The ?rst edition of this book was published in 2002 for an audience of applied mathematicians and engineers. The response to the ?rst edition, represented by sev eral book reviews, has been most heartening. Accordingly, the second edition of this book maintains its major framework and serves as an expanded revision of our previous work. In the second edition, the theoretical backgrounds of group representation the ory are strengthened and made self contained, in response to a request of a book reviewer and students of the authors. Based on these strengthened backgrounds, a theory and a numerical procedure on block diagonalization are presented. Among a number of methodologies, block diagonalization analysis has come to be acknowl edged as a systematic and rigorous procedure for symmetry exploitation for the following two purposes: • Gain better insight into bifurcation behaviors via blockwise singularity detection. • Enhance the computational e?ciency and accuracy of the numerical analysis.
