This textbook presents an introduction to continuum mechanics covering fundamental mathematical tools, general laws and major models. The material is based on lectures held at Gubkin's Russian State University of Oil and Gas. It also includes material related to a joint research seminar with the Institute of Problems in Mechanics of the Russian Academy of Science. The knowledge provided is necessary to understand the structure of existing models, to read and understand the literature and to apply existing methods consciously. Results from computer simulations of virtual models of oil-gas-production are presented to illustrate applications. Graduate students as well as researchers in applied mathematics will benefit from this self-contained text which is enriched by many examples and exercises.  

Vladimir Markovich Entov (1937-2008) worked at the Institute for Problems in Mechanics of the Soviet Academy of Science fom 1971 onwards. Since 1983 he also was Professor of Applied Mathematics and Computer Modeling at the Moscow Institute of Oil and Gas (now known as the Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas). In later years he was involved in research and teaching activity at Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, and the University of Stanford and served as member of the editorial board of the European Journal of Applied Mathematics.Elena Valerievna Glivenko is a professor of the Department of Applied Mathematics at Gubkin University of Oil and Gas, Moscow. Her interests include the development of new computational methods with a natural parallelism based on algebraic topology and mini-operational systems for the study of earthquake catalogs aimed at prediction of strong events. She authored about 100 scientific publications and 7 monographs.