The notion dealt with in this volume of proceedings is often traced back to the late 19th-century writings of a rather obscure scientist, C. V. Burton. A probable reason for this is that the painstaking de ciphering of this author's paper in the Philosophical Magazine (Vol. 33, pp. 191-204, 1891) seems to reveal a notion that was introduced in math ematical form much later, that of local structural rearrangement. This notion obviously takes place on the material manifold of modern con tinuum mechanics. It is more or less clear that seemingly different phe nomena - phase transition, local destruction of matter in the form of the loss of local ordering (such as in the appearance of structural defects or of the loss of cohesion by the appearance of damage or the exten sion of cracks), plasticity, material growth in the bulk or at the surface by accretion, wear, and the production of debris - should enter a com mon framework where, by pure logic, the material manifold has to play a prominent role. Finding the mathematical formulation for this was one of the great achievements of J. D. Eshelby. He was led to consider the apparent but true motion or displacement of embedded material inhomogeneities, and thus he began to investigate the "driving force" causing this motion or displacement, something any good mechanician would naturally introduce through the duahty inherent in mechanics since J. L. d'Alembert.

This monograph details spatial and material vistas on non-linear continuum mechanics in a dissipation-consistent approach. Thereby, the spatial vista renders the common approach to nonlinear continuum mechanics and corresponding spatial forces, whereas the material vista elaborates on configurational mechanics and corresponding material or rather configurational forces. Fundamental to configurational mechanics is the concept of force. In analytical mechanics, force is a derived object that is power conjugate to changes of generalised coordinates. For a continuum body, these are typically the spatial positions of its continuum points. However, if in agreement with the second law, continuum points, e.g. on the boundary, may also change their material positions. Configurational forces are then power conjugate to these configurational changes. A paradigm is a crack tip, i.e. a singular part of the boundary changing its position during crack propagation, with the related configurational force, typically the J-integral, driving its evolution, thereby consuming power, typically expressed as the energy release rate. Taken together, configurational mechanics is an unconventional branch of continuum physics rationalising and unifying the tendency of a continuum body to change its material configuration. It is thus the ideal formulation to tackle sophisticated problems in continuum defect mechanics. Configurational mechanics is entirely free of restrictions regarding geometrical and constitutive nonlinearities and offers an accompanying versatile computational approach to continuum defect mechanics. In this monograph, I present a detailed summary account of my approach towards configurational mechanics, thereby fostering my view that configurational forces are indeed dissipation-consistent to configurational changes.

These lecture notes cover 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.

Con?gurational mechanics has attracted quite a bit of attention from various - search ?elds over the recent years/decades. Having been regarded in its infancy of the early years as a somewhat obscureand almost mystic ?eld of researchthat could only be understood by a happy few of insiders with a pronounced theoretical inc- nation, con?gurational mechanics has developed by now into a versatile tool that can be applied to a variety of problems. Since the seminal works of Eshelby a general notion of con?gurational - chanics has been developed and has successfully been applied to many pr- lems involving various types of defects in continuous media. The most pro- nent application is certainly the use of con?gurational forces in fracture - chanics. However, as con?gurational mechanics is related to arbitrary mat- ial inhomogeneities it has also very successfully been applied to many ma- rials science and engineering problems such as phase transitions and inelastic deformations. Also the modeling of materials with micro-structure evolution is an important ?eld, in which con?gurational mechanics can provide a better understanding of processes going on within the material. Besides these mechanically, physically, and chemically motivated applications, ideas from con?gurational mechanics are now increasingly applied within computational mechanics.

Self contained, this book presents a thorough introduction to the complementary notions of physical forces and material (or configurational) forces. All the required elements of continuum mechanics, deformation theory and differential geometry are also covered. This book will be a great help to many, whilst revealing to others a rather new facet of continuum mechanics in general, and elasticity in particular. An organized exposition of continuum mechanics on the material manifold is given which allows for the consideration of material inhomogeneities in their most appropriate framework. In such a frame the nonlinear elasticity of anisotropic inhomogenous materials appears to be a true field theory. Extensions to the cases of electroelasticity and magnetelasticity are then straightforward. In addition, this original approach provides systematic computational means for the evaluation of characteristic parameters which are useful in various branches of applied mechanics and mathematical physics. This is the case for path-independent integrals and energy-release rates in brittle fracture, the influence of electromagnetic fields on fracture criteria (such as in ceramics), the notion of momentum of electromagnetic fields in matter in optics, and the perturbation of solitons propagating in elastic dispersive systems.

This volume constitutes the Proceedings of the IUTAM Symposium on "Analytical and Computational Fracture Mechanics of Non-homogeneous Materials", held in Cardiff from 18th to 22nd June 2001. The Symposium was convened to address and place on record topical issues in analytical and computational aspects of the fracture of non-homogeneous materials as they are approached by specialists in mechanics, materials science and related fields. The expertise represented in the Symposium was accordingly very wide, and many of the world's greatest authorities in their respective fields participated. Given the extensive range and scale of non-homogeneous materials, it had to be focussed to enhance the quality and impact of the Symposium. The range of non-homogeneous materials was limited to those that are inhomogeneous at the macroscopic level and/or exhibit strain softening. The issues of micro to macro scaling were not excluded even within this restricted range which covered materials such as rock, concrete, ceramics and composites on the one hand, and, on the other, those metallic materials whose ductile fracture is strongly influenced by the presence of inhomogeneities. The Symposium remained focussed on fundamental research issues of practical significance. These issues have many common features among seemingly disparate non-homogeneous materials.

The book comprises the 3rd collection of benchmarks and examples for porous and fractured media mechanics. Analysis of thermo-hydro-mechanical-chemical (THMC) processes is essential to a wide area of applications in environmental engineering, such as geological waste deposition, geothermal energy utilization (shallow and deep systems), carbon capture and storage (CCS) as well as water resources management and hydrology. In order to assess the feasibility, safety as well as sustainability of geoenvironmental applications, model-based simulation is the only way to quantify future scenarios. This charges a huge responsibility concerning the reliability of conceptual models and computational tools. Benchmarking is an appropriate methodology to verify the quality and validate the concept of models based on best practices. Moreover, benchmarking and code comparison are building strong community links. The 3rd THMC benchmark book also introduces benchmark-based tutorials, therefore the subtitle is selected as “From Benchmarking to Tutoring”. The benchmark book is part of the OpenGeoSys initiative - an open source project to share knowledge and experience in environmental analysis and scientific computation. The new version of OGS-6 is introduced and first benchmarks are presented therein (see appendices).