Includes MATLAB-based computational and design algorithms utilizing the "Linear Systems Toolkit." All results and case studies presented in both the continuous- and discrete-time settings.

The application of computational electromagnetics to practical EMI/EMC engineering is an emerging technology. Because of the increased complexity in EMI/EMC issues resulting from advancements in electronics and telecommunications, it is no longer possible to rely exclusively on traditional techniques and tools to solve the growing list of electronic engineering design problems. EMI/EMC Computational Modeling Handbook introduces modeling and simulation of electromagnetics to real-world EMI/EMC engineering. It combines the essentials of electromagnetics, computational techniques, and actual EMI/EMC applications. Included are such popular full-wave computational modeling techniques as the Method of Moments, Finite-Difference Time Domain Technique, Finite Element Method, and several others. The authors have included a myriad of applications for computers, telecommunications, consumer electronics, medical electronics, and military uses. EMI/EMC Computational Modeling Handbook is an invaluable reference work for practicing EMI/EMC engineers, electronic design engineers, and any engineer involved in computational electromagnetics.

Over half of the products of the chemical and process industries are sold in a particulate form. The range of such products is vast: from agrochemicals to pigments, from detergents to foods, from plastics to pharmaceuticals. However, surveys of the performance of processes designed to produce particulate products have consistently shown inadequate design and poor reliability. Particle technology' is a new subject facing new challenges. Chemical and process engineering is becoming less concerned with the design of plants to produce generic simple chemicals (which are often single phase fluids) and is now more concerned with speciality effect' chemicals which may often be in particulate form. Chemical and process engineers are also being recruited in increasing numbers into areas outside their tranditional fields, such as the food industry, pharmaceuticals and the manufacture of a wide variety of consumer products. This book has been written to meet their needs. It provides comprehensive coverage of the technology of particulate solids, in a form which is both accessible and concise enough to be useful to engineering and science students in the final year of an undergraduate degree, and at Master's level. Although it was written with students of chemical engineering in mind, it will also be of use and interest to students of other disciplines. It comprises an account of the fundamentals of teh subject, illustrated by worked examples, and followed by a wide range of selected applications.

Injection moulding is the most important moulding process used by the plastics industry and some idea of its importance can be obtained by considering the following figures. The value of the UK market for plastics processing equipment was GBP60 million in 1977. Of this sum, GBP23 million was spent on injection moulding machines, that is, 40 % of all the money spent on plastics processing equipment in the UK. It has been estimated that one-third of all plastics materials are processed by injection moulding. At the present time the process is of greater importance to the thermoplastics industry but its relevance to the thermoset industry should not be ignored. Most ofthe equipment now used is based on single-screw pre-plasticising units. Once these machines had become established, in the 1960s, it was felt that the ultimate had been reached in machine design and utilisation. However, since that time, machines, processes and materials have undergone extensive development to make injection moulding safer, more reliable, easier to use and more economical to operate. The purpose ofthis book is to review some of the developments that have taken place in this very important area. These developments are described by specialists in the field, who have extensive industrial experience and whose contribution will therefore be of immediate relevance to those concerned with the usage and application of this, the most important plastics moulding process.

Composite Materials in Aerospace Design is one of six titles in a coherent and definitive series dedicated to advanced composite materials research, development and usage in the former Soviet Union. Much of the information presented has been classified until recently. Thus each volume provides a unique insight into hitherto unknown research and development data. This volume deals with the design philosophy and methodology used to produce primary and secondary load bearing composite structures with high life expectancies. The underlying theme is of extensive advanced composites research and development programs in aircraft and spacecraft applications, including the space orbital ship `BURAN'. The applicability of much of this work to other market sectors, such as automotive, shipbuilding and sporting goods is also examined in some detail. The text starts by describing typical structures for which composites may be used in this area and some of the basic requirements from the materials being used. Design of components with composite materials is then discussed, with specific reference to case studies. This is followed by discussion and results from evaluation of finished structures and components, methods of joining with conventional materials and finally, non-destructive testing methods and forecasting of the performance of the composite materials and the structures which they form. Composite Materials in Aerospace Design will be of interest to anyone researching or developing in composite materials science and technology, as well as design and aerospace engineers, both in industry and universities.

