It is at least two decades since the conventional robotic manipulators have become a common manufacturing tool for different industries, from automotive to pharmaceutical. The proven benefits of utilizing robotic manipulators for manufacturing in different industries motivated scientists and researchers to try to extend the applications of robots to many other areas by inventing several new types of robots other than conventional manipulators. The new types of robots can be categorized in two groups; redundant (and hyper-redundant) manipulators, and mobile (ground, marine, and aerial) robots. These groups of robots, known as advanced robots, have more freedom for their mobility, which allows them to do tasks that the conventional manipulators cannot do.

Engineers have taken advantage of the extra mobility of the advanced robots to make them work in constrained environments, ranging from limited joint motions for redundant (or hyper-redundant) manipulators to obstacles in the way of mobile (ground, marine, and aerial) robots.

Since these constraints usually depend on the work environment, they are variable. Engineers have had to invent methods to allow the robots to deal with a variety of constraints automatically. A robot that is equipped with those methods is called an Autonomous Robot.

Autonomous Robots: Kinematics, Path Planning, and Control covers the kinematics and dynamic modeling/analysis of Autonomous Robots, as well as the methods suitable for their control. The text is suitable for mechanical and electrical engineers who want to familiarize themselves with methods of modeling/analysis/control that have been proven efficient through research.

Underactuated multibody systems are intriguing mechatronic systems, as they posses fewer control inputs than degrees of freedom. Some examples are modern light-weight flexible robots and articulated manipulators with passive joints. This book investigates such underactuated multibody systems from an integrated perspective. This includes all major steps from the modeling of rigid and flexible multibody systems, through nonlinear control theory, to optimal system design. The underlying theories and techniques from these different fields are presented using a self-contained and unified approach and notation system. Subsequently, the book focuses on applications to large multibody systems with multiple degrees of freedom, which require a combination of symbolical and numerical procedures. Finally, an integrated, optimization-based design procedure is proposed, whereby both structural and control design are considered concurrently. Each chapter is supplemented by illustrated examples.

This book provides an interdisciplinary presentation of the current knowledge of pattern formation in complex system, with sufficiently many details, tools, and concrete examples to be useful for the graduate student or scientist entering this area of research.

Motion and vibration control is a fundamental technology for the development of advanced mechanical systems such as rnechatrotrics, vehicle syatems, robots, spacecraft. and rotating machinery. Often the implementation of high performance, low power consumption designs is only possible with the use of this techology. 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, sendors, 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, senors, actuators, rotor dynamics, biologically inspired mechanics, humanoid robot dynamcics and control. etc.) and also provides advances in the field of fundamental research e.g. control of fluid/structure integration, nonlinar 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.

"Control from MEMS to Atoms" illustrates the use of control and control systems as an essential part of functioning integrated systems. The book is organized according to the dimensional scale of the problem, starting with micro-scale systems and ending with atomic-scale systems. Similar to macro-scale machines and processes, control systems can play a major role in improving the performance of micro- and nano-scale systems and in enabling new capabilities that would otherwise not be possible. However, the majority of problems at these scales present many new challenges that go beyond the current state-of-the-art in control engineering. This is a result of the multidisciplinary nature of micro/nanotechnology, which requires the merging of control engineering with physics, biology and chemistry.

By providing all the basic knowledge needed to assess how useful active noise control will be for a given problem, this book assists in the designing, setting up, and tuning of an active noise-control system. Written for students who have no prior knowledge of acoustics, signal processing, or noise control but who do have a reasonable grasp of basic physics and mathematics, the text is short and descriptive, leaving all mathematical details and proofs concerning vibrations, signal processing and the like to more advanced texts or research monographs. The book can thus be used in independent study, in a classroom with laboratories, or in conjunction with a kit for experiment or demonstration. Topics covered include basic acoustics, human perception and sound, sound intensity and related concepts, fundamentals of passive noise- control strategies, basics of digital systems and adaptive controllers, and active noise control systems.

This book consists of review articles by experts on recent developments in mechanical engineering sciences. The book has been composed to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of the Mechanical Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. It includes articles on modern mechanical sciences subjects of advanced simulation techniques and molecular dynamics, microfluidics and microfluidic devices, energy systems, intelligent fabrication, microscale manufacturing, smart materials, computational techniques, robotics and their allied fields. It presents the upcoming and emerging areas in mechanical sciences which will help in formulation of new courses and updating existing curricula. This book will help the academicians and policy makers in the field of engineering education to chart out the desired path for the development of technical education.

