This volume consists of papers presented at the Variational Analysis and Aerospace Engineering Workshop II held in Erice, Italy in September 2010 at the International School of Mathematics "Guido Stampacchia". The workshop provided a platform for aerospace engineers and mathematicians (from universities, research centers and industry) to discuss the advanced problems requiring an extensive application of mathematics. The presentations were dedicated to the most advanced subjects in engineering and, in particular to computational fluid dynamics methods, introduction of new materials, optimization in aerodynamics, structural optimization, space missions, flight mechanics, control theory and optimization, variational methods and applications, etc. This book will capture the interest of researchers from both academia and industry.

Algorithm Issues and Challenges Associated with the Development of Robust CFD Codes.- Flight Path Optimization at Constant Altitude.- A survey on the Newton problem of optimal profiles.- Innovative Rotor Blade Design Code.- Fields of Extremals and Sufficient Conditions for the Simplest Problem of the Calculus of Variations in -Variables.- A Framework for Aerodynamic Shape Optimization.- Optimal Motions of Multibody Systems in Resistive Media.- Instationary Heat-Constrained Trajectory Optimization of a Hypersonic Space Vehicle by ODE#x2013;PDE-Constrained Optimal Control.- Variational Approaches to Fracture.- On the Problem of Synchronization of Identical Dynamical Systems: The Huygens#x2019;s Clocks.- Best wing system: an exact solution of the Prandtl#x2019;s problem.- Numerical simulation of the dynamics of boats by a variational inequality approach.- Concepts of Active Noise Aircraft Cockpits Reduction Employed in High Noise Level.- Lekhnitskii#x2019;s Formalism for Stress Concentrations Around Irregularities in Anisotropic Plates: Solutions for Arbitrary Boundary Conditions.- Best Initial Conditions for the Rendezvous Maneuver.- Commercial Aircraft Design for Reduced Noise and Environmental Impact.- Variational Approach to the Problem of the Minimum Induced Drag of Wings.- Plastic Hinges in a Beam.- Problems of Minimal and Maximal Aerodynamic Resistance..- Shock Optimization for Airfoil Design Problems.- Differential Games Treated by a Gradient#x2013;Restoration Approach.- Interval Methods for Optimal Control.- Application of Optimisation Algorithms to Aircraft Aerodynamics.- Different levels of Optimization in Aircraft Design.- Numerical and Analytical Methods for Global Optimization.- The Aeroservoelasticity Qualification Process in Alenia.- Further Steps towards Quantitative Conceptual Aircraft Design.- Some Plebeian Variational Problems.

This volume consists of papers presented at the Variational Analysis and Aerospace Engineering Workshop II held in Erice, Italy in September 2010 at the International School of Mathematics "Guido Stampacchia." The workshop provided a platform for aerospace engineers and mathematicians (from universities, research centers and industry) to discuss the advanced problems requiring an extensive application of mathematics. The presentations were dedicated to the most advanced subjects in engineering and, in particular to computational fluid dynamics methods, introduction of new materials, optimization in aerodynamics, structural optimization, space missions, flight mechanics, control theory and optimization, variational methods and applications, etc.

This book will capture the interest of researchers from both academia and industry.

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In recent years, new mathematical methods and tools have been developed and - plied extensively in the ?eld of aerospace engineering, for example, ?nite element method, computational ?uiddynamics, optimization, control, eigenvalues problems. The interaction between aerospace engineering and mathematics has been sign- cant in the past for both engineers and mathematicians and will be even stronger in the future. The School of Mathematics "Guido Stampacchia" of the "Ettore Majorana" FoundationandCentreofScienti?cCultureisthemostappropriatesiteforaerospace engineers and mathematicians to meet. The present volume collects the papers p- sented at the Erice Workshop held on September 8-16, 2007, which was organized in order to allow aerospace engineers and mathematicians from Universities, - search Centres, and Industry to debate advanced problems in aerospace engineering requiring extensive mathematical applications. Theeditorsarecon?denttocapturetheinterestofpeoplefrombothacademiaand industry, particularly, young researchers working on new frontiers of mathematical applications to engineering. The workshop was dedicated to Angelo Miele, Professor at Rice University in Houston, on the occasion of his 85th birthday. Angelo Miele is both an eminent mathematician and a famous engineer, among other activities, able to conceive new scenarios for space exploration. He has been the advisor of many PhD students at Houston, who became well-known professors in universities worldwide and are speakers at this workshop.

