The chapters of this book summarize the lectures delivered du ring the NATO Advanced Study Institute (ASI) on Computational Methods in Mechanisms, that took place in the Sts. Constantin and Elena Resort, near Varna, on the Bulgarian Coast of the Black Sea, June 16-28, 1997. The purpose of the ASI was to bring together leading researchers in the area of mechanical systems at large, with special emphasis in the computational issues around their analysis, synthesis, and optimization, during two weeks of lectures and discussion. A total of 89 participants from 23 count ries played an active role during the lectures and sessions of contributed papers. Many of the latter are being currently reviewed for publication in specialized journals. The subject of the book is mechanical systems, Le. , systems composed of rigid and flexible bodies, coupled by mechanical means so as to constrain their various bodies in a goal-oriented manner, usually driven under computer con­ trol. Applications of the discipline are thus of the most varied nature, ranging from transportation systems to biomedical devices. U nder normal operation conditions, the constitutive bodies of a mechanical system can be consid­ ered to be rigid, the rigidity property then easing dramatically the analysis of the kinematics and dynamics of the system at hand. Examples of these systems are the suspension of a terrestrial vehicle negotiating a curve at speeds within the allowed or recommended limits and the links of multiaxis industrial robots performing conventional pick-and-place operations.

I. Kinematics of Mechanical Systems.- 1. The Application of Dual Algebra to Kinematic Analysis.- 2. Formulation and Solution for the Direct and Inverse Kinematics Problems for Mechanisms and Mechatronics Systems.- 3. The Design of Spherical 4R Linkages for Four Specified Orientations.- 4. On the Design of Efficient Parallel Mechanisms.- 5. Optimization of Multi-DOF Mechanisms.- 6. Computational Issues in the Kinematic Design of Tactile Sensing Fixtures.- 7. Numerical Methods for Mechanism and Manipulator Workspace Analysis.- II. Dynamics and Control of Rigid-Body Systems.- 8. Equations of Motion in Tensor Variables and Their Application to Multibody Systems.- 9. Efficient Description and Geometrical Interpretation of the Dynamics of Constrained Systems.- 10. A Generic Numerical Method for Mechanical System Kinematics and Dynamics Modeling.- 11. Implicit Integration of the Equations of Multibody Dynamics.- 12. Models for Simulation of Power-Steering Systems.- 13. Control of Robotic Systems by Exact Linearization.- III. Dynamics of Flexible Multibody Systems.- 14. Flexible Bodies in Multibody Systems.- 15. Parallelization of Large Mechanical Engineering Codes. A Case Study for the Multibody Simulation Package FEDEM.- 16. Flexible Multibody Dynamics with Nonlinear Deformations: Vehicle Dynamics and Crashworthiness Applications.