This book offers valuable insights and provides effective tools useful for imagining, creating, and promoting novel and challenging developments in structural mechanics. It addresses a wide range of topics, such as mechanics and geotechnics, vibration and damping, damage and friction, experimental methods, and advanced structural materials. It also discusses analytical, experimental and numerical findings, focusing on theoretical and practical issues and innovations in the field. Collecting some of the latest results from the Lagrange Laboratory, a European scientific research group, mainly consisting of Italian and French engineers, mechanicians and mathematicians, the book presents the most recent example of the long-term scientific cooperation between well-established French and Italian Mechanics, Mathematics and Engineering Schools. It is a valuable resource for postgraduate students, researchers and practitioners dealing with theoretical and practical issues in structural engineering.

This book investigates collisions occurring in the motion of solids, in the motion of fluids but also in the motion of pedestrians in crowds. The duration of these presented collisions is short compared to the whole duration of the motion: they are assumed instantaneous. The innovative concept demonstrated in this book is that a system made of two solids, is deformable because their relative position changes. The definition of the velocities of deformation of the system introduced in the classical developments of mechanics, the principle of the virtual work and the laws of thermodynamics, allows a large range of applications such as crowd motions, debris flow motions, and shape memory alloys motions. The set of the applications is even larger: social sciences and mechanics are unified to predict the motion of crowds with application to transport management and to evacuation of theaters management.

This book provides novel insights into two fundamental subjects in solid mechanics: virtual work and shape change. The author explains how the principle of virtual work represents a tool for analysis of the mechanical effects of the evolution of the shape of a system, how it can be applied to observations and experiments, and how it may be adapted to produce predictive theories of numerous phenomena. The book is divided into three parts. The first relates the principle of virtual work to what we observe with our eyes, the second demonstrates its flexibility on the basis of many examples, and the third applies the principle to predict the motion of solids with large deformations. Examples of both usual and unusual shape changes are presented, and equations of motion, some of which are entirely new, are derived for smooth and non-smooth motions associated with, for instance, systems of disks, systems of balls, classical and non-classical small deformation theories, systems involving volume and surface damage, systems with interactions at a distance (e.g., solids reinforced by fibers), systems involving porosity, collisions, and fracturing of solids.

This book offers valuable insights and provides effective tools useful for imagining, creating, and promoting novel and challenging developments in structural mechanics. It addresses a wide range of topics, such as mechanics and geotechnics, vibration and damping, damage and friction, experimental methods, and advanced structural materials. It also discusses analytical, experimental and numerical findings, focusing on theoretical and practical issues and innovations in the field. Collecting some of the latest results from the Lagrange Laboratory, a European scientific research group, mainly consisting of Italian and French engineers, mechanicians and mathematicians, the book presents the most recent example of the long-term scientific cooperation between well-established French and Italian Mechanics, Mathematics and Engineering Schools. It is a valuable resource for postgraduate students, researchers and practitioners dealing with theoretical and practical issues in structural engineering.

This book provides novel insights into two fundamental subjects in solid mechanics: virtual work and shape change. The author explains how the principle of virtual work represents a tool for analysis of the mechanical effects of the evolution of the shape of a system, how it can be applied to observations and experiments, and how it may be adapted to produce predictive theories of numerous phenomena. The book is divided into three parts. The first relates the principle of virtual work to what we observe with our eyes, the second demonstrates its flexibility on the basis of many examples, and the third applies the principle to predict the motion of solids with large deformations. Examples of both usual and unusual shape changes are presented, and equations of motion, some of which are entirely new, are derived for smooth and non-smooth motions associated with, for instance, systems of disks, systems of balls, classical and non-classical small deformation theories, systems involving volume and surface damage, systems with interactions at a distance (e.g., solids reinforced by fibers), systems involving porosity, collisions, and fracturing of solids.

This book investigates collisions occurring in the motion of solids, in the motion of fluids but also in the motion of pedestrians in crowds. The duration of these presented collisions is short compared to the whole duration of the motion: they are assumed instantaneous. The innovative concept demonstrated in this book is that a system made of two solids, is deformable because their relative position changes. The definition of the velocities of deformation of the system introduced in the classical developments of mechanics, the principle of the virtual work and the laws of thermodynamics, allows a large range of applications such as crowd motions, debris flow motions, and shape memory alloys motions. The set of the applications is even larger: social sciences and mechanics are unified to predict the motion of crowds with application to transport management and to evacuation of theaters management.