The integration of manufacturing constraints and their optImIzation within the design process of mechanical products and systems are now an industrial priority. Following the first two IDMME conferences in Nantes in 1996 and Compiegne in 1998, the purpose of the IDMME'2000 conference was to present recent developments in these areas and new areas within the product and process development theme. The original initiative of the conference is mainly due to the efforts of the French AIP-PRIMECA group (Pool of Computer Resources for Mechanics). The organizing committee and the local organizing institutions (Concordia University, Ecole Poly technique de Montreal, and McGill University) contributed to the success of the conference. The presentation of 190 papers and the presence of more than 225 researchers coming from more than 20 countries demonstrate the success of the initiative. This book contains 57 of these papers selected by an International Scientific Committee: Chairman: C. Fortin (Canada) Co-chairmen: P. Chedmail (France), G. Cognet (France), C. Mascle (Canada), J. Pegna (Canada) J. Angeles (Canada) P. Martin (France) J. L. Batoz (France) C. McMahon (U. K. ) J. C. Bocquet (France) M. Mantyla (Finland) A. - Bernard (France) J. L. Maxwell (USA) P. Bourdet (France) N. M. Patrikalakis (USA) A Clement (France) J. P. Pelle (France) D. Cochran (USA) B. Peseux (France) D. Coutellier (France) D. Play (France) A- Dalsky (Russia) M. Pratt (USA) D. A. Dornfeld (USA) B. Ravani (USA) D. Deneux (France) A. Riviere (France) G. Gogu (France) C.

REFEREN CES . 156 9 Transforma.tion of a Boundary Value Problem to an Initial Value Problem . 157 9.0 Introduction . 157 9.1 Blasius Equation in Boundary Layer Flow . 157 9.2 Longitudinal Impact of Nonlinear Viscoplastic Rods . 163 9.3 Summary . 168 REFERENCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 . 10 From Nonlinear to Linear Differential Equa.tions Using Transformation Groups. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 . 10.1 From Nonlinear to Linear Differential Equations . 170 10.2 Application to Ordinary Differential Equations -Bernoulli's Equation . . . . . . . . . . . 173 10.3 Application to Partial Differential Equations -A Nonlinear Chemical Exchange Process . 178 10.4 Limitations of the Inspectional Group Method . 187 10.5 Summary . 188 REFERENCES . . . . 188 11 Miscellaneous Topics . 190 11.1 Reduction of Differential Equations to Algebraic Equations 190 11.2 Reduction of Order of an Ordinary Differential Equation . 191 11.3 Transformat.ion From Ordinary to Partial Differential Equations-Search for First Integrals . . . . . . " 193 . 11.4 Reduction of Number of Variables by Multiparameter Groups of Transformations . . . . . . . . .. . . . 194 11.5 Self-Similar Solutions of the First and Second Kind . . 202 11.6 Normalized Representation and Dimensional Consideration 204 REFERENCES .206 Problems . 208 .220 Index .. Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL OUTLINE Physical problems in engineering science are often described by dif ferential models either linear or nonlinear. There is also an abundance of transformations of various types that appear in the literature of engineer ing and mathematics that are generally aimed at obtaining some sort of simplification of a differential model."

