The core of ths book presents a theory developed by the author to combine the recent insight into empirical data with mathematical models in freeway traffic research based on dynamical non-linear processes.

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Research of discrete event systems is strongly motivated by applications in flex ible manufacturing, in traffic control and in concurrent and real-time software verification and design, just to mention a few important areas. Discrete event system theory is a promising and dynamically developing area of both control theory and computer science. Discrete event systems are systems with non-numerically-valued states, inputs, and outputs. The approaches to the modelling and control of these systems can be roughly divided into two groups. The first group is concerned with the automatic design of controllers from formal specifications of logical requirements. This re search owes much to the pioneering work of P.J. Ramadge and W.M. Wonham at the beginning of the eighties. The second group deals with the analysis and op timization of system throughput, waiting time, and other performance measures for discrete event systems. The present book contains selected papers presented at the Joint Workshop on Discrete Event Systems (WODES'92) held in Prague, Czechoslovakia, on Au gust 26-28, 1992 and organized by the Institute of Information Theory and Au tomation of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czechoslovakia, by the Automatic Control Laboratory of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland, and by the Department of Computing Science of the University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands."

I became interested in Random Vibration during the preparation of my PhD dissertation, which was concerned with the seismic response of nuclear reactor cores. I was initiated into this field through the cla.ssical books by Y.K.Lin, S.H.Crandall and a few others. After the completion of my PhD, in 1981, my supervisor M.Gera.din encouraged me to prepare a course in Random Vibration for fourth and fifth year students in Aeronautics, at the University of Liege. There was at the time very little material available in French on that subject. A first draft was produced during 1983 and 1984 and revised in 1986. These notes were published by the Presses Poly techniques et Universitaires Romandes (Lausanne, Suisse) in 1990. When Kluwer decided to publish an English translation ofthe book in 1992, I had to choose between letting Kluwer translate the French text in-extenso or doing it myself, which would allow me to carry out a sustantial revision of the book. I took the second option and decided to rewrite or delete some of the original text and include new material, based on my personal experience, or reflecting recent technical advances. Chapter 6, devoted to the response of multi degree offreedom structures, has been completely rewritten, and Chapter 11 on random fatigue is entirely new. The computer programs which have been developed in parallel with these chapters have been incorporated in the general purpose finite element software SAMCEF, developed at the University of Liege.

During its 2004 meeting in Warsaw the General Assembly of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM) decided to support a proposal of the Georgian National Committee to hold in Tbilisi (Georgia), on April 23-27, 2007, the IUTAM Symposium on the Relation of Shell, Plate, Beam, and 3D Models, dedicated to the Centenary of Ilia Vekua. The sci- ti?c organization was entrusted to an international committee consisting of Philipppe G. Ciarlet (Hong Kong), the late Anatoly Gerasimovich Gorshkov (Russia),JornHansen(Canada),GeorgeV.Jaiani(Georgia,Chairman),Re- hold Kienzler (Germany), Herbert A. Mang (Austria), Paolo Podio-Guidugli (Italy), and Gangan Prathap (India). The main topics to be included in the scienti?c programme were c- sen to be: hierarchical, re?ned mathematical and technical models of shells, plates, and beams; relation of 2D and 1D models to 3D linear, non-linear and physical models; junction problems. The main aim of the symposium was to thoroughly discuss the relations of shell, plate, and beam models to the 3D physicalmodels.Inparticular,peculiaritiesofcuspedshells,plates,andbeams were to be emphasized and special attention paid to junction, multibody and ? uid-elastic shell (plate, beam) interaction problems, and their applications. The expected contributions of the invited participants were anticipated to be theoretical, practical, and numerical in character.

This monograph addresses the systematic representation of the methods of analysis developed by the authors as applied to such systems. Particular features of dynamic processes in such systems are studied. Special attention is given to an analysis of different resonant phenomena taking unusual and diverse forms.

