Randall Allemang - Handbook of Experimental Structural Dynamics

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.

The registered company address is: 1 New York Plaza, New York, NY 10004, U.S.A.

The purpose of the SEM Handbook of Experimental Structural Dynamics is to provide a summary/overview of information and reference material in the areas of analytical and experimental structural dynamics that are important to the Society of Experimental Mechanics. The topics covered in this Handbook all address the essential material that is germane to the International Modal Analysis Conference that has been held yearly for close to 40 years beginning in 1982.

This Handbook can be viewed as covering the macro topics of experimental mechanics while the traditional SEM Handbook of Experimental Solid Mechanics covers the micro topics of experimental mechanics. In past revisions of the SEM Handbook of Experimental Mechanics, all subject areas were contained in one single volume. Due to the expansions of topics, the Society decided to divide the material into two Handbooks with this Handbook consisting of two volumes.

The content of the SEM Handbook of Experimental Structural Dynamics primarily involves the areas of structural mechanics (statics and dynamics) that are served by the SEM International Modal Analysis Conference (IMAC) and covered by several Technical Divisions (TDs) or Focus Groups (FGs) of the Society. A few of the topics that will be included in this Handbook will come from TDs and FGs that are active in the SEM Annual Conference but were not included in the recently revised SEM Handbook of Experimental Solid Mechanics.

While the general topic of each chapter is defined by the chapter title, in all cases the content of the chapter reflects the experimental nature of the Handbook and the focus/content of the almost 40 years of science and technology representative of the IMAC Conference. Therefore, even a chapter like Finite Element Modeling reflects the experimental concerns/issues rather than a purely theoretical explanation of the methodology. Terminology and nomenclature are suggested (using the IMAC suggested nomenclature list) but not required due to overlapping standards of nomenclature used in different technical areas. The focus of the material is on proven methods and not simply a literature review. Some overlap between various chapters cannot be avoided for several chapters due to the inter-relationship of certain topics.

Each chapter generally involves a review of the important theory involved in the specific analytical and experimental methods as well as the specific science and technology that is involved. Additionally, though, each chapter covers the relevant practical needs of scientists and engineers who are new to the field involved. In most cases both the pertinent theory and particularly the practical issues have not yet been presented formally in an academic textbook. Each chapter should be a must read for someone new to the field or for someone returning to the field after an absence. The reference list in each chapter may not be all inclusive but does consist of the seminal papers and references for the area of the chapter.

While much of the material in this Handbook may be found scattered in a variety of different publications, this Handbook attempts to pull together all that material into one location to facilitate current and future research as this field moves forward.

June 2022Randall Allemang

Peter Avitabile

Editors