threats on buildings and infrastructures, the studies presented in this book are of significant importance for providing several new solutions for impact and blast enhancement.