The International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM) initiated and sponsored an International Symposium on Optimization of Mechanical Systems held in 1995 in Stuttgart, Germany. The Symposium was intended to bring together scientists working in different fields of optimization to exchange ideas and to discuss new trends with special emphasis on multi body systems. A Scientific Committee was appointed by the Bureau of IUTAM with the following members: S. Arimoto (Japan) EL. Chernousko (Russia) M. Geradin (Belgium) E.J. Haug (U.S.A.) C.A.M. Soares (Portugal) N. Olhoff (Denmark) W.O. Schiehlen (Germany, Chairman) K. Schittkowski (Germany) R.S. Sharp (U.K.) W. Stadler (U.S.A.) H.-B. Zhao (China) This committee selected the participants to be invited and the papers to be presented at the Symposium. As a result of this procedure, 90 active scientific participants from 20 countries followed the invitation, and 49 papers were presented in lecture and poster sessions.

During the last decades, applications of dynamical analysis in advanced, often nonlinear, engineering systems have been evolved in a revolutionary way. In this context one can think of applications in aerospace engineering like satellites, in naval engineering like ship motion, in mechanical engineering like rotating machinery, vehicle systems, robots and biomechanics, and in civil engineering like earthquake dynamics and offshore technology. One could continue with this list for a long time. The application of advanced dynamics in the above fields has been possible due to the use of sophisticated computational techniques employing powerful concepts of nonlinear dynamics. These concepts have been and are being developed in mathematics, mechanics and physics. It should be remarked that careful experimental studies are vitally needed to establish the real existence and observability of the predicted dynamical phenomena. The interaction between nonlinear dynamics and nonlinear control in advanced engineering systems is becoming of increasing importance because of several reasons. Firstly, control strategies in nonlinear systems are used to obtain desired dynamic behaviour and improved reliability during operation, Applications include power plant rotating machinery, vehicle systems, robotics, etc. Terms like motion control, optimal control and adaptive control are used in this field of interest. Since mechanical and electronic components are often necessary to realize the desired action in practice, the engineers use the term mechatronics to indicate this field. If the desired dynamic behaviour is achieved by changing design variables (mostly called system parameters), one can think of fields like control of chaos.

During the last decades, the growth of micro-electronics has reduced the cost of computing power to a level acceptable to industry and has made possible sophisticated control strategies suitable for many applications. Vibration c- trol is applied to all kinds of engineering systems to obtain the desired dynamic behavior, improved accuracy and increased reliability during operation. In this context, one can think of applications related to the control of structures’ vib- tion isolation, control of vehicle dynamics, noise control, control of machines and mechanisms and control of ?uid-structure-interaction. One could continue with this list for a long time. Research in the ?eld of vibration control is extremely comprehensive. Pr- lems that are typical for vibration control of nonlinear mechanisms and str- tures arise in the ?elds of modeling systems in such a way that the model is suitable for control design, to choose appropriate actuator and sensor locations and to select the actuators and sensors. Theobjective of the Symposium was to present anddiscuss methodsthat contribute to thesolution of such problems and to demonstrate the state of the art inthe ?eld shown by typical examples. The intention was to evaluate the limits of performance that can beachievedby controlling the dynamics, and to point out gaps in present research and give links for areas offuture research.Mainly, it brought together leading experts from quite different areas presenting theirpoints of view.

The purpose of this monograph is to show how a compliant offshore structure in an ocean environment can be modeled in two and three di mensions. The monograph is divided into five parts. Chapter 1 provides the engineering motivation for this work, that is, offshore structures. These are very complex structures used for a variety of applications. It is possible to use beam models to initially study their dynamics. Chapter 2 is a review of variational methods, and thus includes the topics: princi ple of virtual work, D'Alembert's principle, Lagrange's equation, Hamil ton's principle, and the extended Hamilton's principle. These methods are used to derive the equations of motion throughout this monograph. Chapter 3 is a review of existing transverse beam models. They are the Euler-Bernoulli, Rayleigh, shear and Timoshenko models. The equa tions of motion are derived and solved analytically using the extended Hamilton's principle, as outlined in Chapter 2. For engineering purposes, the natural frequencies of the beam models are presented graphically as functions of normalized wave number and geometrical and physical pa rameters. Beam models are useful as representations of complex struc tures. In Chapter 4, a fluid force that is representative of those that act on offshore structures is formulated. The environmental load due to ocean current and random waves is obtained using Morison's equa tion. The random waves are formulated using the Pierson-Moskowitz spectrum with the Airy linear wave theory.

