This volume constitutes the Proceedings of the IUTAM Symposium on 'Nonlinear Analysis of Fracture', held in Cambridge from 3rd to 7th Septem ber 1995. Its objective was to assess and place on record the current state of understanding of this important class of phenomena, from the standpoints of mathematics, materials science, physics and engineering. All fracture phenomena are nonlinear; the reason for inclusion of this qualification in the title was to reflect the intention that emphasis should be placed on distinctive aspects of nonlinearity, not only with regard to material consti tutive behaviour but also with regard to insights gained, particularly from the mathematics and physics communities, during the recent dramatic ad vances in understanding of nonlinear systems in general. The expertise represented in the Symposium was accordingly very wide, and many of the world's greatest authorities in their respective fields participated. The Symposium remained focussed on issues of practical significance for fracture phenomena, with concentration on aspects that are still im perfectly understood. The most significant unifying issue in this regard is that of scale: this theme was addressed from several perspectives. One important aspect is the problem of passing information on one scale up or down, as an input for analysis at another scale. Although this is not always the case, it may be that the microscopic process of fracture is understood in some particular class of materials.

During the last decades, the growth of micro-electronics has reduced the cost of computing power to a level acceptable to industry and has made possible sophisticated control strategies suitable for many applications. Vibration c- trol is applied to all kinds of engineering systems to obtain the desired dynamic behavior, improved accuracy and increased reliability during operation. In this context, one can think of applications related to the control of structures’ vib- tion isolation, control of vehicle dynamics, noise control, control of machines and mechanisms and control of ?uid-structure-interaction. One could continue with this list for a long time. Research in the ?eld of vibration control is extremely comprehensive. Pr- lems that are typical for vibration control of nonlinear mechanisms and str- tures arise in the ?elds of modeling systems in such a way that the model is suitable for control design, to choose appropriate actuator and sensor locations and to select the actuators and sensors. Theobjective of the Symposium was to present anddiscuss methodsthat contribute to thesolution of such problems and to demonstrate the state of the art inthe ?eld shown by typical examples. The intention was to evaluate the limits of performance that can beachievedby controlling the dynamics, and to point out gaps in present research and give links for areas offuture research.Mainly, it brought together leading experts from quite different areas presenting theirpoints of view.

During the last decades, continuum mechanics of porous materials has achieved great attention, since it allows for the consideration of the volumetrically coupled behaviour of the solid matrix deformation and the pore-fluid flow. Naturally, applications of porous media models range from civil and environmental engineering, where, e. g. , geote- nical problems like the consolidation problem are of great interest, via mechanical engineering, where, e. g. , the description of sinter materials or polymeric and metallic foams is a typical problem, to chemical and biomechanical engineering, where, e. g. , the complex structure of l- ing tissues is studied. Although these applications are principally very different, they basically fall into the category of multiphase materials, which can be described, on the macroscale, within the framework of the well-founded Theory of Porous Media (TPM). With the increasing power of computer hardware together with the rapidly decreasing computational costs, numerical solutions of complex coupled problems became possible and have been seriously investigated. However, since the quality of the numerical solutions strongly depends on the quality of the underlying physical model together with the experimental and mathematical possibilities to successfully determine realistic material parameters, a successful treatment of porous materials requires a joint consideration of continuum mechanics, experimental mechanics and numerical methods. In addition, micromechanical - vestigations and homogenization techniques are very helpful to increase the phenomenological understanding of such media.

The IUT AM / IFToMM Symposium on Synthesis of Nonlinear Dynamical Systems, held in Riga, Latvia, 24-28 August 1998, was one of a series of IUTAM sponsored symposia which focus on the theory and application of methods of nonlinear dynamics in mechanics. The symposium follows eighteen symposia on Analysis and Synthesis of Nonlinear Mechanical Oscillatory Systems held at Riga Technical University from 1971 to 1991 and in 1996 (prof. E. Lavendelis and Prof. M. Zakrzhevsky). Early in the late fifties and sixties Prof. J. G. Panovko organised several successful conferences in Riga on Nonlinear Oscillations. The participants in all these conferences and symposia (except 1996) were only from the ex-Soviet Union. This symposium, organised by the Institute of Mechanics of Riga Technical University, brought together scientists active in different fields of nonlinear dynamics. Selected scientists from 14 countries represented a wide range of expertise in' mechanics, from pure theoreticians to people primarily oriented towards application of nonlinear and chaotic dynamics and nonlinear oscillations. The goal of the symposium was to stimulate development of the theory of strongly nonlinear dynamical systems and its new applications in the fields of applied mechanics, engineering and other branches of science and technology.

