"Analytical System Dynamics: Modeling and Simulation" combines results from analytical mechanics and system dynamics to develop an approach to modeling constrained multidiscipline dynamic systems. This combination yields a modeling technique based on the energy method of Lagrange, which in turn, results in a set of differential-algebraic equations that are suitable for numerical integration. Using the modeling approach presented in this book enables one to model and simulate systems as diverse as a six-link, closed-loop mechanism or a transistor power amplifier.

Multibody Dynamics is an area of Computational Mechanics which blends together various disciplines such as structural dynamics, multi-physics - chanics, computational mathematics, control theory and computer science, in order to deliver methods and tools for the virtual prototyping of complex mechanical systems. Multibody dynamics plays today a central role in the modeling, analysis, simulation and optimization of mechanical systems in a variety of ?elds and for a wide range of industrial applications. The ECCOMAS Thematic Conference on Multibody Dynamics was ini- ated in Lisbon in 2003, and then continued in Madrid in 2005 with the goal of providing researchers in Multibody Dynamics with appropriate venues for exchanging ideas and results. The third edition of the Conference was held at the Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy, from June 25 to June 28, 2007. The Conference saw the participation of over 250 researchers from 32 di?- ent countries, presenting 209 technical papers, and proved to be an excellent forum for discussion and technical exchange on the most recent advances in this rapidly growing ?eld.

Energy Harvesting Technologies provides a cohesive overview of the fundamentals and current developments in the field of energy harvesting. In a well-organized structure, this volume discusses basic principles for the design and fabrication of bulk and MEMS based vibration energy systems, theory and design rules required for fabrication of efficient electronics, in addition to recent findings in thermoelectric energy harvesting systems.

Combining leading research from both academia and industry onto a single platform, Energy Harvesting Technologies serves as an important reference for researchers and engineers involved with power sources, sensor networks and smart materials.

This volume treats Lagrange equations for electromechanical systems, including piezoelectric transducers and selected applications. It is essentially an extension to piezoelectric systems of the work by Crandall et al.: "Dynamics of Mechanical and Electromechanical Systems," published in 1968. The first three chapters contain classical material based on this and other well known standard texts in the field. Some applications are new and include material not published in a monograph before.

The aim of this International Symposium on Dynamics of Vibro-Impact Systems is to provide a forum for the discussion of recent developments in the theory and industrial applications of vibro-impact ocean systems. A special effort has been made to invite active researchers from engineering, science, and applied mathematics communities. This symposium has indeed updated engineers with recent analytical developments of vibro-impact dynamics and at the same time allowed engineers and industrial practitioners to alert mathematicians with their unresolved issues. The symposium was held in Troy, Michigan, during the period October 1-3, 2008. It included 28 presentations grouped as follows: The first group comprises of nine papers dealing with the interaction of ocean systems with slamming waves and floating ice. It also covers related topics such as sloshing-slamming dynamics, and non-smooth dynamics associated with offshore structures. Moreover, it includes control issues pertaining to marine surface vessels. The second group consists of fifteen papers treats the interaction of impact systems with friction and their control, Hertzian contact dynamics, parameter variation in vibro-impact oscillators, random excitation of vibro-impact systems, vibro-impact dampers, oscillators with a bouncing ball, limiting phase trajectory corresponding to energy exchange between the oscillator and external source, frequency-energy distribution in oscillators with impacts, and discontinuity mapping. The third group is covered in four papers and addresses some industrial applications such as hand-held percussion machines, rub-impact dynamics of rotating machinery, impact fatigue in joint structures.

Thank heavens for Jens Wittenburg, of the University of Karlsruhe in Germany. Anyone who 's been laboring for years over equation after equation will want to give him a great big hug. It is common practice to develop equations for each system separately and to consider the labor necessary for deriving all of these as inevitable. Not so, says the author. Here, he takes it upon himself to describe in detail a formalism which substantially simplifies these tasks.

Motion and vibration control is a fundamental technology for the development of advanced mechanical systems such as mechatronics, vehicle systems, robots, spacecraft, and rotating machinery. Often the implementation of high performance, low power consumption designs is only possible with the use of this technology. It is also vital to the mitigation of natural hazards for large structures such as high-rise buildings and tall bridges, and to the application of flexible structures such as space stations and satellites. Recent innovations in relevant hardware, sensors, actuators, and software have facilitated new research in this area. This book deals with the interdisciplinary aspects of emerging technologies of motion and vibration control for mechanical, civil and aerospace systems. It covers a broad range of applications (e.g. vehicle dynamics, actuators, rotor dynamics, biologically inspired mechanics, humanoid robot dynamics and control, etc.) and also provides advances in the field of fundamental research e.g. control of fluid/structure integration, nonlinear control theory, etc. Each of the contributors is a recognised specialist in his field, and this gives the book relevance and authority in a wide range of areas.

