As software systems become more and more ubiquitous, the issues of dependability become more and more critical. Given that solutions to these issues must be planned at the beginning of the design process, it is appropriate that these issues be addressed at the architectural level.

A systematic presentation of energy principles and variational methods. The increasing use of numerical and computational methods in engineering and applied sciences has shed new light on the importance of energy principles and variational methods. Energy Principles and Variational Methods in Applied Mechanics provides a systematic and practical introduction to the use of energy principles, traditional variational methods, and the finite element method to the solution of engineering problems involving bars, beams, torsion, plane elasticity, and plates.