From the reviews: "The book is excellent, and covers a very broad area (usually treated as separate topics) from a unified perspective. [...] It will be very useful for both mathematicians and physicists." EMS Newsletter

This volume is written by Academician Sedov who is considered by many as the leading scientist in mechanics in the USSR. This latest fourth edition helps the reader in a relatively short time to master and acquire fully the essence of many geometrical and mechanical theories.

Soft biological tissues often undergo large (nearly) elastic deformations that can be analyzed using the nonlinear theory of elasticity. Because of the varied approaches to nonlinear elasticity in the literature, some aspects of the subject may be difficult to appreciate. This book attempts to clarify and unify those treatments, illustrating the advantages and disadvantages of each through various examples in the mechanics of soft tissues. Applications include muscle, arteries, the heart, and embryonic tissues. Contents: Vectors, Dyadics, and Tensors; Analysis of Deformation; Analysis of Stress; Constitutive Relations; Biomechanics Applications. Readership: Graduate students and researchers interested in mechanics problems involving large elastic deformations, like those in soft tissue biomechanics.

Interest in constrained optimization originated with the simple linear pro gramming model since it was practical and perhaps the only computationally tractable model at the time. Constrained linear optimization models were soon adopted in numerous application areas and are perhaps the most widely used mathematical models in operations research and management science at the time of this writing. Modelers have, however, found the assumption of linearity to be overly restrictive in expressing the real-world phenomena and problems in economics, finance, business, communication, engineering design, computational biology, and other areas that frequently demand the use of nonlinear expressions and discrete variables in optimization models. Both of these extensions of the linear programming model are NP-hard, thus representing very challenging problems. On the brighter side, recent advances in algorithmic and computing technology make it possible to re visit these problems with the hope of solving practically relevant problems in reasonable amounts of computational time. Initial attempts at solving nonlinear programs concentrated on the de velopment of local optimization methods guaranteeing globality under the assumption of convexity. On the other hand, the integer programming liter ature has concentrated on the development of methods that ensure global optima. The aim of this book is to marry the advancements in solving nonlinear and integer programming models and to develop new results in the more general framework of mixed-integer nonlinear programs (MINLPs) with the goal of devising practically efficient global optimization algorithms for MINLPs.

This two-part text fills what has often been a void in the first-year graduate physics curriculum. Through its examination of particles and continua, it supplies a lucid and self-contained account of classical mechanics — which in turn provides a natural framework for introducing many of the advanced mathematical concepts in physics. The text opens with Newton's laws of motion and systematically develops the dynamics of classical particles, with chapters on basic principles, rotating coordinate systems, lagrangian formalism, small oscillations, dynamics of rigid bodies, and hamiltonian formalism, including a brief discussion of the transition to quantum mechanics. This part of the book also considers examples of the limiting behavior of many particles, facilitating the eventual transition to a continuous medium. The second part deals with classical continua, including chapters on string membranes, sound waves, surface waves on nonviscous fluids, heat conduction, viscous fluids, and elastic media. Each of these self-contained chapters provides the relevant physical background and develops the appropriate mathematical techniques, and problems of varying difficulty appear throughout the text.

This book examines in detail the Theory of Elasticity which is a branch of the mechanics of a deformable solid. Special emphasis is placed on the investigation of the process of deformation within the framework of the generally accepted model of a medium which, in this case, is an elastic body. A comprehensive list of Appendices is included providing a wealth of references for more in depth coverage. The work will provide both a stimulus for future research in this field as well as useful reference material for many years to come.