This book provides a comprehensive treatment of the development and present state of the theory of sensitivity of dynamic systems. It is intended as a textbook and reference for researchers and scientists in electrical engineering, control and information theory as well as for mathematicians. The extensive and structured bibliography provides an overview of the literature in the field and points out directions for further research.

A text surveying perturbation techniques and sensitivity analysis of linear systems is an ambitious undertaking, considering the lack of basic comprehensive texts on the subject. A wide-ranging and global coverage of the topic is as yet missing, despite the existence of numerous monographs dealing with specific topics but generally of use to only a narrow category of people. In fact, most works approach this subject from the numerical analysis point of view. Indeed, researchers in this field have been most concerned with this topic, although engineers and scholars in all fields may find it equally interesting. One can state, without great exaggeration, that a great deal of engineering work is devoted to testing systems' sensitivity to changes in design parameters. As a rule, high-sensitivity elements are those which should be designed with utmost care. On the other hand, as the mathematical modelling serving for the design process is usually idealized and often inaccurately formulated, some unforeseen alterations may cause the system to behave in a slightly different manner. Sensitivity analysis can help the engineer innovate ways to minimize such system discrepancy, since it starts from the assumption of such a discrepancy between the ideal and the actual system.

The availability of powerful computers along with highly effective computational techniques have allowed computer-aided design and engineering of structural dynamics systems to achieve a high level of capability and importance. This volume clearly reveals the great significance of these techniques and the essential role they will play in the future as further development occurs. This will be a significant and unique reference for students, research workers, practitioners, computer scientists and others for years to come.

Sensitivity Methods in Control Theory is a collection of manuscripts presented as the Third International Symposium of Sensitivity Analysis, held at Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia on August 31-September 5, 1964, sponsored by The Theory Committee of International Federation of Automatic Control. Sensitivity theory or sensitivity analysis concerns the solution of problems associated with parameter variations within the general scope of control theory. This book is organized into five parts encompassing 30 chapters. Part I presents some basic approaches of sensitivity analysis, such the Lyapunov's theory of stability, invariant imbedding, nonlinear sampled data, and linear time-varying systems. This part also looks into the preliminary steps towards the development of game theory and some general applications of sensitivity analysis. Part II treats the problem of accuracy, reliability, self-adjustment, and optimization of sensitivity of automatic control systems, while Part III deals with the functional derivative technique of sensitivity analysis and its applications for designing self-adjusting control systems. Part IV describes the task of synthesizing control systems for linear plants with variable parameters satisfying specified performance criteria. Part V considers the association between sensitivity and optimality in various control systems. This book will prove useful to design and other specialized fields in engineering.

Masters Theses in the Pure and Applied Sciences was first conceived, published, and disseminated by the Center for Information and Numerical Data Analysis and Synthesis (CINDAS) * at Purdue University in 1957, starting its coverage of theses with the academic year 1955. Beginning with Volume 13, the printing and dissemination phases of the activity were transferred to University Microfilms/Xerox of Ann Arbor, Michigan, with the thought that such an arrangement would be more beneficial to the academic and general scientific and technical community. After five years of this joint undertaking we had concluded that it was in the interest of all con cerned if the printing and distribution of the volumes were handled by an interna tional publishing house to assure improved service and broader dissemination. Hence, starting with Volume 18, Masters Theses in the Pure and Applied Sciences has been disseminated on a worldwide basis by Plenum Publishing Cor poration of New York, and in the same year the coverage was broadened to include Canadian universities. All back issues can also be ordered from Plenum. We have reported in Volume 34 (thesis year 1989) a total of 13,377 theses titles from 26 Canadian and 184 United States universities. We are sure that this broader base for these titles reported will greatly enhance the value of this important annual reference work. While Volume 34 reports theses submitted in 1989, on occasion, certain univer sities do report theses submitted in previous years but not reported at the time.