Continuum damage mechanics. Theory and applications (Q1210805)

[The articles of this volume will not be indexed individually.] The series of CISM courses and lectures, written by the leading experts in their fields, is well known to give an up-dated report on a high scientific level. The present volume is no exception. We view 30 years of rapid development in continuum damage mechanics (CDM). Many consider the famous work of Kachanov as the birthdate of this important subject. The book contains seven contributions of different aspects of damage theories. They demonstrate the broad range of applications of CDM. As an introduction, \textit{J. Hult} gives a short scope on the main features and methods of CDM. He describes the basic damage models and some of the key experiments for material identification. Secondly \textit{J. Lemaitre} introduces a theory of CDM, whose starting point is the convex dissipation potential, which by means of convex analysis, reflects micro- and macro-plastic behaviour, damage, rupture, and creep interactions for isotropic material. In his contribution, \textit{S. Murakami}, in order to describe anisotropic behaviour, generalizes the damage concept to a tensorial version. This can be motivated by micro- considerations. But obviously, anisotropic damage is still very little known. The other papers in this interesting edition deal with the micro- mechanical aspects (\textit{D. Krajcinovic}, \textit{D. Sumarac}), bounding methods (\textit{F. A. Leckie}), and damage of brittle solids (\textit{J. Najar}). Upon reading these articles, we observe that, although a lot of different suggestions have been made, there are still a lot of problems to be solved.