Modeling and Convexity

This reference book gives the reader a complete but comprehensive presentation of the foundations of convex analysis and presents applications to significant situations in engineering. The presentation of the theory is self-contained and the proof of all the essential results is given. The examples consider meaningful situations such as the modeling of curvilinear structures, the motion of a mass of people or the solidification of a material. Non convex situations are considered by means of relaxation methods and the connections between probability and convexity are explored and exploited in order to generate numerical algorithms.

Eduardo Souza De Cursi is Professor at the National Institute for Applied Sciences in Rouen, France, where he is also Dean of International Affairs and Director of the Laboratory for the Optimization and Reliability in Structural Mechanics.

Rubens Sampaio is Professor at PUC-Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His fields of interest are Applied Mathematics and Mechanics.