Bøger af Giuseppe Rega

The book retraces the history of the Italian Association of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (AIMETA) since its establishment in 1965. AIMETA is the official Italian association of mechanics adhering to IUTAM (International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics), which organizes and coordinates a meaningful number of research activities, the most important of which are the biennial National Congress and the internationally renowned journal "e;Meccanica"e;, published by Springer. Besides collecting and organizing all related important data and information, as far as possible, by distinguishing among the five scientific areas - general mechanics, solids, structures, fluids, machines - encompassed by AIMETA, the history of the association is assumed as a proper perspective to overview the evolution of theoretical and applied mechanics in Italy over about the last fifty years. This is accomplished in the first part of the book. with also a specific focus on the mechanics of solids and structures, where the biographies of a meaningful number of recognized Italian scholars of mechanics in all areas are also provided, along with testimonials and memories by a few senior people meaningfully involved with AIMETA and Italian mechanics. The second part gives an account, although unavoidably incomplete, of recent developments of mechanical sciences in Italy, as reflected also in the activities of AIMETA and with reference to the international context. Contributions by a number of invited senior scholars, still very active, consist of overviews on some scientific themes in the various areas, summaries of achievements of research groups, expressions of research viewpoints, prospects for future developments.

This is the first book which exploits concepts and tools of global nonlinear dynamics for bridging the gap between theoretical and practical stability of systems/structures, and for possibly enhancing the engineering design in macro-, micro- and nano-mechanics. Addressed topics include complementing theoretical and practical stability to achieve load carrying capacity; dynamical integrity for analyzing global dynamics, for interpreting/predicting experimental behavior, for getting hints towards engineering design; techniques for control of chaos; response of uncontrolled and controlled system/models in applied mechanics and structural dynamics by also considerung the effect of system imperfections; from relatively simple systems to multidimensional models representative of real world applications; potential and expected impact of global dynamics for engineering design.