PREFACE for 2nd Edition

Since the first edition was published almost ten years ago and computer software has changed drastically. As far as the authors know, any of CSMP group is not supported for recent WINDOWS system. On the other hand, general mathematical software such as MATLAB has been taught in many engineering courses. Since we left Rutgers, we have been working at different institutions in different countries but in the same research area. Recent computer software development has forced us to learn mathematical software and both of us selected MATLAB. We have met at several occasions such as international symposium and one time we discussed to renew the first edition by using some new language which is more powerful and suitable in the present WINDOWS environment. This is the main reason we selected MATLAB. It has also very powerful toolboxes such as SIMULINK, which is very suitable for dynamic simulation. First we planned to involve all models in MATLAB and SIMULINK, but because of the limit of the volume, we have decided to have MATLAB models with one SIMULINK model as an example. It is not difficult to develop SIMULINK models if the readers understand MATLAB models. All models in the first edition have been converted in MATLAB with its explanation by Dr. Wei Fang. All models in the book can be downloaded from Dr. Wei Fang’s home page. The URLs of the web sites are as follow:

http://ecaaser3.ecaa.ntu.edu.tw/weifang/cuc/index.htm

http://ecaaser5.ecaa.ntu.edu.tw/weifang/cuc/index.htm

Both of us hope all readers can run all models in the new computer environment.

In Nagasaki and Taipei

January 2002

Tadashi Takakura and Wei Fang