ME681A: MATHEMATICS FOR ENGINEERS (3-0-0-9)

Instructor: Anirban Guha

Year: Monsoon 2016
Total number of 75 minute lectures: 26 ( implies 39 lecture hours (LH) )
Vector Calculus and introductory differential geometry (5 LH)
1. Curves: parametric representation, tangent vector, arc length, curvature, principal normal vector,
osculating plane, bi-normal vector; Surfaces: parametric representation, tangent vector and
tangent plane, Frennet-Serret frame.
2. Scalar fields: gradient, directional derivative, potential; Vector fields: divergence, curl, solenoidal
and irrotational vector fields; Line integral and path independence; Surface and volume integrals;
Gauss divergence, Stokes and Greens theorems (without proof).
Tensor Algebra and Calculus (4 LH)
1. Index Notation and Summation Convention.
2. Tensor algebra: tensor as a linear vector transformation, dyadic representation, transformation of
components, product of tensors, transpose, decomposition into symmetric and antisymmetric
parts, invariants (trace and determinant), decomposition into isotropic and deviatoric parts, inner
product and norm, inverse, orthogonal tensors, eigenvalues and eigenvectors, square-root,
positive definite symmetric tensor, polar decomposition, tensors of higher order.
3. Tensor calculus: tensor derivative of a scalar field, gradient of a vector field, divergence of a
tensor field.
Linear Algebra (11 LH)
1. Vector spaces: definition, linear independence of vectors and basis, inner product and inner
product space, orthogonality, Gram-Schmidt procedure, subspaces.
2. Matrices: coordinate-dependent linear transformation, null and range spaces.
3. Linear algebraic equations: existence and uniqueness of solution, elementary row/column
operations, Gauss elimination and Gauss Jordon methods, echelon form, pivoting, Gauss-Seidel
and Jacobi iterative methods, condition number, minimum norm and least square error solutions for
undermined systems.
4. Eigenvalues and eigenvectors of matrices: properties like multiplicity, eigenspace, spectrum and
linear independence of eigenvectors, eigenvalues/eigenvectors of symmetric matrices, similarity
transformation and orthogonalization.
5. Singular value decomposition.
Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs) (12 LH)
1. Initial value (IV) problem of 1st order ODE: existence, uniqueness and continuity with initial
conditions.
2. Methods of solving 1st order ODEs: separation of variable technique, change of variable to
make ODE separable; exact ODEs, integrating factor to make ODE
exact, linear 1st order ODEs.
3. Homogeneous, linear, 2nd order ODEs: existence and uniqueness, 2 fundamental (linearly
independent) solutions and Wronskian, superposition for obtaining general solution, fundamental
solutions of ODEs with constant coefficients, method of reduction of order to find 2nd linearly
independent solution, fundamental solutions of Euler-Cauchy ODEs.
4. Non-homogeneous, linear, 2nd order ODEs: existence and uniqueness, methods of undermined
coefficients and variation of parameters for obtaining the solution of non-homogeneous part
(particular solution).
5. System of 1st order ODEs: existence and uniqueness of IV problem, solution of the
homogeneous part with constant coefficients, generalized eigenvector to find other fundamental
solutions, method of variation of parameters to find the solution of non-homogeneous part
(particular solution).
6. Homogeneous, linear, 2nd order ODEs with variable coefficients: power series method for
obtaining solution, solution of Legendre equation; Frobenius method for obtaining solution when

the coefficients have regular singularity, solution of Bessel equation; Sturm-Louville problem with
regular, periodic and singular (homogeneous) boundary conditions and use of its eigenfunctions as
an orthogonal basis for the representation of any function.
7. Laplace transform method for IV problem involving non-homogeneous, linear, 2nd order ODEs,
properties of transform, inverse transform using tables, discontinuous right-hand sides involving
unit step, impulse and Dirac-delta functions, t-shifting theorem for finding inverse when the right
hand side is discontinuous.
Fourier Series and Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) (6 LH)
1. Fourier series: periodic functions, trigonometric functions as eigenfunctions of Sturm-Liouville
problem with periodic boundary conditions, representation of any function as an infinite series
using trigonometric functions as orthogonal basis, conditions for point-wise convergence (without
proof), even and odd series.
2. Classification of 2nd order, quasi-linear, PDE in 2 independent variables, different types of initial
and boundary conditions for hyperbolic, parabolic and elliptic PDEs.
3. 1-D wave equation (hyperbolic PDE): separation of variable solution, DAlemberts solution,
solution using Laplace transform.
4. 1-D (unsteady) heat equation (parabolic PDE): separation of variable solution, solution using
Laplace transform.
5. 2-D Laplace equation (elliptic PDE) over rectangular domain: separation of variable solution.
Numerical analysis (3 LH)
Numerical solution of ODEs from Euler to RK4, geometric understanding.
Numerical stability analysis, Newton-Raphson, Newton-Cotes numerical integration schemes,
interpolation.