This monograph focuses on the dynamical research work on crank-piston mechanisms considering basic and additional motions. In order to have full dynamical analyses of piston machines and their mechanisms, the book studies the crank-piston mechanisms with clearances in kinematic pairs. The tasks are carried out by focusing on friction, wear and impacts in mechanisms, as well as cracks formation in links and elasticity of details, with distributed and concentrated masses. Then, the reliability and durability of the mechanisms of piston machines is applied on oil and gas transportation. The monograph is meant for design specialists. It is also useful for specialists-manufacturers and designers of piston machines, scientists and lecturers, doctoral students.

Inverse problems have a long history in acoustics, optics, electromagnetics and geophysics, but only recently have the signals provided by ocean acoustic sensors become numerous and sophisticated enough to allow for realistic identification of the ocean parameters. Acoustic signals propagating for long distances in the water column and reflections of underwater sound from the ocean boundaries provide novel problems of interpretation and inversion. The chapters in this volume discuss some of the contemporary aspects of these problems. They provide recent and useful results for bottom recognition, inverse scattering in acoustic wave guides, and ocean acoustic tomography, as well as a discussion of some of the new algorithms, such as those related to matched-field processing, that have recently been used for inverting experimental data. Each chapter is by a noted expert in the field and represents the state of the art. The chapters have all been edited to provide a uniform format and level of presentation.

This book presents the most significant contributions to the DINAME 2017 conference, covering a range of dynamic problems to provide insights into recent trends and advances in a broad variety of fields seldom found in other proceedings volumes. DINAME has been held every two years since 1986 and is internationally recognized as a central forum for discussing scientific achievements related to dynamic problems in mechanics. Unlike many other conferences, it employs a single-session format for the oral presentations of all papers, which limits the number of accepted papers to roughly 100 and makes the evaluation process extremely rigorous. The papers gathered here will be of interest to all researchers, graduate students and engineering professionals working in the fields of mechanical and mechatronics engineering and related areas around the globe.

This book discusses stochastic dynamics of power systems and the related analytical methodology. It summarizes and categorizes the stochastic elements of power systems and develops a framework for research on stochastic dynamics of power systems. It also establishes a research model for stochastic dynamics of power systems and theoretically proves stochastic stability in power systems. Further, in addition to demonstrating the stochastic oscillation mechanism in power systems, it also proposes methods for quantitative analysis and stochastic optimum control in the field of stochastic dynamic security in power systems. This book is a valuable resource for researchers, scholars and engineers in the field of electrics.

This book has evolved from the passionate desire of the authors in using the modern concepts of multibody dynamics for the design improvement of the machineries used in the rural sectors of India and The World. In this connection, the first author took up his doctoral research in 2003 whose findings have resulted in this book. It is expected that such developments will lead to a new research direction MuDRA, an acronym given by the authors to "Multibody Dynamics for Rural Applications. " The way Mu- DRA is pronounced it means 'money' in many Indian languages. It is hoped that practicing MuDRA will save or generate money for the rural people either by saving energy consumption of their machines or making their products cheaper to manufacture, hence, generating more money for their livelihood. In this book, the initial focus was to improve the dynamic behavior of carpet scrapping machines used to wash newly woven hand-knotted c- pets of India. However, the concepts and methodologies presented in the book are equally applicable to non-rural machineries, be they robots or - tomobiles or something else. The dynamic modeling used in this book to compute the inertia-induced and constraint forces for the carpet scrapping machine is based on the concept of the decoupled natural orthogonal c- plement (DeNOC) matrices. The concept is originally proposed by the second author for the dynamics modeling and simulation of serial and - rallel-type multibody systems, e. g.

Concern with the class of problems investigated in this monograph began for me as a graduate student at MIT (1958-62) when serving as research assistant to Professor Eric Reissner who initiated me into the subject and whose influence - whether directly or dialectically - is probably discernable in the contours of the work. My fIrst attempt at a systematic derivation of the equations of shell theory was made while on a summer assistantship with Professor Norman Levinson in 1960. Beyond gaining a sobering reali- zation of the complexities involved, I made little progress at that time. In 1962-64 while a Temporary Member at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (NYU) I made a fresh start, while benefIting from my association and discus- sions with Professor Fritz John. With the conviction that the full integration of the equations with respect to the thickness coordinate, by means of the Legendre repre- sentations, must lead to a clarifIcation of the position of the two-dimensional theory in its three-dimensional context, the necessary computations were completed during that period. Several years passed while I became reconciled with the thought that the material needed to be organized as a monograph. This was done during 1969-70 while at the NASA Electronics Research Center in Cambridge, MA.

