The fracture of brittle materials is of utmost importance for civil engineering and seismology applications. A different approach towards the aim of early identification of fracture and the prediction of failure before it occurs is attempted in this work. Laboratory experiments were conducted in a variety of rock and cement based material specimens of various shapes and sizes. The applied loading schemes were cyclic or increasing and the specimens were tested to compression and bending type loading of various levels. The techniques of Pressure Stimulated Current and Bending Stimulated Current were used for the detection of electric signal emissions during the various deformation stages of the specimens. The detected signals were analysed macroscopically and microscopically so as to find suitable criteria for fracture prediction and correlation between the electrical and mechanical parameters. The macroscopic proportionality of the mechanically stimulated electric signal and the strain was experimentally verified, the macroscopic trends of the PSC and BSC electric signals were modelled and the effects of material memory to the electric signals were examined. The current of a time-varying RLC electric circuit was tested against experimental data with satisfactory results and it was proposed as an electrical equivalent model. Wavelet based analysis of the signal revealed the correlation between the frequency components of the electric signal and the deformation stages of the material samples. Especially the increase of the high frequency component of the electric signal seems to be a good precursor of macrocracking initiation point. The additional electric stimulus of a dc voltage application seems to boost the frequency content of the signal and reveals better the stages of cracking process. The microscopic analysis method is scale-free and thus it can confront with the problems of size effects and material properties effects. The AC conductivity time series of fractured and pristine specimens were also analysed by means of wavelet transform and the spectral analysis was used to differentiate between the specimens. A non-destructive technique may be based on these results. Analysis has shown that the electric signal perturbation is an indicator of the forthcoming fracture, as well as of the fracture that has already occurred in specimens.

3D design is being recognized widely as the next BIG thing in system integration. However, design and analysis tools for 3D are still in infancy stage. Power supply noise analysis is one of the critical aspects of a design. Hence, the area of noise analysis for 3D designs is a key area for future development. The following research presents a new parasitic RLC modeling technique for 3D chips containing TSVs as well as a novel optimization algorithm for power-ground network of a 3D chip with the aim of minimizing noise in the network. The following work also looks into an existing commercial IR drop analysis tool and presents a way to modify it with the aim of handling 3D designs containing TSVs.