Author Description

This book comprises papers that were presented at the Symposium on Configurational Mechanics, which was held within the framework of the 5th EUROMECH Soil Mechanics Conference, Thessaloniki, 17-22 August 2003. Configurational (or material) mechanics, in contrast to Newtonian mechanics in Euclidean space, concerns any sort of change or motion in the material conmfiguration, thus it is a mechanics in the material space. This framework provides a novel and unifying view on otherwise diverse disciplines like fracture mechanics, phase transitions, plasticity and dislocation theory. In addition, configurational mechanics can be used in computations because it provides a fruitful interpretation of the field equations in the discretized space. The volume contains eleven contributions from specialists of various European institutions, among who are some of the pioneers of the field. The included articles concern both theoretical and computational mechanics, electroplasticity, magnetoelasticity, elastoplasticity as well as granular, multiphase and micropolar media. This book is of interest to mechanicians, engineers, applied mathematicians, and materials scientists.