I wish to express my full indebtedness to all researchers in the field. Without their outstanding contribution to knowledge, this book would not have been written. The author wishes to express his sincere thanks and gratitude to Professors M. F. Ashby (University of Cambridge), N. D. Cristescu (University ofFlorida), N. Davids (The Pennsylvania State University), H. F. Frost (Dartmouth College), A W. Hendry (University of Edinburgh), F. A Leckie (University of California, Santa Barbara), A K. Mukherjee (University of California, Davis), T. Nojima (Kyoto University), J. T. Pindera (University of Waterloo), J. W. Provan (University of Victoria), K. Tanaka (Kyoto University), Y Tomita (Kobe University) and G. A Webster (Imperial College), and to Dr. H. J. Sutherland (Sandia National Laboratories). Permission granted to the author for the reproduction of figures and/or data by the following scientific societies, publishers and journals is gratefully acknowledged: ASME International, ASTM, Academic Press, Inc. , Addison Wesley Longman (Pearson Education), American Chemical Society, American Institute of Physics, Archives of Mechanics I Engineering Transactions (archiwum mechaniki stosawanej I rozprawy inzynierskie, Warsaw, Poland), British Textile Technology Group, Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd. (USA), Chapman & Hall Ltd. (International Thomson Publishing Services Ltd. ), Elsevier Science-NL (The Netherlands), Elsevier Science Limited (U. K. ), Elsevier SequoiaS. A (Switzerland), John Wiley & Sons, Inc. , lOP Publishing Limited (UK), Kluwer Academic Publishers (The Netherlands), Les Editions de Physique Les Ulis (France), Pergamon Press Ltd. (U. S. A), Society for Experimental Mechanics, Inc.

Magnetic Bearings are bearings where the suspension forces are generated magnetically without any contact. The advantages to modern machinery are obvious: no mechanical wear, no lubrication, potential for high rotor speed, accuracy, and high dynamic performance, new constructional solutions to a classical problem in machine dynamics. The realization of such bearings is in rapid progress. Examples for application areas are turbomachinery, centrifuges, vacuum techniques, machine tool spindles, chemical industry, medical devices, robotics, high speed drives, spacecraft equipment, con tactless actuators, vibration isolation. The Symposium is demonstrating the current state of the art in this developing field of mechatronics, showing actual research efforts, reporting on applications in the various areas, and discussing open questions. The main purpose of the Symposium has been to establish a common information basis for people working on magnetic bearings. It will point to promising areas, and it will help to facilitate decisions on research and development projects, and on investments for applications.

Dynamics of multibody systems is of great importance in the fields of robotics, biomechanics, spacecraft control, road and rail vehicle design, and dynamics of machinery. Many research problems have been solved and a considerable number of computer codes based on multibody formalisms is now available. With the present book it is intended to collect software systems for multibody system dynamics which are well established and have found acceptance in the users community. The Handbook will aid the reader in selecting the software system which is most appropriate to his needs. Altogether 17 research groups contributed to the Handbook. A compact summary of important capabilities of these software systems is presented in tabular form. All authors dealt with two typical test examples, a planar mechanism and a spatial robot. Thus, it is very easy to compare the results and to identify more clearly the advantages of one or the other formalism.

The inspiration from Biology and the Natural Evolution process has become a research area within computer science. For instance, the description of the arti?cial neuron given by McCulloch and Pitts was inspired from biological observations of neural mechanisms; the power of evolution in nature in the diverse species that make up our world has been related to a particular form of problem solving based on the idea of survival of the ?ttest; similarly, - ti?cial immune systems, ant colony optimisation, automated self-assembling programming, membrane computing, etc. also have their roots in natural phenomena. The ?rst and second editions of the International Workshop on Nature Inspired Cooperative Strategies for Optimization (NICSO), were held in Granada, Spain, 2006, and in Acireale, Italy, 2007, respectively. As in these two previous editions, the aim of NICSO 2008, held in Tenerife, Spain, was to provide a forum were the latest ideas and state of the art research related to nature inspired cooperative strategies for problem solving were discussed. The contributions collected in this book were strictly peer reviewed by at least three members of the international programme committee, to whom we are indebted for their support and assistance. The topics covered by the contributionsincludenature-inspiredtechniqueslikeGeneticAlgorithms, Ant Colonies, Amorphous Computing, Arti?cial Immune Systems, Evolutionary Robotics, Evolvable Systems, Membrane Computing, Quantum Computing, Software Self Assembly, Swarm Intelligence, etc

