Skip to main content

Save up to 30% on Elsevier print and eBooks with free shipping. No promo code needed.

Save up to 30% on print and eBooks.

Variational and Extremum Principles in Macroscopic Systems

  • 1st Edition - March 30, 2005
  • Authors: Stanislaw Sieniutycz, Henrik Farkas
  • Language: English
  • Hardback ISBN:
    9 7 8 - 0 - 0 8 - 0 4 4 4 8 8 - 8
  • eBook ISBN:
    9 7 8 - 0 - 0 8 - 0 4 5 6 1 4 - 0

Recent years have seen a growing trend to derive models of macroscopic phenomena encountered in the fields of engineering, physics, chemistry, ecology, self-organisation theory an… Read more

Variational and Extremum Principles in Macroscopic Systems

Purchase options

LIMITED OFFER

Save 50% on book bundles

Immediately download your ebook while waiting for your print delivery. No promo code is needed.

Institutional subscription on ScienceDirect

Request a sales quote

Recent years have seen a growing trend to derive models of macroscopic phenomena encountered in the fields of engineering, physics, chemistry, ecology, self-organisation theory and econophysics from various variational or extremum principles. Through the link between the integral extremum of a functional and the local extremum of a function (explicit, for example, in the Pontryagin’s maximum principle variational and extremum principles are mutually related. Thus it makes sense to consider them within a common context.

The main goal of Variational and Extremum Principles in Macroscopic Systems is to collect various mathematical formulations and examples of physical reasoning that involve both basic theoretical aspects and applications of variational and extremum approaches to systems of the macroscopic world.

The first part of the book is focused on the theory, whereas the second focuses on applications. The unifying variational approach is used to derive the balance or conservation equations, phenomenological equations linking fluxes and forces, equations of change for processes with coupled transfer of energy and substance, and optimal conditions for energy management.