Introduction to the Control of Dynamic Systems

Smetana has written an integrated course book about dynamics and automatic controls for introductory students in vibrations, dynamics, digital and automatic controls, dynamics of machinery, linear systems, and modeling. Upper-level undergraduate students are sure to benefit from Smetana's 40 years of experience in the field. The book emphasizes a common methodology and seeks to aid student understanding with SOLVE software to permit easy and comprehensive numerical experiments to answer "what if" questions, more than 350 illustrations, and details about how solutions are achieved and how to analyze the results. Discussion of various software packages reinforces the author's view that "engineering education will eventually emulate the engineering workplace in its use of 'canned' software." A 95-page user's manual for the SOLVE software provides FORTRAN codes for evaluating analytical solutions to systems of linear differential equations; it comes with two 3.5-inch PC diskettes. The goal is to prepare the newly graduated engineer to analyze the response of a flexible system to command and to determine rationally how the system's performance can be brought to the desired level of performance.