Crisis of mechanics literature?

Excerpt

Since 1980 there has been an impressive change in the scientific literature, in particular in mechanics. The increase in the number of published articles has not been a recent phenomenon. Since the end of the 1950’s the classical journals of Applied Mathematics, Applied Mechanics, and affine disciplines, underwent a large increase in submitted papers. The size of these journals grew because the papers were not trivial, but proposed new appealing problems, like structural stability in the dynamical context, limit analysis, non-linear elasticity, interactions of fluid with structures, and aeroelasticity. The novelty was not only the formulation of original models for describing the physical situations, but also the use of appropriate mathematical treatment. Only after the end of the Second World War were the classical methods of treating linear partial differential equations with the method of to separation of variables diffused in the technical literature, and so too the systematic use of a priori estimates of the solutions. However, the most important progress was the critical analysis of the mathematical models in order to simplify them after reasonable approximations. This requires physical insight and mathematical taste. The history of science is rich in successful attempts in the field, from Coulomb, Fourier, Saint-Venant, to many others. …