This book is intended for a first course in the calculus of variations, at the senior or beginning graduate level. The reader will learn methods for finding functions that maximize or minimize integrals. The text lays out important necessary and sufficient conditions for extrema in historical order, and it illustrates these conditions with numerous worked-out examples from mechanics, optics, geometry, and other fields. The exposition starts with simple integrals containing a single independent variable, a single dependent variable, and a single derivative, subject to weak variations, but steadily moves on to more advanced topics, including multivariate problems, constrained extrema, homogeneous problems, problems with variable endpoints, broken extremals, strong variations, and sufficiency conditions. Numerous line drawings clarify the mathematics. Each chapter ends with recommended readings that introduce the student to the relevant scientific literature and with exercises that consolidate understanding.

Fresh, lively text serves as a modern introduction to the subject, with applications to the mechanics of systems with a finite number of degrees of freedom. Ideal for math and physics students.

This book provides an introduction to the broad topic of the calculus of variations. It addresses the most natural questions on variational problems and the mathematical complexities they present. Beginning with the scientific modeling that motivates the subject, the book then tackles mathematical questions such as the existence and uniqueness of solutions, their characterization in terms of partial differential equations, and their regularity. It includes both classical and recent results on one-dimensional variational problems, as well as the adaptation to the multi-dimensional case. Here, convexity plays an important role in establishing semi-continuity results and connections with techniques from optimization, and convex duality is even used to produce regularity results. This is then followed by the more classical Hölder regularity theory for elliptic PDEs and some geometric variational problems on sets, including the isoperimetric inequality and the Steiner tree problem. The book concludes with a chapter on the limits of sequences of variational problems, expressed in terms of Γ-convergence. While primarily designed for master's-level and advanced courses, this textbook, based on its author's instructional experience, also offers original insights that may be of interest to PhD students and researchers. A foundational understanding of measure theory and functional analysis is required, but all the essential concepts are reiterated throughout the book using special memo-boxes.

The book endeavors to strike a balance between mathematical and numerical coverage of a wide range of topics in fi nite element analysis. It strives to provide an introduction, especially for undergraduates and graduates, to fi nite element analysis and its applications. Topics include advanced calculus, differential equations, vector analysis, calculus of variations, fi nite difference methods, fi nite element methods and time-stepping schemes. The book also emphasizes the application of important numerical methods with dozens of worked examples. The applied topics include elasticity, heat transfer, and pattern formation. A few self-explanatory Matlab programs provide a good start for readers to try some of the methods and to apply the methods and techniques to their own modelling problems with some modifi cations. The book will perfectly serve as a textbook in fi nite element analysis, computational mathematics, mathematical modelling, and engineering computations.

The calculus of variations is used to find functions that optimize quantities expressed in terms of integrals. Optimal control theory seeks to find functions that minimize cost integrals for systems described by differential equations. This book is an introduction to both the classical theory of the calculus of variations and the more modern developments of optimal control theory from the perspective of an applied mathematician. It focuses on understanding concepts and how to apply them. The range of potential applications is broad: the calculus of variations and optimal control theory have been widely used in numerous ways in biology, criminology, economics, engineering, finance, management science, and physics. Applications described in this book include cancer chemotherapy, navigational control, and renewable resource harvesting. The prerequisites for the book are modest: the standard calculus sequence, a first course on ordinary differential equations, and some facility with the use of mathematical software. It is suitable for an undergraduate or beginning graduate course, or for self study. It provides excellent preparation for more advanced books and courses on the calculus of variations and optimal control theory.

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.

This book provides a basic, initial resource, introducing science and engineering students to the field of optimization. It covers three main areas: mathematical programming, calculus of variations and optimal control, highlighting the ideas and concepts and offering insights into the importance of optimality conditions in each area. It also systematically presents affordable approximation methods. Exercises at various levels have been included to support the learning process.

The calculus of variations is one of the oldest subjects in mathematics, yet is very much alive and is still evolving. Besides its mathematical importance and its links to other branches of mathematics, such as geometry or differential equations, it is widely used in physics, engineering, economics and biology.This book serves both as a guide to the expansive existing literature and as an aid to the non-specialist ? mathematicians, physicists, engineers, students or researchers ? in discovering the subject's most important problems, results and techniques. Despite the aim of addressing non-specialists, mathematical rigor has not been sacrificed; most of the theorems are either fully proved or proved under more stringent conditions.In this new edition, the chapter on regularity has been significantly expanded and 27 new exercises have been added. The book, containing a total of 103 exercises with detailed solutions, is well designed for a course at both undergraduate and graduate levels.

The calculus of variations is one of the oldest subjects in mathematics, and it is very much alive and still evolving. Besides its mathematical importance and its links to other branches of mathematics, such as geometry or differential equations, it is widely used in physics, engineering, economics and biology.This book serves both as a guide to the expansive existing literature and as an aid to the non-specialist — mathematicians, physicists, engineers, students or researchers — in discovering the subject's most important problems, results and techniques. Despite the aim of addressing non-specialists, mathematical rigor has not been sacrificed; most of the theorems are either fully proved or proved under more stringent conditions.This new edition offers an entirely new chapter, as well as the addition of several new exercises. The book, containing a total of 147 exercises with detailed solutions, is well designed for a course at both undergraduate and graduate levels.

In the part on Fourier analysis, we discuss pointwise convergence results, summability methods and, of course, convergence in the quadratic mean of Fourier series. More advanced topics include a first discussion of Hardy spaces. We also spend some time handling general orthogonal series expansions, in particular, related to orthogonal polynomials. Then we switch to the Fourier integral, i.e. the Fourier transform in Schwartz space, as well as in some Lebesgue spaces or of measures.Our treatment of ordinary differential equations starts with a discussion of some classical methods to obtain explicit integrals, followed by the existence theorems of Picard-Lindelöf and Peano which are proved by fixed point arguments. Linear systems are treated in great detail and we start a first discussion on boundary value problems. In particular, we look at Sturm-Liouville problems and orthogonal expansions. We also handle the hypergeometric differential equations (using complex methods) and their relations to special functions in mathematical physics. Some qualitative aspects are treated too, e.g. stability results (Ljapunov functions), phase diagrams, or flows.Our introduction to the calculus of variations includes a discussion of the Euler-Lagrange equations, the Legendre theory of necessary and sufficient conditions, and aspects of the Hamilton-Jacobi theory. Related first order partial differential equations are treated in more detail.The text serves as a companion to lecture courses, and it is also suitable for self-study. The text is complemented by ca. 260 problems with detailed solutions.