to generalized functions and distributions -- Multiplications of distributions in classical physics -- Elementary introduction -- Jump formulas for systems in nonconservative form. New numerical methods -- The case of several constitutive equations -- Linear wave propagation in a medium with piecewise C? characteristics -- The canonical Hamiltonian formalism of interacting quantum fields -- The abstract theory of generalized functions.

This book presents recent and very elementary developments of a theory of multiplication of distributions in the field of explicit and numerical solutions of systems of PDEs of physics (nonlinear elasticity, elastoplasticity, hydrodynamics, multifluid flows, acoustics). The prerequisites are kept to introductory calculus level so that the book remains accessible at the same time to pure mathematicians (as a smoothand somewhat heuristic introdcution to this theory) and to applied mathematicians, numerical engineers and theoretical physicists (as a tool to treat problems involving products of distributions).