This volume deals with continuum theories of discrete mechanical and thermodynamical systems in the fields of mathematics, theoretical and applied mechanics, physics, materials science and engineering.
The flux-line lattice in superconductors; communications and cooperation complex bacterial colonies; thermodynamics of chaos; statistical mechanics of vortex matter; order-disorder and phase separation - modelling grain sintering; towards a united approach to the fracture, yielding and damage; effect of interfacial bonding on the mechanical properties of bone tissue; self-organized criticality and deterministic chaos in a generalized spring-block model of earthquake faults - analytical and numerical results; some basic problems in micromechanics of solids with pores of various shapes (dry and fluid-filled); self-consistent schemes in the problem of wave propagation in homogeneous media; recent advances in suspension mechanics; some microscopic perspectives in continuum modelling; observations of strain localization and instabilities in plastic deformation of metals; transitions in nonlinear mechanics; equivalence groups for second order balance equations. (Part contents).
