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Title:
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Computational Techniques Related to Configurational Mechanics
In honor of Prof. Kaspar J. Willam's 65th birthday 

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Organizers:
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Paul Steinmann
University of Kaiserslautern
Kaiserslautern
Germany
email : ps@rhrk.uni-kl.de

Kenneth Runesson
Department of Applied Mechanics
Chalmers University of Technology
Goteborg
Sweden
email: kenneth.runesson@chalmers.se

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Minisymposium description:
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Configurational mechanics promises high potential in various areas of computational mechanics. 
In contrast to deformational mechanics which deals with the motion of 'continuum points' relative 
to the ambient space, configurational mechanics deals, loosly speaking, with the motion of 
'continuum points' relative to the ambient material. Typical impacts on computational techniques 
range from mesh adaptation in the sense of ALE-methods and/or h-adaptivity over computational 
fracture mechanics to the modelling and simulation of the kinetics of various types of material 
defects and evolving microstructures.

The minisymposium is thus intended to cover recent progress in computational techniques related to 
configurational mechanics. Thereby, typical topics of interest in numerical methods driven by 
concepts of configurational mechanics are, e.g.

 * mesh-adaptive techniques (r,h) and related strategies for error computation
   (minimization of energy, goal-oriented measures, etc.)
 * structural optimization (e.g. shape optimization of trusses, etc.)
 * material optimization (e.g. phase boundaries, fibre orientation, etc.)
 * morphology optimization
 * computational fracture mechanics including fatigue
 * computational defect kinetics
 * techniques for capturing singularities