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Educational, Scientific and Technological Aspects of Mesoscopic Continuum Physics for Waves in Complex Materials (ESTwave)
Start date: Apr 1, 2009, End date: Mar 31, 2012 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The central topic of this proposal is Mesoscopic Continuum Physics, a theory which is situated between microscopic description which focusses on the individual particle and uses statistical methods and macroscopic phenomenological continuum mechanics, which usually does not take into account microstructure. Mesoscopic Continuum Physics combines aspects of both, it uses the continuum point of view and includes the distribution function as a statistical element. The mesoscopic continuum theory had been developed in the field of liquid crystals, but since then has been successfully applied to theoretical description of granular media and has also been introduced in damage mechanics (micro-cracks). Nevertheless there are only very few numerical calculations in this field, which is due to the fact that the mesoscopic continuum theory uses a higher dimensional space. In special cases like e.g. twist-waves the dimensionality can be reduced.The idea is to use the finite element method and to compare the results with simulations in the field of mechanics with internal variables.
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