Description:

Calculus of variations is one of the most important mathematical tools of great scientific significance used by scientistis and engineers. Unfortunately, a few books that are available are written at a level which is not easily comprehensible for postgraduate students.This book, written by a highly respected academic, presents the materials in a lucid manner so as to be within the easy grasp of the students with some background in calculus, differential equations and functional analysis. The aim is to give a thorough and systematic analysis of various aspects of calculus of variations.

It begins with fundamentals and develops the subject to the level of research frontiers. The problems of theoretical physics, elasticity, heat transfer, hydrodynamics and hydromagnetics have been lucidly treated. The text is updated to include new topics such as variational principles of any nonlinear problem, stochastic calculus of varia-tion, variational inequalities and problems of optimum control. The text is suitable as a first course on Calculus of Variations and as a reference book for research workers in applied mechanics and theoretical physics.