Phase Transformations and Material Instabilities in Solids contains the proceedings of an interdisciplinary conference on phase transitions and material instabilities in solids, conducted by the Mathematics Research Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison on October 11-13, 1983 in Madison, Wisconsin. The papers explore phase transformations and material instabilities in solids and cover topics ranging from equilibrium shapes of surfaces to morphological instabilities and dendrite formation. Shock-induced phase transitions are also considered. Comprised of 11 chapters, this book begins with a discussion on material instabilities and the calculus of variations, followed by an analysis of mechanical analogs of coexistent phases. A model for the formation of shear bands in simple shear that involves the description of irreversible mechanical shear and the resulting heat release is then presented. Subsequent chapters focus on the Cauchy and Born hypotheses for crystals; the arrangement of coherent phases in a loaded body; one-dimensional shock layers in Korteweg fluids; and dynamics of first-order phase transitions. The final chapter deals with equilibrium shapes of surfaces and grain boundaries. This monograph will be of interest to students, practitioners, and researchers in mathematics and statistical physics.

The book is mainly devoted to the thermomechanical behavior of materials during solid-solid phase transformations. The physical mechanisms including diffusion, martensitic transformation and plasticity are described from material science point of view. The global behaviour is deduced from methods of classical as well as irreversible thermodynamics and continuum and micro mechanics. Mainly metals, both non ferrous and ferrous alloys but also geological problems are dealt with. Special attention is given to transformation induced plasticity and shape memory alloys. Three chapters are concerned with practical applications (heat treatment, smart structures, residual stresses).

Phase transformations are among the most intriguing and technologically useful phenomena in materials, particularly with regard to controlling microstructure. After a review of thermodynamics, this book has chapters on Brownian motion and the diffusion equation, diffusion in solids based on transition-state theory, spinodal decomposition, nucleation and growth, instabilities in solidification, and diffusionless transformations. Each chapter includes exercises whose solutions are available in a separate manual. This book is based on the notes from a graduate course taught in the Centre for Doctoral Training in the Theory and Simulation of Materials. The course was attended by students with undergraduate degrees in physics, mathematics, chemistry, materials science, and engineering. The notes from this course, and this book, were written to accommodate these diverse backgrounds.

The main objective of this special collection was to present state-of-the-art advances in the field of solid-solid phase transformations. Volume is indexed by Thomson Reuters CPCI-S (WoS). The 204 peer-reviewed papers were divided into 10 chapters: 1: Displacive Transformations, 2: Diffusional Transformations, 3: Transition by Interface Migration, 4: Order-Disorder Transitions, 5: Phase Transitions and Size Effect, 6: Driven Systems and Phase Transformations, 7: Phase Transformations during Industrial Processing, 8: Amorphous Alloys, Quasicrystals and other Complex Phases, 9: Advances in the Theory and Modeling of Phase Transitions, 10: Advances in Experimental Techniques. The present work will be a useful supplement to the classic textbooks on the subject.