Annotation This is the first monograph devoted to the foundation of the theory of composite anisotropic thin-walled beams and to its applications in various problems involving the aeronautical/aerospace, helicopter, naval and mechanical structures. Throughout the theoretical part, an effort was made to provide the treatment of the subject by using the equations of the 3-D elasticity theory. Non-classical effects such as transverse shear, warping constraint, anisotropy of constituent materials yielding the coupling of twist-bending (lateral), bending (transversal)-extension have been included and their implications have been thoroughly analyzed. Thermal effects have been included and in order to be able to circumvent their deleterious effects, functionally graded materials have been considered in their construction. Implications of the application of the tailoring technique and of the active feedback control on free vibration, dynamic response, instability and aeroelasticity of such structures have been amply investigated. Special care was exercised throughout this work to address and validate the adopted solution methodologies and the obtained results against those available in the literature and obtained via numerical or experimental means.

This book is concerned with the methods of solving the nonlinear Boltz mann equation and of investigating its possibilities for describing some aerodynamic and physical problems. This monograph is a sequel to the book 'Numerical direct solutions of the kinetic Boltzmann equation' (in Russian) which was written with F. G. Tcheremissine and published by the Computing Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences some years ago. The main purposes of these two books are almost similar, namely, the study of nonequilibrium gas flows on the basis of direct integration of the kinetic equations. Nevertheless, there are some new aspects in the way this topic is treated in the present monograph. In particular, attention is paid to the advantages of the Boltzmann equation as a tool for considering nonequi librium, nonlinear processes. New fields of application of the Boltzmann equation are also described. Solutions of some problems are obtained with higher accuracy. Numerical procedures, such as parallel computing, are in vestigated for the first time. The structure and the contents of the present book have some com mon features with the monograph mentioned above, although there are new issues concerning the mathematical apparatus developed so that the Boltzmann equation can be applied for new physical problems. Because of this some chapters have been rewritten and checked again and some new chapters have been added.

This unique book is dedicated to the application of self-consistent methods to the solution of static and dynamic problems of the mechanics and physics of composite materials. The effective elastic, electric, dielectric, thermo-conductive and other properties of composite materials reinforced by ellipsoidal, spherical multi-layered inclusions, thin hard and soft inclusions, short fibers and unidirected multi-layered fibers are considered. The book contains many concrete results.

Composite structures and products have developed tremendously since the publication of the first edition of this work in 1986. This new edition of the now classic 1986 text has been written to educate the engineering reader in the various aspects of mechanics for using composite materials in the design and analysis of composite structures and products. Areas dealt with include manufacture, micromechanical properties, structural design, joints and bonding and a much needed introduction to composite design philosophy. Each chapter is concluded by numerous problems suitable for home assignments or examination. A solution guide is available on request from the authors.

The aim of this book is to present the mathematical theory and the know-how to make computer programs for the numerical approximation of Optimal Control of PDE's. The computer programs are presented in a straightforward generic language. As a consequence they are well structured, clearly explained and can be translated easily into any high level programming language. Applications and corresponding numerical tests are also given and discussed. To our knowledge, this is the first book to put together mathematics and computer programs for Optimal Control in order to bridge the gap between mathematical abstract algorithms and concrete numerical ones. The text is addressed to students and graduates in Mathematics, Mechanics, Applied Mathematics, Numerical Software, Information Technology and Engineering. It can also be used for Master and Ph.D. programs.

In this new edition, the fundamental material on classical linear aeroelasticity has been revised. Also new material has been added describing recent results on the research frontiers dealing with nonlinear aeroelasticity as well as major advances in the modelling of unsteady aerodynamic flows using the methods of computational fluid dynamics and reduced order modeling techniques. New chapters on aeroelasticity in turbomachinery and aeroelasticity and the latter chapters for a more advanced course, a graduate seminar or as a reference source for an entrée to the research literature.