Applications of Industrial Mathematics

This book collects the results presented at the 158th European Study Group with Industry, which took place at the Centre de Recerca Matemàtica in Barcelona in January 2020. The European Study Groups with Industry are a well-recognised forum where mathematicians work with industrial representatives on issues of current interest to companies. At this particular meeting, the problems were chosen to provide a wide variety of subject areas and to appeal to local academics.

In this work, the research carried out and the solutions presented to the companies are detailed. In particular, the book focuses on: estimating the difficulty level of mobile games; modelling the stability of human towers; fibre coating in the manufacture of clutch components; safe trajectories of robot arms.

The book provides an excellent addition to the canon of Industrial Mathematics. It is addressed to researchers keen to apply mathematics to topical, real-world problems.

Maria Aguareles is Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, Applied Mathematics and Statistics at Universitat de Girona. Over the last two decades, she has worked on the development and analysis of mathematical models arising in physics and in industrial processes with special emphasis on the development of perturbation techniques applied to partial differential equations. She started her research career in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia and at the Oxford Centre for Industrial and Applied Mathematics where she still holds active collaborations.

Francesc Font is Serra-Húnter Assistant Professor in the Department. of Fluid Mechanics at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). He received his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from UPC in 2014 and has held Postdoctoral positions at the University of Limerick (Ireland), McMaster University (Canada) and UPC. In 2019, he received Juan de la CiervaSenior Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Spanish government to develop his research at the Centre de Recerca Matemàtica (Spain). He specialises in the mathematical modelling of transport phenomena and has worked on topics such as nanoscale heat transfer, Li-ion batteries and contaminant removal.

Tim Myers has over thirty years’ experience in developing and applying mathematical models to practical physical situations. In the past decade, his work has focused primarily on two main subject areas, applying mathematics to better understand nanoscale phenomena and to optimise processes for the removal of environmental contaminants. He has worked at research institutes throughout the world and is currently Principal Investigator at the Centre de Recerca Matemàtica in Barcelona as well as holding Adjunct Professor positions in Spain and Ireland. Since 2011, he has been qualified at the highest research level within the Catalan accreditation system.

Marta Pellicer is Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, Applied Mathematics and Statistics at the Universitat de Girona. She has over two decades of expertise working on mathematical modelling in physics and industrial processes. More concretely, she has focused on the spectral analysis and asymptotic behaviour of the partial differential equations that model several viscoelastic and thermoviscoelastic systems. She started her research career in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and, after a short time at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, obtained a full position at the University of Girona.

Joan Solà-Morales has held Full Professorship in Applied Mathematics at the Polytechnical University of Catalunya, Barcelona, since 1989. He has carried out research on differential equations in collaboration with mathematicians and engineers, and teaching on modelling and applied subjects to students of Mathematics and Engineering. He was one of the main organisers of the first Study Group in the Barcelona area back in 2001, and since then, he has been involved in a wide range of similar activities.