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W. G. Pritchard Lab Seminar: 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM, 216 McAllister Bldg

	            **Monday October 3, 2005**
	
Elasticity of inhomogeneous materials: relaxing the affine assumption

Brian DiDonna

Institute for Mathematics and its Applications
University of Minnesota

Abstract:

There has recently been a surge of interest in the rheology of 
inhomogeneous materials such as foams, granular materials, and biopolymer 
networks. The elastic response of such materials is strongly affected by 
non-uniformities in the displacement field at intermediate length scales. 
I will present a general framework for the non-uniform, or "non-affine" 
component of a material's response to externally applied stresses. This 
framework succeeds in separating the microscopic elasticity of material 
sub-blocks from macroscopic structural effects.

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