Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827) Laplace was a French mathematician, astronomer, and physicist who applied the Newtonian theory

of gravitation to the solar system (an important problem of his day). He played a leading role in the development of the metric system. The Laplace Transform is widely used in engineering applications (mechanical and electronic), especially where the driving force is discontinuous. It is also used in process control.

The Laplace transform provides a useful method of solving certain types of differential equations when certain initial conditions are given, especially when the initial values are zero. The Laplace transform is also very useful in the area of circuit analysis (which we see later in the Applicationssection) . It is often easier to analyse the circuit in its Laplace form, than to form differential equations. The techniques of Laplace transform are not only used in circuit analysis, but also in

Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controllers DC motor speed control systems DC motor position control systems Second order systems of differential equations (underdamped, overdamped and critically damped)

Circuit Equations
There are two (related) approaches: 1. Derive the circuit (differential) equations in the time domain, then transform these ODEs to the s-domain; 2. Transform the circuit to the s-domain, then derive the circuit equations in the sdomain (using the concept of "impedance"). We will use the first approach. We will derive the system equations(s) in the t-plane, then transform the equations to the s-plane. We will usually then transform back to thet-plane.]

A. Application in Physics A very simple application of Laplace transform in the area of physics could be to find out the harmonic vibration of a beam which is supported at its two ends [3].Let us consider a beam of length l and uniform cross section parallel to the yz plane so that the normal deection w(x,t) is measured downward if the axis of the beam is towards x axis. The basic equation defining this phenomenon is as given below: EId4w/dx4- mw2w = 0; (1)

where E is Young's modulus of elasticity; I is the moment of inertia of the cross section with respect to the y axis; m is the mass per unit length; and w is the angular frequency

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In mathematics, the Laplace transform is a powerful technique for analyzing linear time-invariant systems such as electrical circuits, harmonic oscillators, optical devices, and mechanical systems, to name just a few. Given a simple mathematical or functional description of an input or output to a system, the Laplace transform provides an alternative functional description that often simplifies the process of analyzing the behavior of the system, or in synthesizing a new system based on a set of specifications. The Laplace transform is an important concept from the branch of mathematics called functional analysis. In actual physical systems the Laplace transform is often interpreted as a transformation from the time-domain point of view, in which inputs and outputs are understood as functions of time, to the frequency-domain point of view, where the same inputs and outputs are seen as functions of complex angular frequency, or radians per unit time. This transformation not only provides a fundamentally different way to understand the behavior of the system, but it also drastically reduces the complexity of the mathematical calculations required to analyze the system. The Laplace transform has many important applications in physics, optics, electrical engineering, control engineering, signal processing, and probability theory. The Laplace transform is named in honor of mathematician and astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace, who used the transform in his work on probability theory. The transform was discovered originally by Leonhard Euler, the prolific eighteenth-century Swiss mathematician.

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