New textbook on Lagrangian Mechanics

Dear Colleague,

I’m delighted to announce that the second edition of my textbook “Intermediate Dynamics for Engineers Newton-Euler and Lagrangian Mechanics has just been published: 

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/intermediate-dynamics-for-engineers/FAA3C5B3BABAB917C275038F5E212B93

An electronic version of the textbook might be freely available to students from the publisher's website using Cambridge Core at your home institution. All author royalties will be donated to groups that support students at my home institution. 

The textbook is suitable for both senior-level and first-year graduate courses. I hope you find that the fully revised edition provides a unique and systematic treatment of engineering dynamics that covers Newton–Euler and Lagrangian approaches. Using ideas from differential geometry, the equivalence of these two approaches to formulating the equations of motion for discrete mechanical systems is shown. In addition, analyses of the resulting equations of motion are presented for a variety of systems ranging from a model for a range of systems including a rollercoaster, Chaplygin’s sphere, rolling rigid bodies, and moment-free motion of a rigid body. 

In response to students’ comments, queries from instructors, and work with several collaborators including Evan Hemingway, Jeff Lotz, Julia Nichols, Mark Sena, Arun Srinivasa,  revisions to the second edition include

1. Two completely revised chapters on the constraints on, and potential energies for, rigid bodies, and the dynamics of systems of particles and rigid bodies; 
2. Clearer discussion on coordinate singularities and their relation to mass matrices and configuration manifolds; 
3. Additional discussion of contravariant basis vectors and dual Euler basis vectors, as well as related works in robotics and orthopedic biomechanics; 
4. Improved coverage of navigation equations; 
5. Inclusion of a 350-page solutions manual for instructors, available online; 
6. A fully updated reference list; and 
7. Numerous structured examples, discussion of various applications, and exercises covering a wide range of topics are included throughout, and source code for exercises, and simulations of systems are available online.

Thanks for your interest. I hope the second half of the academic year is off to a good start.

Best wishes,

Oliver