Scientific Objectives
Since its foundation the Society for Natural Philosophy has played a central role in the promotion of mechanics research and has often encouraged efforts to look at unexplored areas of physics and to establish fruitful interactions with mathematics. Following the tradition, this 50th meeting of the Society is focused on the mechanics of complex materials, that is, materials characterized by substructures at different scales, whose scrutiny should be the starting point of all modeling, either continuous or discrete. The attention is specifically addressed to the mechanics of foams, cellular materials, liquid crystals and nano-materials. Other topics of interest are the problems where discontinuities or the development of interfaces may arise, as in fracture mechanics or phase transitions.
The meeting is open to contributions on phenomenology, modeling and mathematical analysis of related problems.