This is the first mechatronics book dealing with coupled mechanical and electrical actions, an emerging branch of modern technology. Authored by the leading scientist in this field, the book treats various subjects along the interface between mechanics and electronics.

Several consistent solutions for cooperative system control have recently been identified by the authors of the current monograph. This was achieved by solving three separate tasks that are essential for solving the problem of cooperative manipulation as a whole. The first task is related to the understanding of the physical nature of cooperative manipulation and finding a way for a sufficiently exact characterization of cooperative system statics, kinematics and dynamics. After successfully completing this task, in the frame of the second task, the problem of coordinated motion of the cooperative system is solved. Finally, as a solution to the third task, the control laws of cooperative manipulation are synthesized.

The starting point in dealing with the above three tasks of cooperative manipulation was the assumption that the problem of force uncertainty in cooperative manipulation can be resolved by introducing elastic properties into the cooperative system, at least in the part where force uncertainty appears. In static and dynamic analysis of the elastic structure of cooperative systems the finite element method is applied. In contrast to the procedure used in the major part of the available literature where deformation work is expressed by deviations from the unloaded state of fixed elastic structure, in this monograph the deformation work is expressed by internal forces as a function of the absolute coordinates of contacts of mobile elastic structure. Coordinated motion and control in cooperative manipulation are solved as the problem of coordinated motion and control of a mobile elastic structure, taking into account the specific features of cooperative manipulation. Coordinated motion and control laws in cooperative manipulation are synthesized on the basis of a non-linear model where the problem of uncertainty is solved, which is not the case in the available literature. Simple examples demonstrate the consistent procedure of mathematical modeling and synthesis of nominal coordinated motion, as well as control of the cooperative system.

This book will be useful to a wide audience of engineers, ranging from undergraduate and graduate students, new and advanced academic researchers, to practitioners (mechanical and electrical engineers, computer and system scientists). It is intended for readers whose work involves manufacturing, industrial, robotics, automation, computer and control engineering, and who wish to find out about this important new technology and its potential advantages for control engineering applications.

This is the first ever book that provides a comprehensive coverage of automotive control systems. The presentation of dynamic models in the text is also unique. The dynamic models are tractable while retaining the level of richness that is necessary for control system design. Much of the mateiral in the book is not available in any other text.

Intelligent Mobile Robot Navigation builds upon the application of fuzzy logic to the area of intelligent control of mobile robots. Reactive, planned, and teleoperated techniques are considered, leading to the development of novel fuzzy control systems for perception and navigation of nonholonomic autonomous vehicles. The unique feature of this monograph lies in its comprehensive treatment of the problem, from the theoretical development of the various schemes down to the real-time implementation of algorithms on mobile robot prototypes. As such, the book spans different domains ranging from mobile robots to intelligent transportation systems, from automatic control to artificial intelligence.

For most cases of interest, exact solutions to nonlinear equations describing stochastic dynamical systems are not available. This book details the relatively simple and popular linearization techniques available, covering theory as well as application. It examines models with continuous external and parametric excitations, those that cover the majority of known approaches.

Nowadays, the engineering practice raises far more vibration problems than can be theoretically explained or modelled. Because Df this, measurements are used in almost all fields of industry, transportation and civil engineering in studies of mechanical and structural vibration. They are an invaluable tool for designing products and machines with high reliability and low noise level, vehicles and buildings with improved comfort and resistance to dynamic loads, as well as for obtaining increased safety of opera tion and optimum running parameters. In order to cope with the increasing demand for experimental measurement of vibration characteristics, young engineers and designers need an introductory book with emphasis on "what has to be measured" and "by what means" before learning "how measurements are done." The expertise to perform vibration measurements must be gained in time, with every new investi gation and studied problem . .A detailed presentation of instrumentation and measuring techniques is beyond the aim of this book. Such information can be found in product data sheets, application manuals and hand books supplied by equipment manufacturers. Only general princi ples and widely used methods are presented herein, in order to provide the reader with an overview of the instrumentation and techniques encountered in vibration measurement."

