Optimal Design of Flexural Systems: Beams, Grillages, Slabs, Plates and Shells covers theoretical developments and optimal solutions for all boundary conditions that may be of practical or theoretical interest in the design of flexural systems. Organized into nine chapters, this book begins with a review of certain fundamental concepts of mechanics, calculus of variations, and optimal design. Subsequent chapters discuss in considerable details the theories of optimal plastic design, as well as the elastic and prestressed systems. Other chapters describe the theory of optimal flexure fields that give an absolute minimum statically admissible ""moment volume"" for plane systems, as well as the slabs and grillages optimized within various types of geometrical constraints. The last chapter evaluates experimental work and certain practical aspects of the optimization of flexural systems. This book will be of interest to graduate students, research workers, practicing engineers, and architects in structural engineering, architectural science, aerospace technology, solid mechanics, and applied mathematics.