Introduction to modelling for 1st year engineers

These resources cover an introduction to modelling for first year engineering undergraduate. The main focus is on electrical and mechanical systems, but there is also some discussion of dc motors, fluids and heat as well as an introduction to time series modelling. The main emphasis is on why modelling is important and how to go about doing this from first principles (e.g. Kirchhoff's laws, Newton's Laws, etc.). Given the focus is on new students arriving at University, there is no attempt to develop models beyond second order. The resources here include the lecture hand out (pdf) which includes embedded tutorial questions, some powerpoints for structuring lectures , flash animations to step through modelling process for electrical circuits and a large data base of CAA developed on webct (here provided in a zip file). The lecture notes also contains a brief overview on usage for lecturing staff. These were developed at the University of Sheffield and authored by J A Rossiter from the Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering.