Nonlinear Dynamics and Stochastic Mechanics

This volume contains the proceedings of the International Symposium on Nonlinear Dynamics and Stochastic Mechanics held at The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences from August-September (1993) as part of the 1992-1993 Program Year on Dynamical Systems and Bifurcation Theory. In recent years, mathematicians and applied scientists have made significant progress in understanding and have developed powerful tools for the analysis of the complex behavior of deterministic and stochastic dynamical systems. By moving beyond classical perturbation methods to more general geometrical, computational, and analytical methods, this book is at the forefront in transferring these new mathematical ideas into engineering practice.This work presents the solutions of some specific problems in engineering structures and mechanics and demonstrates by explicit example these new methods of solution. The book joins problems in engineering science to recent developments in the mathematical theory of dynamical systems; offers novel applications of dynamical systems theory; presents numerical methods for stochastic systems; and, compares analytical and numerical studies near the onset of chaos. In one volume, it brings together and contrasts deterministic and stochastic models of 'chaos'.