Chapter 1
Introduction
This book is designed for seniors, first year graduate students and engineers working
on the analysis and design of mechanical/structural/aerospace systems subjected to
dynamic actions, e.g., wind, earthquakes, aerodynamic forces, road roughness and
other inputs. It provides a comprehensive rigorous discussion on the dynamics of
linear systems in clear, concise terms.
The main reason for a new book on linear dynamical systems is that current
popular books on the subject devote numerous pages to simple dynamic systems
of limited practical interest, e.g., cars without shock absorbers, before considering
realistic systems, e.g., functional cars that have shock absorbers. Moreover, this
bottom-up approach results in books that are overwhelming due to shear size and has
been confusing to many Cornell students since they view these simplified dynamical
systems as distinct problems which require different tools for solution. In contrast,
this book deals, first, with realistic systems. Simple dynamical systems become
special cases of the general formulation.
The inspiration for this book came from teaching a dynamics course online to
Cornell University students during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. Out of necessity,
I organized my lectures over the years into this self-contained, comprehensive work
intended to be accessible to university students and practitioners. The impact of the
pandemic made it apparent that online teaching would become more and more the
norm for delivering lectures to college students and, it will give access to engineers
in the field that was not available to them before in traditional, brick-n-mortar
educational settings.
Notable attributes of this book are: it covers all relevant topics on the dynamics
of linear systems in a succinct and rigorous manner; develops general methods for
analyzing dynamical systems and views solutions of simplified dynamical systems
as special cases of general formulations so that they cannot be viewed as distinct
problems; discusses less familiar mathematical tools used in some derivations in
appendices; uses numerical examples to further clarify theoretical considerations;
and, lastly, illustrates practical implementation by MATLAB functions.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. D. Grigoriu, Linear Dynamical Systems,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64552-6_1
1
Introduction
This book is designed for seniors, first year graduate students and engineers working
on the analysis and design of mechanical/structural/aerospace systems subjected to
dynamic actions, e.g., wind, earthquakes, aerodynamic forces, road roughness and
other inputs. It provides a comprehensive rigorous discussion on the dynamics of
linear systems in clear, concise terms.
The main reason for a new book on linear dynamical systems is that current
popular books on the subject devote numerous pages to simple dynamic systems
of limited practical interest, e.g., cars without shock absorbers, before considering
realistic systems, e.g., functional cars that have shock absorbers. Moreover, this
bottom-up approach results in books that are overwhelming due to shear size and has
been confusing to many Cornell students since they view these simplified dynamical
systems as distinct problems which require different tools for solution. In contrast,
this book deals, first, with realistic systems. Simple dynamical systems become
special cases of the general formulation.
The inspiration for this book came from teaching a dynamics course online to
Cornell University students during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. Out of necessity,
I organized my lectures over the years into this self-contained, comprehensive work
intended to be accessible to university students and practitioners. The impact of the
pandemic made it apparent that online teaching would become more and more the
norm for delivering lectures to college students and, it will give access to engineers
in the field that was not available to them before in traditional, brick-n-mortar
educational settings.
Notable attributes of this book are: it covers all relevant topics on the dynamics
of linear systems in a succinct and rigorous manner; develops general methods for
analyzing dynamical systems and views solutions of simplified dynamical systems
as special cases of general formulations so that they cannot be viewed as distinct
problems; discusses less familiar mathematical tools used in some derivations in
appendices; uses numerical examples to further clarify theoretical considerations;
and, lastly, illustrates practical implementation by MATLAB functions.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. D. Grigoriu, Linear Dynamical Systems,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64552-6_1
1