This concise text offers both professionals and students an introduction to the fundamentals and standard methods of the calculus of variations. In addition to surveys of problems with fixed and movable boundaries, it explores highly practical direct methods for the solution of variational problems.
Topics include the method of variation in problems with fixed boundaries; variational problems with movable boundaries and other problems; sufficiency conditions for an extremum; variational problems of constrained extrema; and direct methods of solving variational problems. Each chapter features numerous illustrative problems, and solutions appear at the end.