In this book a detailed and systematic treatment of asymptotic methods in the theory of plates and shells is presented. The main features of the book are the basic principles of asymptotics and their applications, traditional approaches such as regular and singular perturbations, as well as new approaches such as the composite equations approach. The book introduces the reader to the field of asymptotic simplification of the problems of the theory of plates and shells and will be useful as a handbook of methods of asymptotic integration. Providing a state-of-the-art review of asymptotic applications, this book will be useful as an introduction to the field for novices as well as a reference book for specialists.

This is a self-contained introduction to algebraic control for nonlinear systems suitable for researchers and graduate students. It is the first book dealing with the linear-algebraic approach to nonlinear control systems in such a detailed and extensive fashion. It provides a complementary approach to the more traditional differential geometry and deals more easily with several important characteristics of nonlinear systems.

Based on a long engineering experience, this book offers a comprehensive and state-of-the-art analysis of aerodynamic and flight mechanic entry topics. This updated edition had new chapters on Re-entry on Mars mission, flight quality, rarefied aerodynamics and re-entry accuracy. In addition, it provides a large set of application exercises and solutions.

This book presents an introduction into the entire science of Continuum Mechanics in three parts. The presentation is modern and comprehensive. Its introduction into tensors is very gentle. The book contains many examples and exercises, and is intended for scientists, practitioners and students of mechanics.

Civil infrastructure systems are generally the most expensive assets in any country, and these systems are deteriorating at an alarming rate. In addition, these systems have a long service life in comparison to most other commercial products. As well, the introduction of intelligent materials and innovative design approaches in these systems is painfully slow due to heavy relianceon traditional construction and maintenance practices, and the conservative nature of design codes. Feedback on the "state of the health" of constructed systems is practically nonexistent. In the quest for lighter, stronger and corrosion-resistant structures, the replacement of ferrous materials by high-strength fibrous ones is being actively pursued in several countries around the world, both with respect to the design of new structures as well as for the rehabilitation and strengthening of existing ones. In North America, active research in the design of new highway bridges is focused on a number of specialty areas, including the replacement of steel reinforcing bars in concrete deck slabs by randomly distributed low-modulus fibers, and the replacement of steel prestressing cables for concrete components by tendons comprising super-strong fibers. Research is also being conducted on using FRPs to repair and strengthen existing structures.

Mechanics provides the link between mathematics and practical engineering app- cations. It is one of the oldest sciences, and many famous scientists have left and will leave their mark in this fascinating ?eld of research. Perhaps one of the most prominentscientists in mechanics was Sir Isaac Newton, who with his "laws of - tion" initiated the description of mechanical systems by differential equations. And still today, more than 300 years after Newton, this mathematical concept is more actual than ever. The rising computer power and the development of numerical solvers for diff- ential equations allowed engineersall over the world to predict the behavior of their physical systems fast and easy in an numerical way. And the trend to computational simulation methods is still further increasing, not only in mechanics, but practically in all branches of science. Numerical simulation will probablynot solve the world's engineering problems, but it will help for a better understanding of the mechanisms of our models.

This volume constitutes the proceedings of the 1997 IUTAM Symposium, where invited researchers in acoustics, aeronautics, elastodynamics, electromagnetics, hydrodynamics, and mathematics discussed non-reflecting computational boundaries. The participants formulated benchmark problems for evaluating computational boundaries, as described in the first article.

Periodic Systems gives a comprehensive treatment of the theory of periodic systems, including the problems of filtering and control. Topics covered include: basic issues, including Floquet theory, controllability and observability, canonical decomposition, system norms and Lyapunov and robust stability; the problem of state estimation in its various forms, filtering, prediction and smoothing; control design methods, particularly optimal and robust control. The text focuses on discrete-time signals and systems; however, an overview of the entire field, including the continuous-time case, is provided in the first chapter. The authors presentation of the theory and results is mathematically rigorous while maintaining a readable style, avoiding excessive formalism. This makes the book accessible to graduate students and researchers from the fields of engineering, physics, economics and mathematics.

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.

Besides turbulence, there is hardly any other scientific topic which has been considered a prominent scientific challenge for such a long time. The special interest in turbulence is not only based on it being a difficult scientific problem but also on its meaning in the technical world and our daily life. This carefully edited book comprises recent basic research as well as research related to the applications of turbulence. Therefore, both leading engineers and physicists working in the field of turbulence were invited to the iTi Conference on Turbulence held in Bad Zwischenahn, Gemany 21st - 24th of September 2003. Topics discussed include, for example, scaling laws and intermittency, thermal convection, boundary layers at large Reynolds numbers, isotropic turbulence, stochastic processes, passive and active scalars, coherent structures, numerical simulations, and related subjects.

