4 Compositional Modelling of Distributed-Parameter Systems

Abstract

The Hamiltonian formulation of distributed-parameter systems has been a challenging reserach area for quite some time. (A nice introduction, especially with respect to systems stemming from fluid dynamics, can be found in [26], where also a historical account is provided.) The identification of the underlying Hamiltonian structure of sets of p.d.e.s has been instrumental in proving all sorts of results on integrability, the existence of soliton solutions, stability, reduction, etc., and in unifying existing results, see e.g. [11], [24], [18], [17], [25], [14].