The book presents a series of concise papers by researchers specialized in various fields of continuum and computational mechanics and of material science. The focus is on principles and strategies for multiscale modeling and simulation of complex heterogeneous materials, with periodic or random microstructure, subjected to various types of mechanical, thermal, chemical loadings and environmental effects. A wide overview of complex behavior of materials (plasticity, damage, fracture, growth, etc.) is provided. Among various approaches, attention is given to advanced non-classical continua modeling which, provided by constitutive characterization for the internal and external actions (in particular boundary conditions), is a very powerful frame for the gross mechanical description of complex material behaviors, able to circumvent the restrictions of classical coarse-graining multiscale approaches.

The book presents a series of concise papers by researchers specialized in various fields of continuum and computational mechanics and of material science. The focus is on principles and strategies for multiscale modeling and simulation of complex heterogeneous materials, with periodic or random microstructure, subjected to various types of mechanical, thermal, chemical loadings and environmental effects. A wide overview of complex behavior of materials (plasticity, damage, fracture, growth, etc.) is provided. Among various approaches, attention is given to advanced non-classical continua modeling which, provided by constitutive characterization for the internal and external actions (in particular boundary conditions), is a very powerful frame for the gross mechanical description of complex material behaviors, able to circumvent the restrictions of classical coarse-graining multiscale approaches.

The papers in this volume deal with materials science, theoretical mechanics and experimental and computational techniques at multiple scales, providing a sound base and a framework for many applications which are hitherto treated in a phenomenological sense. The basic principles are formulated of multiscale modeling strategies towards modern complex multiphase materials subjected to various types of mechanical, thermal loadings and environmental effects. The focus is on problems where mechanics is highly coupled with other concurrent physical phenomena. Attention is also focused on the historical origins of multiscale modeling and foundations of continuum mechanics currently adopted to model non-classical continua with substructure, for which internal length scales play a crucial role.