Mathematical modeling plays an essential role in science and engineering. Costly and time consuming experiments (if they can be done at all) are replaced by computational analysis. In industry, commercial codes are widely used. They are flexible and can be adjusted for solving specific problems of interest. Solving large problems with tens or hundreds of thousands unknowns becomes routine. The aim of analysis is to predict the behavior of the engineering and physical reality usually within the constraints of cost and time. Today, human cost and time are more important than computer cost. This...

This monograph is mostly devoted to the problem of the geome trizing of Lagrangians which depend on higher order accelerations. It naturally prolongs the theme of the monograph "The Geometry of La grange spaces: Theory and Applications," written together with M. Anastasiei and published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1994. The existence of Lagrangians of order k > 1 has been contemplated by mechanicists and physicists for a long time. Einstein had grasped their presence in connection with the Brownian motion. They are also present in relativistic theories based on metrics which depend on...

Remarkable recent progress in quantum optics has given rise to extremely precise quantum measurements that are used in the research into the fundamentals of quantum physics, and in different branches of physics such as optical spectroscopy. This progress stimulates new technologies in the field of optical communications, optical computation and information systems.
This state-of-the-art volume presents work from a Summer School on Advances in Quantum Optics and Spectroscopy of Solids, held in Ankara, Turkey, in 1995. The various contributions written by leading...

Operations research and mathematical programming would not be as advanced today without the many advances in interior point methods during the last decade. These methods can now solve very efficiently and robustly large scale linear, nonlinear and combinatorial optimization problems that arise in various practical applications. The main ideas underlying interior point methods have influenced virtually all areas of mathematical programming including: analyzing and solving linear and nonlinear programming problems, sensitivity analysis, complexity analysis, the analysis of Newton's method,...

Quantum and chaos, key concepts in contemporary science, are incompatible by nature. This volume presents an investigation into quantum transport in mesoscopic or nanoscale systems which are classically chaotic and shows the success and failure of quantal, semiclassical, and random matrix theories in dealing with questions emerging from the mesoscopic cosmos. These traditional theories are critically analysed, and this leads to a new direction. To reconcile quantum with chaos and to restore genuine temporal chaos in quantum systems, a time-discrete variant of quantum dynamics is proposed....

No-one who took part in the NATO Advanced Studies Institute from which this book emerges will have forgotten the experience. True, the necessary conditions for a very successful workshop were satisfied: a field of physics bursting with new power and new puzzles, a matchless team of lecturers, an international gathering of students many of whom had themselves contributed at the forefront of their subject, an admirable overlap of experiment and theory, a good mix of experimenters and theorists, an enviable environment. But who could have foreseen the way the workshop became a focus for future...

Designing new structural materials, extending lifetimes and guarding against fracture in service are among the preoccupations of engineers, and to deal with these they need to have command of the mechanics of material behaviour. The first volume of this two-volume work deals with elastic and elastoplastic behaviour; this second volume continues with viscoelasticity, damage, fracture (resistance to cracking) and contact mechanics. As in Volume I, the treatment starts from the active mechanisms on the microscopic scale and develops the laws of macroscopic behaviour. Chapter I deals with...

The field of composite materials has seen substantial development in the past decade, New composite systems are being continually developed for various applications. Among such systems are metal, intermetallic, and superalloy matrix composites, carbon-carbon composites as well as polymer matrix composites. At the same time, a new discipline has emerged of active or smart materials, which are often constructed as composite or heterogeneous media and structures. One unifying theme in these diverse systems is the influence that uncoupled and coupled eigenfields or transformation fields exert on...

Tribology is the science of friction, lubrication and wear of moving components. Results obtained from tribology are used to reduce energy losses in friction pro- cesses, to reduce material losses due to wear, and to increase the service life of components. Contact Mechanics plays an important role in Tribology. Contact Mechanics studies the stress and strain states of bodies in contact; it is contact that leads to friction interaction and wear. This book investigates a variety of contact problems: discrete contact of rough surfaces, the effect of imperfect elasticity and mechanical...

During the last decades modelling of inelastic structural behaviour has achieved great attention. Wherever elastic designhas reached its limita sa consequence of increased loading, the related cons titutive rela tions meanwhile have become part of the engineer's practice. However, new materials with complex behaviour, further increasing loads at higher temperatures, as well as the implementation of stronger security demands have led to theconsequence that the preferentially used phenomenological concepts need to be verified and improved continuously. Caused by the a priori non linear...