Recently much attention has been devoted to the optimization of transportation networks in a given geographic area. One assumes the distributions of population and of services/workplaces (i.e. the network's sources and sinks) are known, as well as the costs of movement with/without the network, and the cost of constructing/maintaining it. Both the long-term optimization and the short-term, "who goes where," optimization are considered. These models can also be adapted for the optimization of other types of networks, such as telecommunications, pipeline or drainage networks. In the monograph we study the most general problem settings, namely, when neither the shape nor even the topology of the network to be constructed is known a priori.

The study of shape optimization problems encompasses a wide spectrum of academic research with numerous applications to the real world. In this work these problems are treated from both the classical and modern perspectives and target a broad audience of graduate students in pure and applied mathematics, as well as engineers requiring a solid mathematical basis for the solution of practical problems.

Key topics and features:

* Presents foundational introduction to shape optimization theory

* Studies certain classical problems: the isoperimetric problem and the Newton problem involving the best aerodynamical shape, and optimization problems over classes of convex domains

* Treats optimal control problems under a general scheme, giving a topological framework, a survey of "gamma"-convergence, and problems governed by ODE

* Examines shape optimization problems with Dirichlet and Neumann conditions on the free boundary, along with the existence of classical solutions

* Studies optimization problems for obstacles and eigenvalues of elliptic operators

* Poses several open problems for further research

* Substantial bibliography and index

Driven by good examples and illustrations and requiring only a standard knowledge in the calculus of variations, differential equations, and functional analysis, the book can serve as a text for a graduate course in computational methods of optimal design and optimization, as well as an excellent reference for applied mathematicians addressing functional shape optimization problems.

Leading researchers in the field of Optimal Transportation, with different views and perspectives, contribute to this Summer School volume: Monge-Ampère and Monge-Kantorovich theory, shape optimization and mass transportation are linked, among others, to applications in fluid mechanics granular material physics and statistical mechanics, emphasizing the attractiveness of the subject from both a theoretical and applied point of view. The volume is designed to become a guide to researchers willing to enter into this challenging and useful theory.

The series is aimed specifically at publishing peer reviewed reviews and contributions presented at workshops and conferences. Each volume is associated with a particular conference, symposium or workshop. These events cover various topics within pure and applied mathematics and provide up-to-date coverage of new developments, methods and applications.

At the summer school in Pisa in September 1996, Luigi Ambrosio and Norman Dancer each gave a course on the geometric problem of evolution of a surface by mean curvature, and degree theory with applications to PDEs respectively. This self-contained presentation accessible to PhD students bridged the gap between standard courses and advanced research on these topics. The resulting book is divided accordingly into 2 parts, and neatly illustrates the 2-way interaction of problems and methods. Each of the courses is augmented and complemented by additional short chapters by other authors describing current research problems and results.

The study of shape optimization problems is a very wide field, both classical, as the isoperimetric problem and Newton problem of the best aerodynamical shape show, and modern, for all the recent results obtained in the last two, three decades. The fascinating feature is that the competing objects are shapes, i.e. domains of Rn, instead of functions, as usually occurs in problems of calculus of variations. This constraint often produces additional difficulties that lead to a lack of existence of a solution and the introduction of suitable relaxed formulations of the problem. However, in a few cases an optimal solution exists, due to the special form of the cost functional and to the geometrical restriction on the class of competing domains. This volume collects the lecture notes of two courses given in the academic year 2000/01 by the authors at the University of Pisa and at the Scuola Normale Superiore respectively. The courses were mainly addressed to Ph. D. students and required a background in the topics in functional analysis that are usually taught in undergraduate courses.

This book combines the efforts of a distinguished team of authors, who are all renowned mathematicians and expositors, and provides a modern introduction to the calculus of variations. By focusing on the one-dimensional case it remains relatively free of technicalities, and therefore provides a useful overview of the theory at a level suitable for graduate students.