Product design significantly influences product cost and quality, as well as market share and profitability of a firm. Design projects often involve many people belonging to different functional areas and in many organizations several design projects may be under way at the same time. Due to this complexity, management of design has given rise to a rich set of research problems in management and engineering. In this volume, design is considered as the planning and specification activity prior to fabrication. Design determines what products will be produced, how they will be produced, and when they will be introduced into the market. The quality of the products and the speed with which they are developed are significantly affected by the design process. The design process by which a product is developed is determined by the managerial and engineering practices, tools and techniques. This book presents engineering and management perspectives on design. Topics covered include: Decomposition of product development projects; Tools and techniques for preliminary evaluation of designs; Interface between design and manufacturing, assembly and distribution; Design information flows, and Determination of the scope, timing and duration of projects, and the allocation of resources.

This book is a compilation of research accomplishments in the fields of modeling, simulation, and their applications, as presented at AsiaSim 2011 (Asia Simulation Conference 2011). The conference, held in Seoul, Korea, November 16-18, was organized by ASIASIM (Federation of Asian Simulation Societies), KSS (Korea Society for Simulation), CASS (Chinese Association for System Simulation), and JSST (Japan Society for Simulation Technology). AsiaSim 2011 provided a forum for scientists, academicians, and professionals from the Asia-Pacific region and other parts of the world to share their latest exciting research findings in modeling and simulation methodologies, techniques, and their tools and applications in military, communication network, industry, and general engineering problems.

Intelligent/smart systems have become common practice in many engineering applications. On the other hand, current low cost standard CMOS technology (and future foreseeable developments) makes available enormous potentialities. The next breakthrough will be the design and development of "smart adaptive systems on silicon" i.e. very power and highly size efficient complete systems (i.e. sensing, computing and "actuating" actions) with intelligence on board on a single silicon die. Smart adaptive systems on silicon will be able to "adapt" autonomously to the changing environment and will be able to implement "intelligent" behaviour and both perceptual and cognitive tasks. At last, they will communicate through wireless channels, they will be battery supplied or remote powered (via inductive coupling) and they will be ubiquitous in our every day life.

Although many books deal with research and engineering topics (i.e. algorithms, technology, implementations, etc.) few of them try to bridge the gap between them and to address the issues related to feasibility, reliability and applications. Smart Adaptive Systems on Silicon, though not exhaustive, tries to fill this gap and to give answers mainly to the feasibility and reliability issues.

Smart Adaptive Systems on Silicon mainly focuses on the analog and mixed mode implementation on silicon because this approach is amenable of achieving impressive energy and size efficiency. Moreover, analog systems can be more easily interfaced with sensing and actuating devices.

Over the last decade, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has become a - ture technology for the development of new products in aeronautical industry. Aerodynamic design engineers have progressively taken advantage of the pos- bilities o?ered by the numericalsolutionof the Reynolds averagedNavier-Stokes (RANS) equations. Signi?cant improvements in physical modeling and solution algorithms as well as the enormous increase of computer power enable hi- ?delity numerical simulations in all stages of aircraft development. In Germany, the national CFD project MEGAFLOW furthered the dev- opment and availability of RANS solvers for the prediction of complex ?ow problemssigni?cantly. MEGAFLOWwasinitiated by the?rstaviationresearch programoftheFederalGovernmentin1995undertheleadershipoftheDLR(see Kroll, N. , Fassbender, J. K. (Eds). : MEGAFLOW - Numerical Flow Simulation for Aircraft Design; Notes on Numerical Fluid Mechanics and Multidisciplinary Design, Volume 89, Springer, 2005). A network from aircraft industry, DLR and several universities was created with the goal to focus and direct development activities for numerical ?ow simulation towards a common aerodynamic si- lation system providing both a block-structured (FLOWer-Code) and a hybrid (TAU-Code) parallel ? ow prediction capability. Today, both codes have reached a high level of maturity and reliability. They are routinely used at DLR and German aeronautic industry for a wide range of aerodynamic applications. For many universities the MEGAFLOW software represents a platform for the - provementofphysicalmodelsandfortheinvestigationofcomplex?owproblems. The network was established as an e?cient group of very closely co-operating partners with supplementing expertises and experience.