The Symposium remained focussed on issues of practical significance for fracture phenomena, with concentration on aspects that are still imperfectly understood. The most significant unifying issue in this regard is that of scale: this theme was addressed from several perspectives. One important aspect is the problem of passing information on one scale up or down, as an input for analysis at another scale. Although this is not always the case, it may be that the microscopic process of fracture is understood in some particular class of materials. The problem then becomes one of constructing an appropriate model at the macroscopic scale, that retains the essential features of the microscopic process but avoids unmanageable complexity. Dually, considering the problem from the macroscopic end, it is important to assess which particular aspects of the macroscopic stress field interact directly with the fracture process. In the simplest cases, the process is driven by the crack tip singularity in the macroscopic field; then, at least some problems relating to scale disappear. The focus of interest of course is in the regime where this 'singularity dominance' is not realised.

Proceedings of the IUTAM Symposium held in Abisko National Park, Kiruna, Sweden, July 31-August 4, 2000

New developments in the applications of fracture mechanics to engineering problems have taken place in the last years. Composite materials have extensively been used in engineering problems. Quasi-brittle materials including concrete, cement pastes, rock, soil, etc. all benefit from these developments. Layered materials and especially thin film/substrate systems are becoming important in small volume systems used in micro and nanoelectromechancial systems (MEMS and NEMS). Nanostructured materials are being introduced in our every day life. In all these problems fracture mechanics plays a major role for the prediction of failure and safe design of materials and structures. These new challenges motivated the author to proceed with the second edition of the book. The second edition of the book contains four new chapters in addition to the ten chapters of the first edition. The fourteen chapters of the book cover the basic principles and traditional applications, as well as the latest developments of fracture mechanics as applied to problems of composite materials, thin films, nanoindentation and cementitious materials. Thus the book provides an introductory coverage of the traditional and contemporary applications of fracture mechanics in problems of utmost technological importance. With the addition of the four new chapters the book presents a comprehensive treatment of fracture mechanics. It includes the basic principles and traditional applications as well as the new frontiers of research of fracture mechanics during the last three decades in topics of contemporary importance, like composites, thin films, nanoindentation and cementitious materials. The book contains fifty example problems and more than two hundred unsolved problems. A "Solutions Manual" is available upon request for course instructors from the author.

This book deals with various computational procedures for multiple repeated analyses (reanalysis) of structures, and presents them in a unified approach. It meets the need for a general text covering the basic concepts and methods as well as recent developments in this area. To clarify the presentation, many illustrative examples and numerical results are demonstrated. Previous books on structural analysis do not cover most of the material presented here.

These proceedings contain 48 innovative papers consolidating the development of creep research since 1990 and discussing the new horizons in this fundamental field of applied mechanics in the coming century. This volume is useful for researchers and graduate course students in the relevant fields.

This book started its life as a series of lectures given by the second author from the 1970’s onwards to students in their third and fourth years in the Department of Mechanics and Mathematics at Rostov State University. For these lectures there was also an audience of engineers and applied mechanicists who wished to understand the functional analysis used in contemporary research in their fields. These people were not so much interested in functional analysis itself as in its applications; they did not want to be told about functional analysis in its most abstract form, but wanted a guided tour through those parts of the analysis needed for their applications. The lecture notes evolved over the years as the first author started to make more formal typewritten versions incorporating new material. About 1990 the first author prepared an English version and submitted it to Kluwer Academic Publishers for inclusion in the series Solid Mechanics and its Applications. At that state the notes were divided into three long chapters covering linear and nonlinear analysis. As Series Editor, the third author started to edit them. The requirements of lecture notes and books are vastly different. A book has to be complete (in some sense), self contained, and able to be read without the help of an instructor.