Applied Calculus of Variations for Engineers, 2nd Edition

Preface to the second edition

Since the publication of the first edition six years ago several readers com-

mented on the book and recommended improvements in a future edition.

Academic readers requested expanding the mathematical foundation with a

chapter dedicated to analytic solutions. Industrial readers desired a deeper

exploration of the variational foundation of equations of motion for various

engineering disciplines. Finally some reviewers suggested expanding the com-

putational techniques section.

The modifications to the second edition reflect these requests. The major

additions are in two new chapters (6 and 10) and two new Sections (7.5 and

12.5). Chapter 6 discusses a variety of analytic solutions to problems of cal-

culus of variations and Chapter 10 derives various equations of motion from

variational principles. Section 7.5 describes the boundary integral method

and Section 12.5 contains a detailed description of the finite element method.

The typographical errors found in the first edition have been corrected and

a strong effort was made to avoid introducing any in the new material. The

new chapters and sections were indexed and more references were added to

make this work as complete as possible.

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