The book features selected high-quality papers presented at the International Conference on Computing, Power and Communication Technologies 2019 (GUCON 2019), organized by Galgotias University, India, in September 2019. Divided into three sections, the book discusses various topics in the fields of power electronics and control engineering, power and energy systems, and machines and renewable energy. This interesting compilation is a valuable resource for researchers, engineers and students.

Among the wide variety of nonlinear mechanical systems, it appears possible to distinguish a representative class which may be characterized by the presence of threshold nonlinear positional forces. Such systems demonstrate a sudden change in the behavior of elastic and dissipative forces. This monograph addresses the systematic representation of the new methods of analysis developed by the authors recently as applied to such systems. Specific features of dynamic processes of these systems are studied. Special attention is given to an analysis of different resonant phenomena taking unusual and diverse forms. These methods are applied to the analysis of mechanical systems designed for the generation and transformation of intensive processing of an impulsive nature. These are machines for rock fragmentation, impact processing, special types of shock testing machines and many other types of machinery.

Adaptive structural systems in conjunction with multifunctional materials facilitate technical solutions with a wide spectrum of applications and a high degree of integration. By virtue of combining the actuation and sensing capabilities of piezoelectric materials with the advantages of fiber composites, the anisotropic constitutive properties may be tailored according to requirements and the failure behavior can be improved. Such adaptive fiber composites are very well-suited for the task of noise and vibration reduction. In this respect the helicopter rotor system represents a very interesting and widely perceptible field of application. The occurring oscillations can be reduced with aid of aerodynamic couplings via fast manipulation of the angle of attack, being induced by twist actuation of the rotor blade. On the one hand the sensing properties may be used to determine the current state of deformation, while on the other hand the actuation properties may be used to attain the required state of deformation. The implementation of such concepts requires comprehensive knowledge of the theoretical context, which shall be illuminated in the work at hand from the examination of the material behavior to the simulation of the rotating structure.

Non-linear stochastic systems are at the center of many engineering disciplines and progress in theoretical research had led to a better understanding of non-linear phenomena. This book provides information on new fundamental results and their applications which are beginning to appear across the entire spectrum of mechanics. The outstanding points of these proceedings are Coherent compendium of the current state of modelling and analysis of non-linear stochastic systems from engineering, applied mathematics and physics point of view. Subject areas include: Multiscale phenomena, stability and bifurcations, control and estimation, computational methods and modelling. For the Engineering and Physics communities, this book will provide first-hand information on recent mathematical developments. The applied mathematics community will benefit from the modelling and information on various possible applications.

Nonlinear Dynamics of Complex Systems describes chaos, fractal and stochasticities within celestial mechanics, financial systems and biochemical systems. Part I discusses methods and applications in celestial systems and new results in such areas as low energy impact dynamics, low-thrust planar trajectories to the moon and earth-to-halo transfers in the sun, earth and moon. Part II presents the dynamics of complex systems including bio-systems, neural systems, chemical systems and hydro-dynamical systems. Finally, Part III covers economic and financial systems including market uncertainty, inflation, economic activity and foreign competition and the role of nonlinear dynamics in each.

The book provides readers with a snapshot of recent research and industrial trends in field of industrial acoustics and vibration. Each chapter, accepted after a rigorous peer-review process, reports on a selected, original piece of work presented and discussed at the Second International Conference on Acoustics and Vibration (ICAV2018), which was organized by the Tunisian Association of Industrial Acoustics and Vibration (ATAVI) and held March 19-21, in Hammamet, Tunisia. The contributions cover advances in both theory and practice in a variety of subfields, such as: smart materials and structures; fluid-structure interaction; structural acoustics as well as computational vibro-acoustics and numerical methods. Further topics include: engines control, noise identification, robust design, flow-induced vibration and many others. This book provides a valuable resource for both academics and professionals dealing with diverse issues in applied mechanics. By combining advanced theories with industrial issues, it is expected to facilitate communication and collaboration between different groups of researchers and technology users.

