On the role of structural mechanics in inelastic material analysis and design

摘要

This lecture is not an attempt to survey an exponentially growing field in nonlinear analysis, testing and design of engineering structures, but rather an attempt to illustrate pertinent aspects of recent research activities in my group. In the presented work I re-examine the theoretical formulation of inelastic constitutive material models in terms of accounting for interplay between the micro-structure and the appropriate representation which is employed at the level of the macro-structure. The main objective of the work is to show that a new, refined results are furnished with such an approach with respect to classical phenomeno-logical models of inelastic material behavior. I also briefly discuss the issues that the multi-scale models of this kind will raise with respect to material design and testing.