Configurational Mechanics of Materials

In several applications it is well recognized that all materials, on some scale, cannot be regarded as perfect continua. They rather contain a variety of numerous defects, such as micro-cracks, inclusions, vacancies, voids, dislocations, etc. To characterize such defects, the notion of "force” acting on a "defect” in the material needs to be introduced which leads to a whole engineering science o...