Recently, research in robot kinematics has attracted researchers with different theoretical profiles and backgrounds, such as mechanical and electrica! engineering, computer science, and mathematics. It includes topics and problems that are typical for this area and cannot easily be met elsewhere. As a result, a specialised scientific community has developed concentrating its interest in a broad class of problems in this area and representing a conglomeration of disciplines including mechanics, theory of systems, algebra, and others. Usually, kinematics is referred to as the branch of mechanics which treats motion of a body without regard to the forces and moments that cause it. In robotics, kinematics studies the motion of robots for programming, control and design purposes. It deals with the spatial positions, orientations, velocities and accelerations of the robotic mechanisms and objects to be manipulated in a robot workspace. The objective is to find the most effective mathematical forms for mapping between various types of coordinate systems, methods to minimise the numerical complexity of algorithms for real-time control schemes, and to discover and visualise analytical tools for understanding and evaluation of motion properties ofvarious mechanisms used in a robotic system.

The 1960s were perhaps a decade of confusion, when scientists faced d- culties in dealing with imprecise information and complex dynamics. A new set theory and then an in?nite-valued logic of Lot? A. Zadeh were so c- fusing that they were called fuzzy set theory and fuzzy logic; a deterministic system found by E. N. Lorenz to have random behaviours was so unusual that it was lately named a chaotic system. Just like irrational and imaginary numbers, negative energy, anti-matter, etc., fuzzy logic and chaos were gr- ually and eventually accepted by many, if not all, scientists and engineers as fundamental concepts, theories, as well as technologies. In particular, fuzzy systems technology has achieved its maturity with widespread applications in many industrial, commercial, and technical ?elds, ranging from control, automation, and arti?cial intelligence to image/signal processing, patternrecognition, andelectroniccommerce.Chaos, ontheother hand, wasconsideredoneofthethreemonumentaldiscoveriesofthetwentieth century together with the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. As a very special nonlinear dynamical phenomenon, chaos has reached its current outstanding status from being merely a scienti?c curiosity in the mid-1960s to an applicable technology in the late 1990s. Finding the intrinsic relation between fuzzy logic and chaos theory is certainlyofsigni?cantinterestandofpotentialimportance.Thepast20years have indeed witnessed some serious explorations of the interactions between fuzzylogicandchaostheory, leadingtosuchresearchtopicsasfuzzymodeling of chaotic systems using Takagi-Sugeno models, linguistic descriptions of chaotic systems, fuzzy control of chaos, and a combination of fuzzy control technology and chaos theory for various engineering pract

"Nonlinear Oscillations in Mechanical Engineering" explores the effects of nonlinearities encountered in applications in that field. Since the nonlinearities are caused, first of all, by contacts between different mechanical parts, the main part of this book is devoted to oscillations in mechanical systems with discontinuities caused by dry friction and collisions. Another important source of nonlinearity which is covered is that caused by rotating unbalanced parts common in various machines as well as variable inertias occurring in all kinds of crank mechanisms. This book is written for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, but it may be also helpful and interesting for both theoreticians and practitioners working in the area of mechanical engineering at universities, in research labs or institutes and especially in the R and D departments within industrial firms.

This monograph presents an updated source of information on the state of the art in advanced control of articulated and mobile robots. It includes relevant selected problems dealing with enhanced actuation, motion planning and control functions for articulated robots, as well as of sensory and autonomous decision capabilities for mobile robots. The basic idea behind the book is to provide a larger community of robotic researchers and developers with a reliable source of information and innovative applications in the field of control of cooperating and mobile robots. This book is the outcome of the research project MISTRAL (Methodologies and Integration of Subsystems and Technologies for Anthropic Robotics and Locomotion) funded in 2001-2002 by the Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research. The thorough discussion, rigorous treatment, and wide span of the presented work reveal the significant advances in the theoretical foundation and technology basis of the robotics field worldwide.

