This updated second edition broadens the explanation of rotational kinematics and dynamics — the most important aspect of rigid body motion in three-dimensional space and a topic of much greater complexity than linear motion. It expands treatment of vector and matrix, and includes quaternion operations to describe and analyze rigid body motion which are found in robot control, trajectory planning, 3D vision system calibration, and hand-eye coordination of robots in assembly work, etc. It features updated treatments of concepts in all chapters and case studies. The textbook retains its comprehensiveness in coverage and compactness in size, which make it easily accessible to the readers from multidisciplinary areas who want to grasp the key concepts of rigid body mechanics which are usually scattered in multiple volumes of traditional textbooks. Theoretical concepts are explained through examples taken from across engineering disciplines and links to applications and more advanced courses (e.g. industrial robotics) are provided. Ideal for students and practitioners, this book provides readers with a clear path to understanding rigid body mechanics and its significance in numerous sub-fields of mechanical engineering and related areas.

This is a comprehensive and accessible text that discusses all the aspects of fluid mechanics in concise manner and easy to understand language. The contents of the book have been designed to match with the exact needs of the students. The book has attempted to provide linkages between the different fundamental concepts of fluid mechanics. It gives a holistic knowledge of the logic behind each of them through illustrations and simple worked-out examples. These features will help to approach any problem in a systematic way based on the theory learnt. After the end of each chapter, students will have a chance to review a summary of the presented features. Chapter-end problems have been carefully selected to supplement the theoretical knowledge. The book contains a list of important references at the end of each chapter, to serve as a guide to those students and teachers who wish to delve deeper into the subject matter.

This book is intended to help the reader understand impact phenomena as a focused application of diverse topics such as rigid body dynamics, structural dynamics, contact and continuum mechanics, shock and vibration, wave propagation and material modelling. It emphasizes the need for a proper assessment of sophisticated experimental/computational tools promoted widely in contemporary design. A unique feature of the book is its presentation of several examples and exercises to aid further understanding of the physics and mathematics of impact process from first principles, in a way that is simple to follow.

This textbook is a modern, concise and focused treatment of the mathematical techniques, physical theories and applications of rigid body mechanics, bridging the gap between the geometric and more classical approaches to the topic. It emphasizes the fundamentals of the subject, stresses the importance of notation, integrates the modern geometric view of mechanics and offers a wide variety of examples -- ranging from molecular dynamics to mechanics of robots and planetary rotational dynamics. The author has unified his presentation such that applied mathematicians, mechanical and astro-aerodynamical engineers, physicists, computer scientists and astronomers can all meet the subject on common ground, despite their diverse applications. * Free solutions manual available for lecturers at www.wiley-vch.de/supplements/

Rigid Body Dynamics Algorithms presents the subject of computational rigid-body dynamics through the medium of spatial 6D vector notation. It explains how to model a rigid-body system and how to analyze it, and it presents the most comprehensive collection of the best rigid-body dynamics algorithms to be found in a single source. The use of spatial vector notation greatly reduces the volume of algebra which allows systems to be described using fewer equations and fewer quantities. It also allows problems to be solved in fewer steps, and solutions to be expressed more succinctly. In addition algorithms are explained simply and clearly, and are expressed in a compact form. The use of spatial vector notation facilitates the implementation of dynamics algorithms on a computer: shorter, simpler code that is easier to write, understand and debug, with no loss of efficiency.

Discover How Geometric Integrators Preserve the Main Qualitative Properties of Continuous Dynamical Systems A Concise Introduction to Geometric Numerical Integration presents the main themes, techniques, and applications of geometric integrators for researchers in mathematics, physics, astronomy, and chemistry who are already familiar with numerical tools for solving differential equations. It also offers a bridge from traditional training in the numerical analysis of differential equations to understanding recent, advanced research literature on numerical geometric integration. The book first examines high-order classical integration methods from the structure preservation point of view. It then illustrates how to construct high-order integrators via the composition of basic low-order methods and analyzes the idea of splitting. It next reviews symplectic integrators constructed directly from the theory of generating functions as well as the important category of variational integrators. The authors also explain the relationship between the preservation of the geometric properties of a numerical method and the observed favorable error propagation in long-time integration. The book concludes with an analysis of the applicability of splitting and composition methods to certain classes of partial differential equations, such as the Schrödinger equation and other evolution equations. The motivation of geometric numerical integration is not only to develop numerical methods with improved qualitative behavior but also to provide more accurate long-time integration results than those obtained by general-purpose algorithms. Accessible to researchers and post-graduate students from diverse backgrounds, this introductory book gets readers up to speed on the ideas, methods, and applications of this field. Readers can reproduce the figures and results given in the text using the MATLAB® programs and model files available online.