Computational kinematics is an enthralling area of science with a rich spectrum of problems at the junction of mechanics, robotics, computer science, mathematics, and computer graphics. The present book collects up-to-date methods as presented during the Fifth International Workshop on Computational Kinematics (CK2009) held at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. The covered topics include design and optimization of cable-driven robots, analysis of parallel manipulators, motion planning, numerical methods for mechanism calibration and optimization, geometric approaches to mechanism analysis and design, synthesis of mechanisms, kinematical issues in biomechanics, balancing and construction of novel mechanical devices, detection and treatment of singularities, as well as computational methods for gear design. The results should be of interest for practicing and research engineers as well as Ph.D. students from the fields of mechanical and electrical engineering, computer science, and computer graphics.

Mechanics and Control of Soft-fingered Manipulation introduces a new approach to the modeling of fingertips that have a soft pad and a hard back plate, similar to human fingers. Starting from the observation of soft-fingered grasping and manipulation, the book provides a parallel distributed model that takes into account tangential deformation of the fingertips. The model is supported with many experimental verifications and simulation results. Statics and dynamics in soft-fingered grasping and manipulation are also formulated based on this new model. The book uniquely investigates how soft fingertips with hard back plates enhance dexterity in grasping and manipulation, theoretically and experimentally, revealing the differences between soft-fingered and rigid-fingered manipulation. Researchers involved in object manipulation by robotic hands, as well as in human dexterity in object manipulation, will find this text enlightening.

Structure-Borne Sound" is a thorough introduction to structural vibrations with emphasis on audio frequencies and the associated radiation of sound. The book presents in-depth discussions of fundamental principles and basic problems, in order to enable the reader to understand and solve his own problems. It includes chapters dealing with measurement and generation of vibrations and sound, various types of structural wave motion, structural damping and its effects, impedances and vibration responses of the important types of structures, as well as with attenuation of vibrations, and sound radiation from structures. For the third edition, the author fundamentally revised and newly organized the contents of the work. Nevertheless, the intention has been to preserve the style of the previous editions, namely to focus on the fundamentals enabling the reader to analyse further problems.

This text is well-designed with respect to the exposition from the preliminary to the more advanced and the applications interwoven throughout. It provides the essential foundations for the theory as well as the basic facts relating to almost periodicity. In six structured and self-contained chapters, the author unifies the treatment of various classes of almost periodic functions, while uniquely addressing oscillations and waves in the almost periodic case.

This is the first text to present the latest results in almost periodic oscillations and waves. The presentation level and inclusion of several clearly presented proofs make this work ideal for graduate students in engineering and science. The concept of almost periodicity is widely applicable to continuuum mechanics, electromagnetic theory, plasma physics, dynamical systems, and astronomy, which makes the book a useful tool for mathematicians and physicists.

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.

Modeling and Control in Vibrational and Structural Dynamics: A Differential Geometric Approach describes the control behavior of mechanical objects, such as wave equations, plates, and shells. It shows how the differential geometric approach is used when the coefficients of partial differential equations (PDEs) are variable in space (waves/plates), when the PDEs themselves are defined on curved surfaces (shells), and when the systems have quasilinear principal parts. To make the book self-contained, the author starts with the necessary background on Riemannian geometry. He then describes differential geometric energy methods that are generalizations of the classical energy methods of the 1980s. He illustrates how a basic computational technique can enable multiplier schemes for controls and provide mathematical models for shells in the form of free coordinates. The author also examines the quasilinearity of models for nonlinear materials, the dependence of controllability/stabilization on variable coefficients and equilibria, and the use of curvature theory to check assumptions. With numerous examples and exercises throughout, this book presents a complete and up-to-date account of many important advances in the modeling and control of vibrational and structural dynamics.

Contact mechanics was and is an important branch in mechanics which covers a broad field of theoretical, numerical and experimental investigations. In this carefully edited book the reader will obtain a state-of-the-art overview on formulation, mathematical analysis and numerical solution procedures of contact problems. The contributions collected in this volume summarize the lectures presented during the 4th Contact Mechanics Interantional symposium (CMIS) held in Hannover, Germany, 2005, by leading scientists in the area of contact mechanics.

This is the first book of robotics presenting solutions of uncoupled and fully-isotropic parallel robotic manipulators and a method for their structural synthesis. Part 1 presents the methodology proposed for structural synthesis. Part 2 presents the various topologies of parallel robots generated by this systematic approach. Many solutions are presented here for the first time. The book will contribute to a widespread implementation of these solutions in industrial products.