Abstract

In the year 2011 Editorial Board of the journal Thermal Science continues with the policy to prepare special issues, Supplements, devoted to the specific, actual scientific topics. Supple ments, issued besides four regular issues per year, have double role in publishing the journal Thermal Science: from one side Supplemental issues gives possibility to present to readers most interesting topics, and from the other side it is possible to publish greater number of papers, following permanent growing interest of the researchers to publish results of their investigations in our journal. Following those ideas, Editorial Board with greatest interest accepted proposal of the organizer of the Mini-symposium on Analytical Methods for Thermal Science, Professor Ji-Huan He and Shanghai Modern Textile Institute, to pre pare special issue with selected papers presented this Symposium. More over, to devote special issue of the journal Thermal Science, to analytical methods, seems to be very challenging, in this era of numerical models and commercial CFD software, used by every researcher, even at the beginning of the professional career. The beginners in investigations think that by numerical modelling it is possible to solve every physical problem, in thermal sciences, too. After wards, they realize that it is not the case, and that other scientific tools, experiments, and analytical methods can not be avoided, and even give better and more correct physical explanation of the processes. For those reasons, my personal opinion is that this issue of the journal Thermal Science is especially important, and will present new impulse for increasing quality of the journal. Papers presented at Symposium "Analytical Methods for Thermal Science", in the frame of the 3rd International Symposium on Nonlinear Dynamics, September 25-28, 2010, Shanghai, China, and selected for this special issue, convey a strong, reliable, efficient, and promising development of thermal science. Included herein is a collection of original refereed research papers by well-established researchers in the field of nonlinear science. We hope that these papers will prove to be a timely and valuable reference for researchers in this area. Analytical approach to thermal science is challenging and promising, and is playing an even more important role in optimal design of various thermal problems. Considering this fact, selection of the papers for this special issue has the aim to show illustrating approaches to various thermal problems by various methods including fractal geometry and fractional calculus, and the present special issue can be used as paradigms for many other applications. I am deeply grateful to the Guest editors, Professor Ji-Huan He (now with National Engineering Laboratory of Modern Silk, Soochow University, Suzhow, China) and Professor Lianchun Zheng (Department of Mathematics and Mechanics, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, China), for excellent paper selection, the job which is at the same time highly professional and delicate. I am sure, that readers will obtain realistic insight in how to apply the methods presented in this special issue to various problems.