It is well known that noise control at the source is the most cost-effective. Designing for quietness is therefore the most important concept in Engineering Acoustics or Technical Acoustics. The IUTAM Symposium on Designing for Quietness held at the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore in December 2000, was probably the first on this topic anywhere in the world. Papers were invited from reputed researchers and professionals spread over several countries. 18 of the 21 papers presented in the Symposium are included in these proceedings after rigorous review, revision and editing. This volume covers a large number of applications, such as silencers, lined ducts, acoustic materials, source characterization, acoustical design of vehicle cabs, ships, space antennas, MEMS pressure transducer etc., active control of structure-borne noise and cavities, SEA for engine noise and structural acoustic modelling with application to design of quieter panels. A list of references at the end of every paper will provide sources for further reading.

This volume offers edited papers presented at the IUTAM-Symposium Topological design optimization of structures, machines and materials - status and perspectives, October 2005. The papers cover the application of topological design optimization to fluid-solid interaction problems, acoustics problems, and to problems in biomechanics, as well as to other multiphysics problems. Also in focus are new basic modelling paradigms, covering new geometry modelling such as level-set methods and topological derivatives.

Nonlinear dynamics has been enjoying a vast development for nearly four decades resulting in a range of well established theory, with the potential to significantly enhance performance, effectiveness, reliability and safety of physical systems as well as offering novel technologies and designs. By critically appraising the state of the art, it is now time to develop design criteria and technology for new generation products/processes operating on principles of nonlinear interaction and in the nonlinear regime, leading to more effective, sensitive, accurate, and durable methods than what is currently available. This new approach is expected to radically influence the design, control and exploitation paradigms, in a magnitude of contexts. With a strong emphasis on experimentally calibrated and validated models, contributions by top-level international experts will foster future directions for the development of engineering technologies and design using robust nonlinear dynamics modelling and analysis.

This volume is a record of the proceedings of the Symposium on Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA) held at the University of Southampton in July 1997 which was held under the auspices of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanic~. Theoretical SEA is form of modelling the vibrational and acoustical behaviour of complex mechanical systems which has undergone a long period of gestation before recent maturation into a widely used engineering design and analysis tool which is supported by a rapidly growing supply of commercial software. SEA also provides a framework for associated experimental measurement procedures, data analysis and interpretation. Under the guidance of the members of a distinguished International Scientific Committee, participants were individually invited from the broad spectrum of 'SEAfarers', including academics, consultants, industrial engineers, software developers and research students. The Symposium aimed to reflect the balance of world-wide activity in SEA, although some eminent members of the SEA community were, sadly, unable to attend. In particular, Professor Richard Lyon and Dr Gideon Maidanik, two of the principal originators of SEA, were sorely missed. This publication contains copies of all the papers presented to the Symposium together with a summary of the associated discussions which contains valuable comments upon the contents of the formal papers together with the views of participants on some fundamental issues which remain to be resolved.

The book describes analytical methods (based primarily on classical modal synthesis), the Finite Element Method (FEM), Boundary Element Method (BEM), Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA), Energy Finite Element Analysis (EFEA), Hybrid Methods (FEM-SEA and Transfer Path Analysis), and Wave-Based Methods. The book also includes procedures for designing noise and vibration control treatments, optimizing structures for reduced vibration and noise, and estimating the uncertainties in analysis results. Written by several well-known authors, each chapter includes theoretical formulations, along with practical applications to actual structural-acoustic systems. Readers will learn how to use vibroacoustic analysis methods in product design and development; how to perform transient, frequency (deterministic and random), and statistical vibroacoustic analyses; and how to choose appropriate structural and acoustic computational methods for their applications. The book can be used as a general reference for practicing engineers, or as a text for a technical short course or graduate course.

The International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM) initiated and sponsored an International Symposium on Optimization of Mechanical Systems held in 1995 in Stuttgart, Germany. The Symposium was intended to bring together scientists working in different fields of optimization to exchange ideas and to discuss new trends with special emphasis on multi body systems. A Scientific Committee was appointed by the Bureau of IUTAM with the following members: S. Arimoto (Japan) EL. Chernousko (Russia) M. Geradin (Belgium) E.J. Haug (U.S.A.) C.A.M. Soares (Portugal) N. Olhoff (Denmark) W.O. Schiehlen (Germany, Chairman) K. Schittkowski (Germany) R.S. Sharp (U.K.) W. Stadler (U.S.A.) H.-B. Zhao (China) This committee selected the participants to be invited and the papers to be presented at the Symposium. As a result of this procedure, 90 active scientific participants from 20 countries followed the invitation, and 49 papers were presented in lecture and poster sessions.

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).

The book covers new developments in structural topology optimization. Basic features and limitations of Michell’s truss theory, its extension to a broader class of support conditions, generalizations of truss topology optimization, and Michell continua are reviewed. For elastic bodies, the layout problems in linear elasticity are discussed and the method of relaxation by homogenization is outlined. The classical problem of free material design is shown to be reducible to a locking material problem, even in the multiload case. For structures subjected to dynamic loads, it is explained how they can be designed so that the structural eigenfrequencies of vibration are as far away as possible from a prescribed external excitation frequency (or a band of excitation frequencies) in order to avoid resonance phenomena with high vibration and noise levels. For diffusive and convective transport processes and multiphysics problems, applications of the density method are discussed. In order to take uncertainty in material parameters, geometry, and operating conditions into account, techniques of reliability-based design optimization are introduced and reviewed for their applicability to topology optimization.

The Symposium was aimed at the theoretical and numerical problems involved in modelling the dynamic response of structures which have uncertain properties due to variability in the manufacturing and assembly process, with automotive and aerospace structures forming prime examples. It is well known that the difficulty in predicting the response statistics of such structures is immense, due to the complexity of the structure, the large number of variables which might be uncertain, and the inevitable lack of data regarding the statistical distribution of these variables. The Symposium participants presented the latest thinking in this very active research area, and novel techniques were presented covering the full frequency spectrum of low, mid, and high frequency vibration problems. It was demonstrated that for high frequency vibrations the response statistics can saturate and become independent of the detailed distribution of the uncertain system parameters. A number of presentations exploited this physical behaviour by using and extending methods originally developed in both phenomenological thermodynamics and in the fields of quantum mechanics and random matrix theory. For low frequency vibrations a number of presentations focussed on parametric uncertainty modelling (for example, probabilistic models, interval analysis, and fuzzy descriptions) and on methods of propagating this uncertainty through a large dynamic model in an effi cient way. At mid frequencies the problem is mixed, and various hybrid schemes were proposed. It is clear that a comprehensive solution to the problem of predicting the vibration response of uncertain structures across the whole frequency range requires expertise across a wide range of areas (including probabilistic and non-probabilistic methods, interval and info-gap analysis, statistical energy analysis, statistical thermodynamics, random wave approaches, and large scale computations) and this IUTAM symposium presented a unique opportunity to bring together outstanding international experts in these fields.