State of the Art, Trends, and Directions in Smart Systems

The state of the art presented here has been established by the participants of this European “Smart systems” network. It reflects their major examination of the three fundamental areas of modeling, optimization and control, and numerical simulation. The investigation of the modeling consists in studing the appropriate models for linear and nonlinear coupling effects, for new composite structures (with their nonlinearities induced by hysteresis, phase transitions, contact or presence of cracks) and the associated time-dependent equations. The exploration in Optimization and Control concern theoretical questions on exact controllability, stabilization, active, passive, hybrid vibration control, optimal shape design (such as the best location of a pattern of sensors, actuators, techniques for nondestructive damage detection, etc.) and practical questions about the robustness and accuracy of the design control systems. Regarding the numerical simulation, two kinds of research have to be brought to a successful conclusion at the same time: at a conceptual level dedicated to theoretical questions such as sensitivity of finite elements (locking, spill-over) and at a practical level dedicated to solve “real-life” applications (such as the simulation of a complete device in order to assess the models retained by checking whether predictions agree with experiments). 1This project is supported by the European Commission’s 5th Framework Program under grant number HPRNCT-2002-00284. 2France, Ecole Supérieure d’Electronique et d’Electrotechnique, (Marne la Vallée), Finland, Helsinki University of Technology (Helsinki), France, Institut National de la Recherche en Informatique et Automatique, Germany, Stuttgart University (Stuttgart), Greece, Aristotle University, (Thessaloniki), Italy, Istituto di Analisi Numerica del C.N.R, (Pavia) and Istituto per le Applicazioni del Calcolo ”M. Picone”, (Roma), Poland, Institute of Fundamental Technological Research, Warsaw, Portugal, (Lisbon) University, Spain, Santiago de Compostela University (Santiago de Compostela) and , Complutense University (Madrid)