Publisher's Synopsis
This volume contains the proceedings of a Symposium Year on Material Instabilities in Continuum Mechanics which was organized by the Department of Mathematics, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. The majority of articles in this volume concern themselves with various aspects of the mathematical theory of phase transitions in solids and fluids, and reflect the revitalization of this area of study by recent advances in the theory of systems of nonlinear partial differential equations and in the calculus of variations. These advances have led to new insights into the morphology of phase transitions (e.g. the arrangement of twins, dendrite formation) and their dynamic behaviour. The remaining articles concern related problems in solid and fluid mechanics, mathematical physics, and optimization. The volume should be of value to research workers both as a summary of the state of the art and as a source of new problems, as well as to;applied mathematicians, physicists, material scientists.