"Mechanics, Models and Methods in Civil Engineering" collects leading papers dealing with actual Civil Engineering problems. The approach is in the line of the Italian-French school and therefore deeply couples mechanics and mathematics creating new predictive theories, enhancing clarity in understanding, and improving effectiveness in applications. The authors of the contributions collected here belong to the Lagrange Laboratory, an European Research Network active since many years. This book will be of a major interest for the reader aware of modern Civil Engineering.

"Mechanics, Models and Methods in Civil Engineering" collects leading papers dealing with actual Civil Engineering problems. The approach is in the line of the Italian-French school and therefore deeply couples mechanics and mathematics creating new predictive theories, enhancing clarity in understanding, and improving effectiveness in applications. The authors of the contributions collected here belong to the Lagrange Laboratory, an European Research Network active since many years. This book will be of a major interest for the reader aware of modern Civil Engineering.

In this edited book various novel approaches to problems of current interest in civil engineering are demonstrated. The topics range from dynamic band seismic problems to the analysis of long-span structures and ancient buildings. Experts associated within the Lagrange Laboratory present recent research results on functionally-graded or composite materials, granular materials, geotechnics, as well as frictional or adhesive contact problems.

Based on practical problems in mechanical engineering, here the author develops the fundamental concepts of non-smooth mechanics and introduces the necessary background material needed to deal with mechanics involving discontinuities and non-smooth constraints.

In this edited book various novel approaches to problems of modern civil engineering are demonstrated. Experts associated within the Lagrange Laboratory present recent research results in civil engineering dealing both with modelling and computational aspects. Many modern topics are covered, such as monumental dams, soil mechanics and geotechnics, granular media, contact and friction problems, damage and fracture, new structural materials, and vibration damping - presenting the state of the art of mechanical modelling and computational issues in civil engineering.

In this edited book various novel approaches to problems of modern civil engineering are demonstrated. Experts associated within the Lagrange Laboratory present recent research results in civil engineering dealing both with modelling and computational aspects. Many modern topics are covered, such as monumental dams, soil mechanics and geotechnics, granular media, contact and friction problems, damage and fracture, new structural materials, and vibration damping - presenting the state of the art of mechanical modelling and computational issues in civil engineering.

In this edited book various novel approaches to problems of current interest in civil engineering are demonstrated. The topics range from dynamic band seismic problems to the analysis of long-span structures and ancient buildings. Experts associated within the Lagrange Laboratory present recent research results on functionally-graded or composite materials, granular materials, geotechnics, as well as frictional or adhesive contact problems.

Based on practical problems in mechanical engineering, the author develops in this book the fundamental concepts of non-smooth thermomechanics and introduces the necessary background material needed to deal with mechanics involving discontinuities and non-smooth constraints. From this point, powerful methods for the applied mathematician and the mechanical engineer are derived, and applied to numerous cases including collisions of deformable and non-deformable solids, shape memory alloys, damage of materials, soil freezing, supercooling and solid--liquid phase changes, to name but a few. This book will be of great value to both the researcher and practitioner, but it can also be used as an advanced text for students in civil and mechanical engineering.

Predictive theories of phenomena involving phase change with applications in engineering are investigated in this volume, e.g. solid-liquid phase change, volume and surface damage, and phase change involving temperature discontinuities. Many other phase change phenomena such as solid-solid phase change in shape memory alloys and vapor-liquid phase change are also explored. Modeling is based on continuum thermo-mechanics. This involves a renewed principle of virtual power introducing the power of the microscopic motions responsible for phase change. This improvement yields a new equation of motion related to microscopic motions, beyond the classical equation of motion for macroscopic motions. The new theory sensibly improves the phase change modeling. For example, when warm rain falls on frozen soil, the dangerous black ice phenomenon can be comprehensively predicted. In addition, novel equations predict the evolution of clouds, which are themselves a mixture of air, liquid water and vapor.