As one of the oldest natural sciences, mechanics occupies a certain pioneering role in determining the development of exact sciences through its interaction with mathematics. As a matter of fact, there is hardly an area in mathematics that hasn't found an application of some form in mechanics. It is thus almost inevitable that theoretical methods in mechanics are highly developed and laid out on different levels of abstraction. With the spread of digital processors this goes as far as the implementation in commercial computer codes, where the user is merely con fronted on the surface with the...

As one of the oldest natural sciences, mechanics occupies a certain pioneering role in determining the development of exact sciences through its interaction with mathematics. As a matter of fact, there is hardly an area in mathematics that hasn't found an application of some form in mechanics. It is thus almost inevitable that theoretical methods in mechanics are highly developed and laid out on different levels of abstraction. With the spread of digital processors this goes as far as the implementation in commercial computer codes, where the user is merely con fronted on the surface with the...