This book discusses efforts to control the low-frequency vibration transmission of typical power equipment and pipeline systems of ships, exploring the use of active and passive hybrid vibration isolation and adjustable dynamic vibration absorption technologies. It also proposes an adaptive feed-forward control strategy and studies a distributed feed-forward control hardware system. In addition, the book presents a three-way dynamic vibration absorption theory used to design a pipeline-system adjustable dynamic vibration absorber, which offers a number of advantages, such as compact structure, easy assembly and disassembly, low power consumption, excellent vibration control effect and wide frequency band adjustable ability, etc. This book is a valuable resource for researchers and engineers in the fields of noise and vibration control, active control systems, active vibration isolation and adaptive dynamic vibration absorption.

The book is motivated by the pivotal issue: what is the performance limit of active control and energy harvesting? It aims to develop systematic design methodologies with a “visualization technique” where the performance limit can be readily determined solely based on visual inspections. Modern technological systems have evolved toward high speed, heavy load, lightweight, flexible operation and extreme conditions, as demonstrated in aerospace, marine, transportation and manufacturing industries. The associated vibration and noise issues have become such problematic that they may significantly confine the performance of the systems, to say the discomfort at least. Through the geometric representation of the performance specifications, fundamental issues such as (1) the existence of feasible controllers; (2) the optimality of controllers; (3) the performance limit of controllers; (4) compromisability among the performance specifications; (5) the synthesis of controllers; and (6) the influence of constraints on optimal solutions can all be resolved within the proposed framework. The state of the art is thus refined with a new approach complementary to those optimization-based routines, where extra effort would have to be exercised to disclose the compromisability of performance specifications. The proposed book will result in a new design methodology—performance limit-oriented active control. It was initiated by the author with the project “Active Control for Performance Limit” (ACPL). A series of fundamental results are obtained and will be disseminated in this book. The results are verified through extensive numerical demonstrations and are expected to provide useful guidance for practical engineering in the vibration and noise industry and research.

Power Transmission and Motion Control 2004 (PTMC) comprises papers by authors from twelve countries. Presented at PTMC 2004- one of a series of annual Workshops held at the Bath University- this collection of well illustrated papers reports on latest developments from key international research centres in the fields of hydraulic and pneumatic motion control. Topics include: Drives, transmissions, and actuators Hydraulic and pneumatic components and systems Modelling and simulation Control Hydraulic fluids Condition monitoring Noise and Vibration Actuation systems Hydraulic system design Measurement techniques Essential reading for researchers and practitioners working in the fields of power transmission, motion control, hydraulics, and pneumatics.