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.

This text is an introduction to the dynamics of active structures and to the feedback control of lightly damped flexible structures; the emphasis is placed on basic issues and simple control strategies that work.

Now in its third edition, more chapters have been added, and comments and feedback from readers have been taken into account, while at the same time the unique premise of bridging the gap between structure and control has remained. Many examples and problems bring the subject to life and take the audience from theory to practice.

The book has chapters dealing with some concepts in structural dynamics; electromagnetic and piezoelectric transducers; piezoelectric beam, plate and truss; passive damping with piezoelectric transducers; collocated versus non-collocated control; active damping with collocated systems; vibration isolation; state space approach; analysis and synthesis in the frequency domain; optimal control; controllability and observability; stability; applications; tendon control of cable structures; active control of large telescopes; and semi-active control. The book concludes with an exhaustive bibliography and index.

This book is intended for structural engineers who want to acquire some background in vibration control; it can be used as a textbook for a graduate course on vibration control or active structures.

A solutions manual is available through the publisher to teachers using this book as a textbook.

This text is an introduction to the feedback control of lightly damped flexible structures; the emphasis is placed on basic issues such as actuator and sensor selection, placement and dynamics, and actual implementation for solving practical problems. The book consists of 11 chapters; in chapters 2 to 5, the open-loop transfer functions of various active structures are derived from their constitutive equations; the discussion includes a truss and sandwich beams and plates with embedded piezoelectric actuators and sensors. The virtues of collocated actuator-sensor configurations are pointed out and used to develop active damping with guaranteed stability. Chapters 6 to 8 are devoted to the model-based control of SISO systems; optimal control is developed graphically using the symmetric root locus; the gain-phase relationship is discussed and the design tradeoffs are explained in the frequency domain. The issues of robustness with respect to the parametric uncertainty and the spillover instability are examined. After two short chapters on controllability (ch. 9) and stability (ch. 10), the book concludes with a set of applications to active damping and precision positioning of a set of aerospace, mechanical and civil engineering structures. The book is intended for structural engineers who want to acquire some background in vibration control; it can be used as a textbook for a graduate course on vibration control or active structures. The text is supplemented with 98 problems.

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.

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.

Structural vibrations have become the critical factor limiting the performance of many engineering systems, typical amplitudes ranging from meters to a few nanometers. Many acoustic nuisances in transportation systems and residential and office buildings are also related to structural vibrations. The active control of such vibrations involves nine orders of magnitude of vibration amplitude, which exerts a profound influence on the technology. Active vibration control is highly multidisciplinary, involving structural vibration, acoustics, signal processing, materials science, and actuator and sensor technology.

Chapters 1-3 of this book provide a state-of-the-art introduction to active vibration control, active sound control, and active vibroacoustic control, respectively. Chapter 4 discusses actuator/sensor placement, Chapter 5 deals with robust control of vibrating structures, Chapter 6 discusses finite element modelling of piezoelectric continua and Chapter 7 addresses the latest trends in piezoelectric multiple-degree-of-freedom actuators/sensors. Chapters 8-12 deal with example applications, including semi-active joints, active isolation and health monitoring. Chapter 13 addresses MEMS technology, while Chapter 14 discusses the design of power amplifiers for piezoelectric actuators.