Vibration Analysis & Control: New Trends & Developments

People became interested in vibration when they created the first musical instruments, probably whistles or drums. Since then, both musicians and philosophers have sought out the rules and laws of sound production, used them in improving musical instruments, and passed them on from generation to generation. Vibration refers to periodic back-and-forth motion of the particles of an elastic body or medium, commonly resulting when almost any physical system is displaced from its equilibrium condition and allowed to respond to the forces that tend to restore equilibrium. Vibrations fall into two categories: free and forced. Free vibrations occur when the system is disturbed momentarily and then allowed to move without restraint. The vibrations of a spring are of a particularly simple kind known as simple harmonic motion (SHM). Forced vibrations occur if a system is continuously driven by an external agency. A simple example is a childs swing that is pushed on each downswing. Of special interest are systems undergoing SHM and driven by sinusoidal forcing. Vibration Analysis (VA), applied in an industrial or maintenance environment aims to reduce maintenance costs and equipment downtime by detecting equipment faults. VA is a key component of a Condition Monitoring (CM) program, and is often referred to as Predictive Maintenance (PdM). Most commonly VA is used to detect faults in rotating equipment (Fans, Motors, Pumps, and Gearboxes etc.) such as Unbalance, Misalignment, rolling element bearing faults and resonance conditions. This book focuses on the important and diverse field of vibration analysis and control. The book covers a wide range of research topics related to design methodologies of passive, semiactive and active vibration control schemes, vibration control devices, fault detection, finite element analysis and other recent applications and studies of this fascinating field of vibration analysis and control. The book should be of valuable to researchers and practitioners of this field, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students and other experts and newcomers looking for supplementary information about the state of the art, challenging open problems, ground-breaking solution proposals and new trends and developments in this arena.