Analytical Dynamics of Discrete Systems

Abstract

Analytical Dynamics of Discrete Systems. providing seniors and beginning graduate students in engineering and the natural sciences with an advanced textbook in dynamics, examines the development of classical particle mechanics from Newton to Lagrange. Every concept is clearly defmed before it is used, every sig-nificant result is stated mathematically as well as verbally, and the domain of applicability of each is explicitly stated. Most of the chapters contain a large number of carefully worked out examples, as well as a set of suggested exercises. The author adopts a geometrical approach to the study of dynamics. He provides an orderly transition from Newtonian to Lagrangean mechanics by demonstrat-ing the need for a baSically different classification of forces in these two theories and the necessity of replacing Newton's third law by d'Alembert's prin-ciple. In the first seven chapters, he includes detailed reviews of • Newtonian mechanics, with attention paid to the historical setting in which it developed • the representation of motion as a trajectory in configuration space, event space, and other spaces • constraints • rigid body kinematics and kinetics