Configurational Mechanics of Materials

In several applications it is well recognized that all materials, on some scale, cannot be regarded as perfect continua. They rather contain a variety of numerous defects, such as micro-cracks, inclusions, vacancies, voids, dislocations, etc. To characterize such defects, the notion of "force" acting on a "defect" in the material needs to be introduced which leads to a whole engineering science of "Configurational Mechanics of Materials". The lecture notes cover the numerous elements of configurational mechanics, including mathematical foundations, linear and nonlinear elasticity and continuum mechanics, coupled fields, fracture mechanics, as well as strength-of-materials.