This book brings together scientists from all over the world who have defined and developed the field of Coordination Dynamics. Grounded in the concepts of self-organization and the tools of nonlinear dynamics, appropriately extended to handle informational aspects of living things, Coordination Dynamics aims to understand the coordinated functioning of a variety of different systems at multiple levels of description. The book addresses the themes of Coordination Dynamics and Dynamic Patterns in the context of the following topics: Coordination of Brain and Behavior, Perception-Action Coupling, Control, Posture, Learning, Intention, Attention, and Cognition.

This book collects invited lectures presented and discussed on the AMAS & ECCOMAS Workshop/Thematic Conference SMART'o3. The SMART'o3 Conference on Smart Materials and Structures was held in a 19th century palace in Jadwisin near Warsaw, 2-5 September 2003, Poland .It was organized by the Advanced Materials and Structures (AMAS) Centre of Excellence at the Institute of Fundamental Technological Research (IFTR) in Warsaw, ECCOMAS - European Community on Computational Methods in Applied Sciences and SMART-TECH Centre at IFTR. The idea of the workshop was to bring together and consolidate the community of Smart Materials and Structures in Europe. The workshop was attended by 66 participants from n European countries (Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain, U.K., Ukraine), 1 participant from Israel and 1 participant from the USA. The workshop program was grouped into the following major topics: 4 sessions on Structural Control (18 presentations), 3 sessions on Vibration Controland Dynamics (14 presentations), 2 sessions on Damage Identification (10 presentations), 2 sessions on Smart Materials (9 presentations). Each session was composed of an invited lecture and some contributed papers. Every paper scheduled in the program was presented, so altogether 51 presentations were given. No sessions were run in parallel. The workshop was attended not only by researchers but also by people closely related to the industry. There were interesting discussions on scientific merits of the presented papers as well as on future development of the field and its possible industrial applications.

model. They conclude that the models using three fitting parameters provide the best fit over a wide range of suctions. Models for soil-water characteristic curves are only useful if we have experimental data on which to base them. Agus, Leong and Rahardjo (Singapore) present a large number of experimental soil-water characteristic curves determined for two types of residual soil from Sigapore. They present data for eight different sites. This data set allows them to relate the parameters of the soil-water characteristic curves to index properties. They conclude that the relationships derived are suitable to pro vide a quick preliminary estimate of a soil-water characteristic curve. The importance of soil-water characteristic curves is emphasized by another con tribution dealing with this topic. Aung, Rahardjo, Leong and Toll (Singapore) inves tigate the relationship between mercury intrusion porosimetry measurements and soil-water characteristic curves. The porosimetry measurements are presented as soil-air characteristic curves. The slopes of the soil-air characteristic curves are found to be similar to the slopes of the soil-water characteristic curves. The equiv alent pore diameters calculated from the mercury entry value and the air entry value appear to be related. Therefore, it is suggested that porosimetry data can be used to construct an estimate of the soil-water characteristic curve."

Constantly increasing attention is paid in the course 'Vibration 'Theory' to vibration of mechanical systems with distributed parameters, since the real elements of machines, devices, and constructions are made of materials that are not perfectly rigid. 'Therefore, vibrations of the objects including, for ex ample, rod elastic elements excite the vibrations of these elements, which can produce a substantial effect on dynamic characteristics of moving objects and on readings of instruments. For a mechanical engineer working in the field of design of new technolo gies the principal thing is his know-how in developing the sophisticated math ematical models in which all specific features of operation of the objects under design in real conditions are meticulously taken into account. So, the main emphasis in this book is made on the methods of derivation of equations and on the algorithms of solving them (exactly or approximately) taking into con sideration all features of actual behavior of the forces acting upon elastic rod elements. 'The eigen value and eigen vector problems are considered at vibrations of curvilinear rods (including the rods with concentrated masses). Also consid ered are the problems with forced vibrations. When investigating into these problems an approximate method of numerical solution of the systems of lin ear differential equations in partial derivatives is described, which uses the principle of virtual displacements. Some problems are more complicated than others and can be used for practical works of students and their graduation theses."

