Introduction

Abstract

Within the last few decades the accelerated coupling of applied mathematics, natural science and engineering has given rise to great interest in computer simulation of real processes. The economic advantage of simulating the behaviour of physical field quantities (e.g. temperature, pressure, stress, velocity, etc.), varying in space and in time, by a digital computer is considerable. Desired properties of a process or desired reactions of a machine can be checked without implementing the expensive process or machinery hardware. Many developments in the fields of numerical mathematics, computer science, analysis, mechanics, system theory etc. have been stimulated by the requirements of practice regarding simulation experiments.