Rational and Applied Mechanics

Available for the first time in English, this two-volume course on theoretical and applied mechanics has been honed over decades by leading scientists and teachers, and is a primary teaching resource for engineering and maths students at St. Petersburg University. The course addresses classical branches of theoretical mechanics (Vol. 1), along with a wide range of advanced topics, special problems and applications (Vol. 2). This first volume of the textbook contains the parts “Kinematics” and “Dynamics”. The part “Kinematics” presents in detail the theory of curvilinear coordinates which is actively used in the part “Dynamics”, in particular, in the theory of constrained motion and variational principles in mechanics. For describing the motion of a system of particles, the notion of a Hertz representative point is used, and the notion of a tangent space is applied to investigate the motion of arbitrary mechanical systems. In the final chapters Hamilton-Jacobi theory is applied for the integration of equations of motion, and the elements of special relativity theory are presented. This textbook is aimed at students in mathematics and mechanics and at post-graduates and researchers in analytical mechanics.