The control of vibrating systems is a significant issue in the design of aircraft, spacecraft, bridges and high-rise buildings. This 2001 book discusses the control of vibrating systems, integrating structural dynamics, vibration analysis, modern control and system identification. Integrating these subjects is an important feature in that engineers will need only one book, rather than several texts or courses, to solve vibration control problems. The book begins with a review of basic mathematics needed to understand subsequent material. Chapters then cover more recent and valuable developments in aerospace control and identification theory, including virtual passive control, observer and state-space identification, and data-based controller synthesis. Many practical issues and applications are addressed, with examples showing how various methods are applied to real systems. Some methods show the close integration of system identification and control theory from the state-space perspective, rather than from the traditional input-output model perspective of adaptive control. This text will be useful for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students in aerospace, mechanical and civil engineering, as well as for practising engineers.

This monograph is devoted to nonlinear dynamics of thin plates and shells with thermosensitive excitation. Because of the variety of sizes and types of mathematical models in current use, there is no prospect of solving them analytically. However, the book emphasizes a rigorous mathematical treatment of the obtained differential equations, since it helps efficiently in further developing of various suitable numerical algorithms to solve the stated problems.

The contributions in this book were presented at the sixth international symposium on Advances in Robot Kinematics organised in June/July 1998 in Strobl/Salzburg in Austria. The preceding symposia of the series took place in Ljubljana (1988), Linz (1990), Ferrara (1992), Ljubljana (1994), and Piran (1996). Ever since its first event, ARK has attracted the most outstanding authors in the area and managed to create a perfect combination of professionalism and friendly athmosphere. We are glad to observe that, in spite of a strong competition of many international conferences and meetings, ARK is continuing to grow in terms of the number of participants and in terms of its scientific impact. In its ten years, ARK has contributed to develop a remarkable scientific community in the area of robot kinematics. The last four symposia were organised under the patronage of the International Federation for the Theory of Machines and Mechanisms -IFToMM. interest to researchers, doctoral students and teachers, The book is of engineers and mathematicians specialising in kinematics of robots and mechanisms, mathematical modelling, simulation, design, and control of robots. It is divided into sections that were found as the prevalent areas of the contemporary kinematics research. As it can easily be noticed, an important part of the book is dedicated to various aspects of the kinematics of parallel mechanisms that persist to be one of the most attractive areas of research in robot kinematics.

These Conference Proceedings are intended to summarise the latest developments in diffraction and scattering theory as reported at the IU TAM Symposium on Diffraction and Scattering in Fluid Mechanics and Elasticity held in Manchester, England on 16-20 July 2000. This in formal meeting was organised to discuss mathematical advances, both from the theoretical and more applied points of view. However, its pri mary goal was to bring together groups of researchers working in dis parate application areas, but who nevertheless share common models, phenomenological features arising in such problems, and common math ematical tools. To this end, we were delighted to have four Plenary Speakers, Professors Allan Pierce, Ed Kerschen, Roger Grimshaw and John Willis FRS, who are undisputed leaders in the four thematic ar eas of our meeting (these are respectively acoustics, aeroacoustics, water or other free surface waves, elasticity). These Proceedings should offer an excellent vehicle for continuing the dialogue between these groups of researchers. The participants were invited because of their expertise and recent contributions to this field. Collectively, there were around 90 contrib utors to the Symposium from some 13 countries located all around the world. These included 45 speakers, 35 co-authors and about 10 other delegates. Individuals came from many of the major international cen tres of excellence in the field of scattering theory."

This volume presents the Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Vibration Problems, held in Istanbul, Turkey, September 5-9, 2005. The main objective being to stimulate a broad interdisciplinary research. The topics covered in the book vary from the effect of ground motion on the stochastic response of suspension bridges to coupling effects between different vibrations in rotor-blade systems.