Page 7 - Mechanical Engineers' Handbook (Volume 2)

Preface

The second volume of the third edition of the Mechanical Engineers’ Handbook (‘‘ME3’’)
is comprised of two major parts: Part 1, Instrumentation, with eight chapters, and Part 2,
Systems, Controls, and MEMS, with 13 chapters. The two parts are linked in the sense that
most feedback control systems require measurement transducers. Most of the chapters in this
volume originated not only in earlier editions of the Mechanical Engineers’ Handbook but
also in a book called Instrumentation and Control, which was edited by Chester L. Nachtigal
and published by Wiley in 1990. Some of these chapters have been either updated or exten-
sively revised. Some have been replaced. Others, which present timeless, fundamental con-
1
cepts, have been included without change. In addition, there are chapters that are entirely
new, including Digital Integrated Circuits: A Practical Application (Chapter 8), Neural Net-
works in Control Systems (Chapter 19), Mechatronics (Chapter 20), and Introduction to
Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS): Design and Application (Chapter 21).
The instrumentation chapters basically are arranged, as they were in the Nachtigal vol-
ume, in the order of the flow of information in real measurement systems. These chapters
start with fundamentals of transducer design, present transducers used by mechanical engi-
neers, including strain gages, temperature transducers such as thermocouples and thermistors,
and flowmeters, and then discuss issues involved in processing signals from transducers and
in acquiring and displaying data. A general chapter on measurement fundamentals, updated
from the second edition of Mechanical Engineers’Handbook (‘‘ME2’’), as well as the chapter
on digital integrated circuits have been added to the half-dozen Instrumentation and Control
chapters in this first part.
The systems and control chapters in the second part of this volume start with three
chapters from ME2, two of which have been updated, and move on to seven chapters from
Nachtigal, only two of which required updating. These ten chapters present a general dis-
cussion of systems engineering; fundamentals of control system design, analysis, and per-
formance modification; and detailed information about the design of servoactuators,
controllers, and general-purpose control devices. This second part of Vol. II concludes with
the chapters, all of them new to the handbook, on what are termed ‘‘new departures’’—
neural networks, mechatronics, and MEMS. These topics have become increasingly impor-
tant to mechanical engineers in recent years.

1 A new edition of Instrumentation and Control has been sought after but has never appeared. Because
several chapters had numerous contributors, it proved impossible to update or revise them or even to
find anyone to write new chapters on the same topics on the schedule that other contributors could meet.
Because the material in these chapters was outdated, they have been dropped from this edition, but may
be revised for future editions.

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