Sensitivity analysis and optimal shape design are key issues in engineering that have been affected by advances in numerical tools currently available. This book, and its supplementary online files, presents basic optimization techniques that can be used to compute the sensitivity of a given design to local change, or to improve its performance by local optimization of these data. The relevance and scope of these techniques have improved dramatically in recent years because of progress in discretization strategies, optimization algorithms, automatic differentiation, software availability, and the power of personal computers.

灵敏度分析和优化形状设计是工程中的关键问题，这些问题受到当前可用数值工具进步的影响。本书及其补充在线文件介绍了基本优化技术，可用于计算给定设计对局部变化的敏感性，或通过对这些数据进行局部优化来提高其性能。近年来，由于在离散化策略、优化算法、自动微分、软件可用性和个人计算机的能力方面的进步，这些技术的相关性和范围有了显著的提高。