Kinematic And Dynamic Issues in Sensor Based Control

Mechanical engineering, an engineering discipline born of the needs of the industrial revolution, is once again asked to do its substantial share in the call for industrial renewal. The general call is urgent as we face profound issues of productivity and competitiveness that require engineering solu­ tions, among others. The Mechanical Engineering Series features graduate texts and research monographs intended to address the need for informa­ tion in contemporary areas of mechanical engineering. The series is conceived as a comprehensive one that will cover a broad range of concentrations important to mechanical engineering graduate edu­ cation and research. We are fortunate to have a distinguished roster of consulting editors, each an expert in one of the areas of concentration. The names of the consulting editors are listed on the front page of the volume. The areas of concentration are applied mechanics, biomechanics, computa­ tional mechanics, dynamic systems and control, energetics, mechanics of material, processing, thermal science, and tribology. Professor Leckie, the consulting editor for applied mechanics, and I are pleased to present this volume of the series: Kinematic and Dynamic Simulation of Multibody Systems: The Real-Time Challenge by Professors Garcia de Jal6n and Bayo. The selection of this volume underscores again the interest of the Mechanical Engineering Series to provide our readers with topical monographs as well as graduate texts. Austin Texas Frederick F. Ling v The first author dedicates this book to the memory of Prof F. Tegerizo (t 1988), who introduced him to kinematics.

The book under review presents a comprehensive treatment of all aspects of modeling and numerical analysis of multibody systems. It contains many illustrations and examples and is suitable as a textbook for one or two graduate courses in multibody dynamics.

Reliability and Risk Issues in Large Scale Safety-critical Digital Control Systems provides some important coverage of reliability issues and their corresponding countermeasures in the field of large-scale digital control systems, from the hardware and software in digital systems to the human operators who supervise the overall process of large-scale systems. Unlike other books which examine theories and issues in individual fields, this book reviews important problems and countermeasures across the fields of hardware and system reliability, software reliability, verification and validation, digital systems, human factors engineering and human reliability analysis.