A little more than a decade ago my colleagues and I faced the necessity for providing a database management system which might commonly serve a number of different types of computer aided design applications at different manufacturing enterprises. We evaluated some wellknown cases of conceptual models and commercially available DBMSs, and found none fuHy meeting the requirements. Yet the analysis of them led us to the development of what we named the Logical Structure Management System (LMS). Syntactically the LMS language is somewhat similar to ALPHA by E. F. Codd. The underly ing conceptual model is entirely different from that of the relational model, however. LMS has been since put into practical use, meanwhile a further ef fort in search of asound theoretical base and a concrete linguistic framework for true product modeling together with comparative studies of various ap proaches has been made. Here, the term product modeling is used to signify the construction of informational models of design objects and design pro cesses in which it must be possible to include not a fixed set of attributes and relations, such as geometry, physical properties, part-of hierarchy, etc., but whatever aspects of design designers may desire to be included. The purpose of this book is to present the major results of the said effort, which are primarily of a theoretical or conceptual nature. Following the intro duction (Chap."

The book may have the potential to fill a gap for researchers who will work in this field and those who need information by considering agriculture and digital technologies together for the needs of the digital age we are in today. Agriculture is a necessary industry for survival - it has become necessary to use the opportunities offered by technology in agricultural production. The reader will be able to see what the latest technologies used as technology in agriculture are and what kind of work has been done. It addresses agricultural needs and the issues showing how various technologies work and their components. It features information that the user can apply in the field. Topics are presented in a simple manner and comprehensive. The author has through hundreds of books and articles - literature on this topic remains scattered. Although most of his publications on Researchgate are in Turkish, the number of reads has exceeded 55,000 - these publications are on subject matter that will appear in this book - there should be lots of interest from both farmers and technology developers. Multidisciplinary - agriculture, agricultural engineering, computer engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, software engineering

This book compiles all aspects of biomimetics from fundamental principles to current technological advances and their future trends in the development of nanoscale biomaterials and tissue engineering. The scope of this book is principally confined to biologically-inspired design of materials and systems for the development of next generation nanobiomaterials and tissue engineering. The book addresses the state-of-the-art of research progress in the applications of the principles, processes, and techniques of biomimetics. The prospective outcomes of current advancements and challenges in biomimetic approaches are also presented.

Multiple Criteria Decision Support in Engineering Design examines some of the underlying issues and related modelling strategies, with a view to exploring the rich potential of a generalised multiple-criteria approach to design decision-making. The arguments are supported by numerical examples. It can be argued that, within the classic monocriterion paradigm, the optimal solution is inarguably identified once the feasible alternatives are established and an objective function agreed on. It is only when conflict resolution is involved that decision-making truly becomes important, and many design situations exist where stated functional requirements may be in actual or potential conflict. The most preferred solution under such circumstances depends on the designer's or decision-maker's priorities, so that the chosen solution is based on a combination of technical possibilities and designer preferences. This book addresses the key concepts in multiple criteria decision-making and provides valuable insight into how such problems arise and can be solved, in the area of decision-making in general and in the domain of engineering design in particular.

Model Order Reduction Techniqes focuses on model reduction problems with particular applications in electrical engineering. Starting with a clear outline of the technique and their wide methodological background, central topics are introduced including mathematical tools, physical processes, numerical computing experience, software developments and knowledge of system theory. Several model reduction algorithms are then discussed. The aim of this work is to give the reader an overview of reduced-order model design and an operative guide. Particular attention is given to providing basic concepts for building expert systems for model reducution.

