Energy Methods in Continuum Mechanics

This volume contains the proceedings of the Workshop on Energy Methods for Free Boundary Problems in Continuum Mechanics, held in Oviedo, Spain, 21-23 March 1994. Conservation laws and the constitutive equations of continuum mechanics lead to complicated coupled systems of partial differential equations to which, as a rule, one fails to apply the techniques, such as the maximum principle, usually employed in the studies of scalar uncoupled equations. The study of the qualitative behaviour of solutions of the systems requires different techniques, such as the so-called energy methods where the properties of some integral of a non-negative function of one or several unknowns allow one to arrive at important conclusions on the involved unknowns. This volume presents the state of the art in such a technique. Special attention is paid to the class of free boundary problems.