Chaos and nonlinear dynamics initially developed as a new emergent field with its foundation in physics and applied mathematics. The highly generic, interdisciplinary quality of the insights gained in the last few decades has spawned myriad applications in almost all branches of science and technology-and even well beyond. Wherever the quantitative modeling and analysis of complex, nonlinear phenomena are required, chaos theory and its methods can play a key role.
This second volume concentrates on reviewing further relevant, contemporary applications of chaotic nonlinear systems as they apply to the various cutting-edge branches of engineering. This encompasses, but is not limited to, topics such as the spread of epidemics; electronic circuits; chaos control in mechanical devices; secure communication; and digital watermarking.
Featuring contributions from active and leading research groups, this collection is ideal both as a reference work and as a 'recipe book' full of tried and tested, successful engineering applications."

This book deals with the analysis of off-road vehicle dynamics from kinetics and kinematics perspectives and the performance of vehicle traversing over rough and irregular terrain. The authors consider the wheel performance, soil-tire interactions and their interface, tractive performance of the vehicle, ride comfort, stability over maneuvering, transient and steady state conditions of the vehicle traversing, modeling the aforementioned aspects and optimization from energetic and vehicle mobility perspectives. This book brings novel figures for the transient dynamics and original wheel terrain dynamics at on-the-go condition.

Moving Loads on Ice Plates is a unique study into the effect of vehicles and aircraft travelling across floating ice sheets. It synthesizes in a single volume, with a coherent theme and nomenclature, the diverse literature on the topic, hitherto available only as research journal articles. Chapters on the nature of fresh water ice and sea ice, and on applied continuum mechanics are included, as is a chapter on the subject's venerable history in related areas of engineering and science. The most recent theories and data are discussed in great depth, demonstrating the advanced state of the modelling and experimental field programmes that have taken place. Finally, results are interpreted in the context of engineering questions faced by agencies operating in the polar and subpolar regions. Although the book necessarily contains some graduate level applied mathematics, it is written to allow engineers, physicists and mathematicians to extract the information they need without becoming preoccupied with details. Structural, environmental, civil, and offshore engineers, and groups who support these industries, particularly within the Arctic and Antarctic, will find the book timely and relevant.

Often, a new area of science grows at the confines between recognised subject divisions, drawing upon techniques and intellectual perspectives from a diversity of fields. Such growth can remain unnoticed at first, until a characteristic fami ly of effects, described by appropriate key words, has developed, at which point a distinct subject is born. Such is very much the case with atomic 'giant resonances'. For a start, their name itself was borrowed from the field of nuclear collective resonances. The energy range in which they occur, at the juncture of the extreme UV and the soft X-rays, remains to this day a meeting point of two different experimental techniques: the grating and the crystal spectrometer. The impetus of synchrotron spectroscopy also played a large part in developing novel methods, described by many acronyms, which are used to study 'giant resonances' today. Finally, although we have described them as 'atomic' to differentiate them from their counterparts in Nuclear Physics, their occurrence on atomic sites does not inhibit their existence in molecules and solids. In fact, 'giant resonances' provide a new unifying theme, cutting accross some of the traditional scientific boundaries. After much separate development, the spectroscopies of the atom in various environments can meet afresh around this theme of common interest. Centrifugal barrier effects and 'giant resonances' proper emerged almost simultaneously in the late 1960's from two widely separated areas of physics, namely the study of free atoms and of condensed matter.

Star clusters are at the heart of astronomy, being key objects for our understanding of stellar evolution and galactic structure. Observations with the Hubble Space Telescope and other modern equipment have revealed fascinating new facts about these galactic building blocks. This book provides two comprehensive and up-to-date, pedagogically designed reviews on star clusters by two well-known experts in the field. Bruce Carney presents our current knowledge of the relative and absolute ages of globular clusters and the chemical history of our Galaxy. Bill Harris addresses globular clusters in external galaxies and their use as tracers of galaxy formation and cosmic distance indicators. The book is written for graduate students as well as professionals in astronomy and astrophysics.

The objective of this book is to present the main theoretical approaches and models in shallow water acoustics as well as different experimental results. The focus is primarily concentrated on physical results describing the sound field in wave length. The authors show dynamic phenomena (tides, internal waves) from the perspective of acoustic influence as well as the scattering of sound over the macroscopic body in shallow water waveguide. The method of acoustic probing can be used by physicists, geophysicists, geologists and oceanographers.