Many important physical systems have input-output properties related to the conservation, dissipation and transport of energy. The theory surrounding such "dissipative properties" may be used as a framework for the design and analysis of control systems. The consideration of dissipativity is useful and may be indispensable for control applications like robotics, active vibration damping and circuit theory and for some control techniques themselves: adaptive, nonlinear-H-infinity, and inverse-optimal control among them.

Dissipative Systems Analysis and Control...

The extension of collision models for single impacts between two bodies, to the case of multiple impacts (which take place when several collisions occur at the same time in a multibody system) is a challenge in Solid Mechanics, due to the complexity of such phenomena, even in the frictionless case. This monograph aims at presenting the main multiple collision rules proposed in the literature. Such collisions typically occur in granular materials, the simplest of which are made of chains of aligned balls. These chains are used throughout the book to analyze various multiple impact rules...