This monograph deals with the behavior of essentially nonlinear heterogeneous materials in processes occurring under intense dynamic loading, where microstructural effects play the main role. This book is not an introduction to the dynamic behavior of materials, and general information available in other books is not included. The material herein is presented in a form I hope will make it useful not only for researchers working in related areas, but also for graduate students. I used it successfully to teach a course on the dynamic behavior of materials at the University of California, San Diego. Another course well suited to the topic may be nonlinear wave dynamics in solids, especially the part on strongly nonlinear waves. About 100 problems presented in the book at the end of each chapter will help the reader to develop a deeper understanding of the subject. I tried to follow a few rules in writing this book: (1) To focus on strongly nonlinear phenomena where there is no small parameter with respect to the amplitude of disturbance, including solitons, shock waves, and localized shear. (2) To take into account phenomena sensitive to materials structure, where typical space scale of material parameters (particle size, cell size) are presented in the models or are variable in experimental research.

W S HALL School of Computing and Mathematics, University of Teesside, Middlesbrough, TS1 3BA UK G OLIVETO Division of Structural Engineering, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Catania, Viale A. Doria 6, 95125 Catania, Italy Soil-Structure Interaction is a challenging multidisciplinary subject which covers several areas of Civil Engineering. Virtually every construction is connected to the ground and the interaction between the artefact and the foundation medium may affect considerably both the superstructure and the foundation soil. The Soil-Structure Interaction problem has become an important feature of Structural Engineering with the advent of massive constructions on soft soils such as nuclear power plants, concrete and earth dams. Buildings, bridges, tunnels and underground structures may also require particular attention to be given to the problems of Soil-Structure Interaction. Dynamic Soil-Structure Interaction is prominent in Earthquake Engineering problems. The complexity of the problem, due also to its multidisciplinary nature and to the fact of having to consider bounded and unbounded media of different mechanical characteristics, requires a numerical treatment for any application of engineering significance. The Boundary Element Method appears to be well suited to solve problems of Soil- Structure Interaction through its ability to discretize only the boundaries of complex and often unbounded geometries. Non-linear problems which often arise in Soil-Structure Interaction may also be treated advantageously by a judicious mix of Boundary and Finite Element discretizations.

This book contains 17 invited papers and 80 communicated papers presented at the International Symposium on Physical Acoustics, held at the University Campus of Kortrijk, Belgium, from 19-22 June 1990. The twenty-fifth anniversary of the Campus was celebrated with special activi ties such as concerts, exhibitions and scientific meetings. This symposium was a part of the celebration. The 120 participants came from 18 different countries. Among the largest groups we mention 32 French contributions and 19 contributions from the U.S.S.R. We especially thank Prof. V.V. Proklov from Moscow and Prof. S.V. Kulakov from Leningrad who helped us with the distribution of invitations in the U.S.S.R. We also thank Prof. G. Quentin and Ir B. Poiree from Paris who endeav oured to inform all French acousticians. We thank all the lecturers for their effort in producing the material for the book in time. The invited lectures have been collected and retyped by Prof. M. Breazeale (U.S.A.), while the contributed papers were collec ted by Prof. O. Leroy and retyped in Belgium. The first 200 pages of the book comprise the invited lectures, not classified by topic, but are in alphabetical order with reference to the first author. The second part of the book contains the contributed papers and posters also classified in alphabetical order according to the first author.

"To my knowledge [this] is the first book to address specifically the use of high-order discretizations in the time domain to solve wave equations. [...] I recommend the book for its clear and cogent coverage of the material selected by its author." --Physics Today, March 2003