The book is intended to be a self-contained reference for the topic, and is aimed at practicing engineers and researches in the field of mechanics of solids. Graduate, postgraduate and doctoral students of mechanical engineering could benefit from using the book as well. It is assumed that the reader has a basic knowledge of mechanics of solids (strength of materials, structural mechanics, and theory of elasticity), as well as of mathematics in the framework of the basic technical course at university level.
Usually, variational approaches are used as power tools for approximate solution of mechanical problems (it is enough to mention only finite element procedure!). The main feature of this book consists in treating the structural mechanics as discipline which can be completely based on variational principles. The author well-reasonably demonstrates the fruitfulness of this approach.
This book is divided into 11 chapters. The first three chapters are devoted to basic variational principles of structural mechanics: Lagrange, Castigliano, Reissner, Hu-Washizu, Gurtin. These principles are used for formulation and justification of boundary value problems for particular problems. Chapters 4 through 8 present formulations of particular problems based on general variational principles for bars, beams and plates. Chapter 9 contains an introduction into the Ritz method, intended for engineers and researches in mechanics. Finally, chapters 10 and 11 are intended for engineers or researches interested in the frequency spectrum analysis and in the stability of equilibrium of structures. Appendices give some general mathematics and certain specific details, or particularize the issues of theory.
This well-written and organized book is a reader-friendly and good-organised manual in the field of variational approaches. It can be highly recommended for experts in mechanics of solids, engineers, and for graduate, postgraduate and doctoral students.