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This work was fully supported by the Algoritmi’s Strategic Project UI 319-2011-2012, under the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology grant Pest C/EEI/UI0319/2011.

The optical techniques are a powerful tool on situations where either the physical contact or invasive techniques for evaluation are not suitable. Vehicle environments constitute an application field for the optical techniques and are the focus of this chapter. In order to reinforce this kind of techniques, it must be clarified that the idea to manipulate the light backs to the second century before our age, when Archimedes planned to destroy enemy ships using a solar heat ray with an array of actuators to change the shape of a mirror (Bifano T., 2011). Therefore, the field of photonics is the one that offers the possibility to achieve one of the greatest realizations and applications because the light is present in all aspects of the human life and our way of living is impossible without light (Carmo J. P. et al., 2012a). Optical measurement systems are also suitable for harsh monitorization because they are non-contact and full-field techniques. This is the case of Moiré Interferometry, which is used for many optoelectronic applications as displacement measurements (Wronkowski L., 1995), evaluation of microelectronics devices deformation (Xie H. et al., 2004), optical communications (Chen L. et al., 2000), strain measurements with Fiber Bragg Grattings, FBGs, (Silva A. F. et al., 2011) and spectrography (Kong S. H. et al., 2001). In this context, it must be noted that the recent nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, confirms the need of tighter security measures be done within harsh environments (which includes the automobiles) in order to increase both the safety of people and the reliability of vehicles’ parts.

An automobile was seen as a simple accessory of luxury in the early years of the past century. Therefore, it was an expensive asset which none of the common citizen could afford. It was necessary to pass a long period and waiting for Henry Ford to establish the first plants with the series fabrication. This new industrial paradigm makes easy to the common American to acquire an automobile, either for running away or for working purposes. Since that date, the automotive research grown exponentially to the levels observed in the actuality. Now, the automobiles are indispensable goods; saying with other words, the automobile is a first necessity article in a wide number of aspects of living: for workers to allow them to move from their homes into their workplaces, for transportation of students, for allowing the domestic women in their home tasks, for ambulances to carry people with decease to the hospitals, for transportation of materials, and so on, the list don’t ends. The new goal pursued by the automotive industry is to provide electric vehicles at low cost and with high reliability. This commitment is justified by the oil’s peak extraction on 50s of this century and also by the necessity to reduce the emissions of CO2 to the atmosphere, as well as to reduce the needs of this even more valuable natural resource. In order to achieve this task and to improve the regular cars based on oil, the automotive industry is even more concerned on doing applied research on technology and on fundamental research of new materials. The most important idea to retain from the previous introduction is to clarify the minds of the potential readers for the direct and indirect penetration of the vehicles and the vehicular industry in the today’s life. In this sequence of ideas, this book tries not only to fill a gap by presenting fresh subjects related to the vehicular technology and to the automotive engineering but to provide guidelines for future research. This book account with valuable contributions from worldwide experts of automotive’s field. The amount and type of contributions were judiciously selected to cover a broad range of research. The reader can found the most recent and cutting-edge sources of information divided in four major groups: electronics (power, communications, optics, batteries, alternators and sensors), mechanics (suspension control, torque converters, deformation analysis, structural monitoring), materials (nanotechnology, nanocomposites, lubrificants, biodegradable, composites, structural monitoring) and manufacturing (supply chains). We are sure that you will enjoy this book and will profit with the technical and scientific contents. To finish, we are thankful to all of those who contributed to this book and who made it possible. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion