This volume contains the Proceedings of the International Workshop "Variational Methods For Discontinuous Structures", held at Villa Erba Antica (Cernobbio) on the Lago di Como, July 4-6, 2001. The workshop was jointly organized by the Dipartimento di Matematica Francesco Brioschi of Milano Politecnico and the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) of Trieste. In past years the calculus of variations faced mainly the study of continuous structures, particularly problems with smooth solutions. One of the deepest and more delicate problems was the regularity of weak solutions. More...

This book provides an introduction to the analysis of discrete dynamical systems. The content is presented by an unitary approach that blends the perspective of mathematical modeling together with the ones of several discipline as Mathematical Analysis, Linear Algebra, Numerical Analysis, Systems Theory and Probability. After a preliminary discussion of several models, the main tools for the study of linear and non-linear scalar dynamical systems are presented, paying particular attention to the stability analysis. Linear difference equations are studied in detail and an elementary...