A significant amount of applied technology pertaining to noise and vibration analysis and control has emerged over the last thirty years or so. It would be an impossible task to attempt to cover all this material in a text book aimed at providing the reader with a fundamental basis for noise and vibration analysis. This book is therefore only concerned with some of the more important fundamental considerations required for a systematic approach to engineering noise and vibration analysis and control, the main emphasis being the industrial environment. Thus, this book is specifically concerned with the fundamentals of noise and vibration analysis for mechanical engineers, structural engineers, mining engineers, production engineers, maintenance engineers, etc. It embodies eight self-contained chapters, each of which is summarised here.

The first chapter, on mechanical vibrations, is a review of some fundamentals. This part of the book assumes no previous knowledge of vibration theory. A large part of what is presented in this chapter is covered very well in existing text books. The main difference is the emphasis on the wave–mode duality, and the reader is encouraged to think in terms of both waves and modes of vibration. As such, the introductory comments relate to both lumped parameter models and continuous system models. The sections on the dynamics of a single oscillator, forced vibrations with random excitation and multiple oscillator are presented using the traditional ‘mechanical vibrations’ approach. The section on continuous systems utilises both the traditional ‘mechanical vibrations’ approach and the wave impedance approach.