This book presents an overview over smart structures - its concepts, its active involvement in the vibration control, their applications and the extensive research work done.

AfterasurveypaperbyUtkininthelate1970s, slidingmodecontrolmeth- ologies emerged as an e?ective tool to tackle uncertainty and disturbances which are inevitable in most of the practical systems. Sliding mode control is a particular class of variable structure control which was introduced by Emel'yanov and his colleagues. The design paradigms of sliding mode c- trol has now become a mature design technique for the design of robust c- troller of uncertain system. In sliding mode technique, the state trajectory of the system is constrained on a chosen manifold (or within some neighb- hood...

Expanding on talks delivered at the 12th IEEE International Workshop on Variable Structure Systems (2012), this book covers sliding modes for decentralized system representations, control of time-delay systems, the higher order sliding mode concept and more.