At the present time stability theory of deformable systems has been developed into a manifold field within solid mechanics with methods, techniques and approaches of its own. We can hardly name a branch of industry or civil engineering where the results of the stability theory have not found their application. This extensive development together with engineering applications are reflected in a flurry of papers appearing in periodicals as well as in a plenty of monographs, textbooks and reference books. In so doing, overwhelming majority of researchers, con cerned with the problems of practical interest, have dealt with the loss of stability in the thin-walled structural elements. Trying to simplify solution of the problems, they have used two- and one-dimensional theories based on various auxiliary hypotheses. This activity contributed a lot to the preferential development of the stability theory of thin-walled structures and organisation of this theory into a branch of solid mechanics with its own up-to-date methods and trends, but left three-dimensional linearised theory of deformable bodies stability (TL TDBS), methods of solving and solutions of the three-dimensional stability problems themselves almost without attention. It must be emphasised that by three dimensional theories and problems in this book are meant those theories and problems which do not draw two-dimensional plate and shell and one-dimensional rod theories.
