Configurational Mechanics

Book excerpt: This book comprises papers that were presented at the Symposium on Configurational Mechanics, during the 5th EUROMECH Soil Mechanics Conference in Thessaloniki in August 2003. Configurational (or material) mechanics -in contrast to Newtonian mechanics in Euclidean space- concerns any sort of change or "motion" in the material configuration. 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. This volume contains eleven contributions from specialists from around Europe Articles concern both theoretical and computational mechanics, electroplasticity, magnetoelasticity, elastoplasticity as well as granular, multiphase and micropolar media.