Testing of Integrated Circuits is important to ensure the production of fault-free chips. However, testing is becoming cumbersome and expensive due to the increasing complexity of these ICs. Technology development has made it possible to produce chips where a complete system, with an enormous transistor count, operating at a high clock frequency, is placed on a single die - SOC (System-on-Chip). The device size miniaturization leads to new fault types, the increasing clock frequencies enforces testing for timing faults, and the increasing transistor count results in a higher number of possible fault sites. Testing must handle all these new challenges in an efficient manner having a global system perspective.

Test design is applied to make a system testable. In a modular core-based environment where blocks of reusable logic, the so called cores, are integrated to a system, test design for each core include: test method selection, test data (stimuli and responses) generation (ATPG), definition of test data storage and partitioning off-chip as ATE (Automatic Test Equipment) and/or on-chip as BIST (Built-In Self-Test)], wrapper selection and design (IEEE std 1500), TAM (test access mechanism) design, and test scheduling minimizing a cost function whilst considering limitations and constraint. A system test design perspective that takes all the issues above into account is required in order to develop a globally optimized solution.

SOC test design and its optimization is the topic of this book. It gives an introduction to testing, describes the problems related to SOC testing, discusses the modeling granularity and the implementation into EDA (electronic design automation) tools. The book is divided into three sections: i) test concepts, ii) SOC design for test, and iii) SOC test applications. The first part covers an introduction into test problems including faults, fault types, design-flow, design-for-test techniques such as scan-testing and Boundary Scan. The second part of the book discusses SOC related problems such as system modeling, test conflicts, power consumption, test access mechanism design, test scheduling and defect-oriented scheduling. Finally, the third part focuses on SOC applications, such as integrated test scheduling and TAM design, defect-oriented scheduling, and integrating test design with the core selection process.

nalog circuits are fascinating artifacts. They manipulate signals whose informa- Ationcontentisrichcomparedtodigitalsignalsthatcarryminimalamountofinf- mation;theyaredelicateinthatanyperturbationduetoparasiticelements,todelays,to interactionswithotherelementsandwiththeenvironmentmaycauseasigni?cantloss ofinformation. Thedif?cultyindealingwiththeseartifactsistoprotectthemfromall possibleattacks, evenminorones, fromthephysicalworld. Theironyisthattheyare oftenusedtofunnelinformationfromandtothephysicalworldtoandfromtheabstr- tionofthedigitalworldandforthisfunction, theyareirreplaceable. Nowonderthen that analog designers form a club of extraordinary gentlemen where art (or magic?) ratherthanscienceisthesharedtrade. Theyaredif?culttotrainsinceexperienceand intuitionarethetraitsthat characterize them. Andthey have dif?cultiesinexplaining what is the process they use to reach satisfactory results. Tools used for design (s- ulation) are mainly replacing the test benches of an experimental lab. However, the growing complexity of the integrated systems being designed today together with the increasing fragility of analog components brought about by shrinking geometries and reducedpowerconsumptionisposingseverechallengestotraditionalanalogdesigners to produce satisfactory results in a short time. At the same time, the need for expe- enced analog designers has increased constantly since almost all designs, because of integration,docontainanalogcomponents. Thissituationhascreatedastronginterest in developing design methodologies and supporting tools that are based on rigorous, mathematically literate, approaches. Doing so will make it possible to leverage the expertiseofseasonedanalogdesignersandtotrainnewgenerationsfasterandbetter. Inthepast, severalattemptshavebeenmadeinacademia andindustrytocreatethese methodologies and to extend the set of tools available. They have had questionable acceptance in the analog design community. However, recently, a ?urry of start-ups andincreasedinvestmentbyEDAcompaniesinnoveltoolssignalasigni?cantchange inmarketattentiontotheanalogdomain. Ipersonallybelievethattosubstantially- prove quality and design time, tools are simply insuf?cient. A design methodology based on a hierarchy of abstraction layers, successive re?nement between two ad- cent layers, and extensive veri?cation at every layer is necessary. To do so, we need to build theories and models that have strong mathematical foundations. The analog design technology community is as strong as it has ever been.

