This book provides a concise introduction to the behavior of mechanical structures and testing their stochastic stability under the influence of noise. It explains the physical effects of noise and in particular the concept of Gaussian white noise. In closing, the book explains how to model the effects of noise on mechanical structures, and how to nullify / compensate for it by designing effective controllers.

The goal of this book is investigating and simulating the effect of white and colored noise on mechanical structures and designing effective controllers to reduce or eliminate these effects. In this book, quarter car model has been introduced as the mechanical structure, and the stochastic effect of the Gaussian white noise as the pavement condition has been modeled mathematically. To eliminate the undesired stochastic behavior of the vehicle imposed to the noise, an active suspension system has been designed, and based on the control engineering view, the mathematical model of the effect of the noise on the designed system has been driven and simulated. As the active force generators of the designed active suspension system, PID and sliding mode controllers have been introduced and designed. MATLAB software has been utilized to design the controllers as well as to model the effect of the noise on the mechanical structure and investigate the stability of the system. The results show that the designed controllers have effective performances to eliminate the effect of the noise as road condition which has a significant effect on reducing the fuel consumption and contributes to environmental sustainability.