The interest of the applied mechanics community in chaotic dynamics of engineering systems has exploded in the last fifteen years, although research activity on nonlinear dynamical problems in mechanics started well before the end of the Eighties. It developed first within the general context of the classical theory of nonlinear oscillations, or nonlinear vibrations, and of the relevant engineering applications. This was an extremely fertile field in terms of formulation of mechanical and mathematical models, of development of powerful analytical techniques, and of understanding of a number of basic nonlinear phenomena. At about the same time, meaningful theoretical results highlighting new solution methods and new or complex phenomena in the dynamics of deterministic systems were obtained within dynamical systems theory by means of sophisticated geometrical and computational techniques. In recent years, careful experimental studies have been made to establish the actual occurrence and observability of the predicted dynamic phenomena, as it is vitally needed in all engineering fields. Complex dynamics have been shown to characterize the behaviour of a great number of nonlinear mechanical systems, ranging from aerospace engineering applications to naval applications, mechanical engineering, structural engineering, robotics and biomechanics, and other areas. The International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics grasped the importance of such complex phenomena in the Eighties, when the first IUTAM Symposium devoted to the general topic of nonlinear and chaotic dynamics in applied mechanics and engineering was held in Stuttgart (1989).

This is a state-of-the-art treatise on the problems of both nonlinearity and uncertainty in the dynamics and control of engineering systems. The concept of dynamics and control implies the combination of dynamic analysis and control synthesis. It is essential to gain insight into the dynamics of a nonlinear system with uncertainty if any new control strategy is designed to utilize nonlinearity.

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.

What can be added to the fracture mechanics of metal fatigue that has not already been said since the 1900s? From the view point of the material and structure engineer, there are many aspects of failure by fatigue that are in need of attention, particularly when the size and time of the working components are changed by orders of magnitude from those considered by st traditional means. The 21 century marks an era of technology transition where structures are made larger and devices are made smaller, rendering the method of destructive testing unpractical. While health monitoring entered the field of science and engineering, the practitioners are discovering that the correlation between the signal and the location of interest depends on a priori knowledge of where failure may initiate. This information is not easy to find because the integrity of the physical system will change with time. Required is software that can self-adjust in time according to the monitored data. In this connection, effective application of health monitoring can use a predictive model of fatigue crack growth. Earlier fatigue crack growth models assumed functional dependence on the maximum stress and the size of the pre-existing crack or defect. Various possibilities were examined in the hope that the data could be grouped such that linear interpolation would apply.

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 material in this work is focused on recent developments in research into the stress-strain behavior of geomaterials, with an emphasis on laboratory measurements, soil constitutive modeling and behavior of soil structures (such as reinforced soils, piles and slopes). The latest advancements in the field, such as the rate effect and dynamic behavior of both clay and sand, behavior of modified soils and soil mixtures, and soil liquefaction are addressed.

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.