Low Noise Amplifiers (LNAs) are commonly used to amplify signals that are too weak for direct processing for example in radio or cable receivers. Traditionally, low noise amplifiers are implemented via tuned amplifiers, exploiting inductors and capacitors in resonating LC-circuits. This can render very low noise but only in a relatively narrow frequency band close to resonance. There is a clear trend to use more bandwidth for communication, both via cables (e.g. cable TV, internet) and wireless links (e.g. satellite links and Ultra Wideband Band). Hence wideband low-noise amplifier techniques are very much needed.

Wideband Low Noise Amplifiers Exploiting Thermal Noise Cancellation explores techniques to realize wideband amplifiers, capable of impedance matching and still achieving a low noise figure well below 3dB. This can be achieved with a new noise cancelling technique as described in this book. By using this technique, the thermal noise of the input transistor of the LNA can be cancelled while the wanted signal is amplified The book gives a detailed analysis of this technique and presents several new amplifier circuits.

This book is directly relevant for IC designers and researchers working on integrated transceivers. Although the focus is on CMOS circuits, the techniques can just as well be applied to other IC technologies, e.g. bipolar and GaAs, and even in discrete component technologies.

This symposium, held at Innsbruck/lgls on June 21-26, 1987, is the fifth in a series of IUTAM-Symposia on the application of stochastic methods in mechanics. The flrst two meetings in Warwick (1972) and Southhampton (1976) concentrated on the stability of stochastic dynamical systems and stochastic methods in dynamics, respectively. The third meeting in Frankfurt/Oder (1982) added aspects of reliability, while the fourth symposium in Stockholm (1984) dealt mainly with fatigue and fracture problems. The general theme of the present symposium is devoted to nonlinear stochastic dynamics of engineering systems which is believed of great importance for providing the tools for basic development and progress in various fields of mechanical-, structural- and aeronautical engineering, particularly in the areas of vehicle dynamics, multi-storey structural dynamics, systems identiflcation, offshore structural dynamics, nuclear structures under various stochastic loading conditions (i. e. wind-, earthquake-, parametric excitations, etc. ). The contributions collected in this volume cover a wide spectrum of topics ranging from more theoretical, analytical and numerical treatment to practical application in various flelds. The truly international character of the meeting is accomplished by 42 contributions and 86 participants from as many as 19 countries and hence, contributed to the original idea of IUTAM, which is to foster international cooperation. It should be recalled, that, for getting this cooperation started again after the First World War, Theodore von Kanmm and Tullio Levi-Civita called the world's flrst international (IUTAM) conference on hydro- and aerornechanics in 1922 in Innsbruck, Austria.

The Fourth International Conference on Advanced Robotics was held in Columbus, Ohio, U. S. A. on June 13th to 15th, 1989. The first two conferences in this series were held in Tokyo. The third was held in Versailles, France in October 1987. The International Conference on Advanced Robotics is affiliated with the International Federation of Robotics. This conference was sponsored by The Ohio State University. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers was a cooperating co-sponsor. The objective of the International Conference on Advanced Robotics is to provide an international exchange of information on the topic of advanced robotics. This was adopted as one of the themes for international research cooperation at a meeting of representatives of seven industrialized countries held in Williamsburg, U. S. A. in May 1983. The present conference is truly international in character with contributions from authors of twelve countries. (Bulgaria, Canada, France, Great Britain, India, Italy, Japan, Peoples Republic of China, Poland, Republic of China, Spain, United States of America.) The subject matter of the papers is equally diverse, covering most technical areas of robotics. The authors are distinguished. They are leaders in the field in their respective countries. The International Conference on Advanced Robotics has always particularly encouraged papers oriented to the design of robotic systems, or to research directed at advanced applications in service robotics, construction, nuclear power, agriculture, mining, underwater systems, and space systems.