Conceptual Structure of Continuum Physics In Recognition of the Fundamental Contributions of Walter Noll

Walter Noll's leadership was central to recent progress in setting the mathematical foundations of continuum physics. In this volume his life and contributions are revisited in an extensive essay that includes a complete list of his research contributions, and the conceptual tools that he provided are put in evidence in original articles pointing to the continuing vitality of his legacy. The volume will appeal to readers with an interest in the many-faceted role that mathematics can play in the advancement of continuum theories of material behavior.

Foreword.- Scienti?c Life and Works of Walter Noll.- Rotationally Symmetric Motions and Their Blowup for Incompressible Nonlinearly Elastic and Viscoelastic Annuli.- Interactions in a Multi-scale Representation of Sparse Media: From Mechanics to Thermodynamics.- “Reality” and Representation in Mechanics: The Legacy of Walter Noll.- Elasticity with Hierarchical Disarrangements: A Field Theory That Admits Slips and Separations at Multiple Submacroscopic Levels.- Continuum Mechanics as a Computable Coarse-Grained Picture of Molecular Dynamics.- Material Geometry.- A Causality Setting for Elasticity Theory.- The Symmetries of Octupolar Tensors.- Explicit Relaxation of a Two-Well Hadamard Energy.- The State of Stress and Strain Adjacent to Notches in a New Class of Nonlinear Elastic Bodies.- A Personal Appreciation of Walter Noll.- Macroscopic and Microscopic Behavior of Narrow Elastic Ribbons.- On the Mechanical Modeling of Matter, Molecular and Continuum.- Hyper-stresses in k-Jet Field Theories.- Multi-Component Multiphase Flow Through a Poroelastic Medium.- Solvent-Vapor Induced Spherulitic Growth in Multicomponent Elastic Films.