This book results from various lectures given in recent years. Early drafts were used for several single semester courses on singular perturbation meth ods given at Rensselaer, and a more complete version was used for a one year course at the Technische Universitat Wien. Some portions have been used for short lecture series at Universidad Central de Venezuela, West Vir ginia University, the University of Southern California, the University of California at Davis, East China Normal University, the University of Texas at Arlington, Universita di Padova, and the University of New Hampshire, among other places. As a result, I've obtained lots of valuable feedback from students and listeners, for which I am grateful. This writing continues a pattern. Earlier lectures at Bell Laboratories, at the University of Edin burgh and New York University, and at the Australian National University led to my earlier works (1968, 1974, and 1978). All seem to have been useful for the study of singular perturbations, and I hope the same will be true of this monograph. I've personally learned much from reading and analyzing the works of others, so I would especially encourage readers to treat this book as an introduction to a diverse and exciting literature. The topic coverage selected is personal and reflects my current opin ions. An attempt has been made to encourage a consistent method of ap proaching problems, largely through correcting outer limits in regions of rapid change. Formal proofs of correctness are not emphasized.

This is the first book published in English devoted solely to the boundary function method, which is one of the asymptotic methods. This method provides an effective and simple way to obtain asymptotic approximations for the solutions of certain ordinary and partial differential equations containing small parameters in front of the highest derivatives. These equations, called singularly perturbed equations, are often used in modeling. In addition to numerous examples, the book includes discussions on singularly perturbed problems from chemical kinetics and heat conduction, semiconductor device modeling, and mathematical biology. The book also contains a variety of original ideas and explicit calculations previously available only in journal literature, as well as many concrete applied problems illustrating the boundary function method algorithms. Quite general asymptotic results described in the book are rigorous in the sense that, along with the asymptotic algorithms, in most cases the theorems on estimation of the remainder terms are presented. A survey of results of Russian mathematicians on the subject is provided; many of these results are not well known in the West. Based on the Russian edition of the textbook by Vasil'eva and Butuzov, this American edition, prepared by Kalachev, differs in many aspects. The text of the book has been revised substantially, some new material has been added to every chapter, and more examples, exercises, and new references on asymptotic methods and their applications have been included.

This new edition incorporates new developments in numerical methods for singularly perturbed differential equations, focusing on linear convection-diffusion equations and on nonlinear flow problems that appear in computational fluid dynamics.

This book is a revised and updated version, including a substantial portion of new material, of our text Perturbation Methods in Applied Mathematics (Springer Verlag, 1981). We present the material at a level that assumes some familiarity with the basics of ordinary and partial differential equations. Some of the more advanced ideas are reviewed as needed; therefore this book can serve as a text in either an advanced undergraduate course or a graduate-level course on the subject. Perturbation methods, first used by astronomers to predict the effects of small disturbances on the nominal motions of celestial bodies, have now become widely used analytical tools in virtually all branches of science. A problem lends itself to perturbation analysis if it is "close" to a simpler problem that can be solved exactly. Typically, this closeness is measured by the occurrence of a small dimensionless parameter, E, in the governing system (consisting of differential equations and boundary conditions) so that for E = 0 the resulting system is exactly solvable. The main mathematical tool used is asymptotic expansion with respect to a suitable asymptotic sequence of functions of E. In a regular perturbation problem, a straightforward procedure leads to a system of differential equations and boundary conditions for each term in the asymptotic expansion. This system can be solved recursively, and the accuracy of the result improves as E gets smaller, for all values of the independent variables throughout the domain of interest. We discuss regular perturbation problems in the first chapter.

Contains well-chosen examples and exercises A student-friendly introduction that follows a workbook type approach

Since the first edition of this book, the literature on fitted mesh methods for singularly perturbed problems has expanded significantly. Over the intervening years, fitted meshes have been shown to be effective for an extensive set of singularly perturbed partial differential equations. In the revised version of this book, the reader will find an introduction to the basic theory associated with fitted numerical methods for singularly perturbed differential equations. Fitted mesh methods focus on the appropriate distribution of the mesh points for singularly perturbed problems. The global errors in the numerical approximations are measured in the pointwise maximum norm. The fitted mesh algorithm is particularly simple to implement in practice, but the theory of why these numerical methods work is far from simple. This book can be used as an introductory text to the theory underpinning fitted mesh methods.

This introductory graduate text is based on a graduate course the author has taught repeatedly over the last ten years to students in applied mathematics, engineering sciences, and physics. Each chapter begins with an introductory development involving ordinary differential equations, and goes on to cover such traditional topics as boundary layers and multiple scales. However, it also contains material arising from current research interest, including homogenisation, slender body theory, symbolic computing, and discrete equations. Many of the excellent exercises are derived from problems of up-to-date research and are drawn from a wide range of application areas.