Page 6 - Dynamics of Mechanical Systems

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Preface

This is a textbook intended for mid- to upper-level undergraduate students in engineering
and physics. The objective of the book is to give readers a working knowledge of dynamics,
enabling them to analyze mechanical systems ranging from elementary and fundamental
systems such as planar mechanisms to more advanced systems such as robots, space
mechanisms, and human body models. The emphasis of the book is upon the fundamental
procedures underlying these dynamic analyses. Readers are expected to obtain skills
ranging from the ability to perform insightful hand analyses to the ability to develop
algorithms for numerical/computer analyses. In this latter regard, the book is also
intended to serve as an independent study text and as a reference book for beginning
graduate students and for practicing engineers.
Mechanical systems are becoming increasingly sophisticated, with applications requir-
ing greater precision, improved reliability, and extended life. These enhanced requirements
are spurred by a demand for advanced land, air, and space vehicles; by a corresponding
demand for advanced mechanisms, manipulators, and robotics systems; and by a need
to have a better understanding of the dynamics of biosystems. The book is intended to
enable its readers to make engineering advances in each of these areas. The authors believe
that the skills needed to make such advances are best obtained by illustratively studying
fundamental mechanical components such as pendulums, gears, cams, and mechanisms
while reviewing the principles of vibrations, stability, and balancing. The study of these
subjects is facilitated by a knowledge of kinematics and skill in the use of Newton’s laws,
energy methods, Lagrange’s equations, and Kane’s equations. The book is intended to
provide a means for mastering all of these concepts.
The book is written to be readily accessible to students and readers having a background
in elementary physics, mathematics through calculus and differential equations, and ele-
mentary mechanics. The book itself is divided into 20 chapters, with the first two chapters
providing introductory remarks and a review of vector algebra. The next three chapters
are devoted to kinematics, with the last of these focusing upon planar kinematics. Chapter
6 discusses forces and force systems, and Chapter 7 provides a comprehensive review of
inertia including inertia dyadics and procedures for obtaining the principal moments of
inertia and the corresponding principal axes of inertia.
Fundamental principles of dynamics (Newton’s laws and d’Alembert’s principle) are
presented in Chapter 8, and the use of impulse–momentum and work–energy principles
is presented in the next two chapters with application to accident reconstruction. Chapters
11 and 12 introduce generalized dynamics and the use of Lagrange’s equation and Kane’s
equations with application to multiple rod pendulum problems. The next five chapters
are devoted to applications that involve the study of vibration, stability, balancing, cams,
and gears, including procedures for studying nonlinear vibrations and engine balancing.
The last three chapters present an introduction to multibody dynamics with application
to robotics and biosystems.
Application and illustrative examples are discussed and presented in each chapter, and
exercises and problems are provided at the end of each chapter. In addition, each chapter
has its own list of references for additional study. Although the earlier chapters provide
the basis for the latter chapters, each chapter is written to be as self-contained as possible,
with excerpts from earlier chapters provided as needed.