Hierarchical modeling in the mechanics of materials

Many problems in the mechanics of materials involve the operation of tither multiple spatial or temporal scales simultaneously. As a result, an import ant thrust of recent work in this area has been the development of methods allowing for the consideration of multiple scales simultaneously. In this p aper, we examine hierarchical approaches to modeling problems of this kind with special reference to the way in which information can be fed from one scale to the next in models of plasticity. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. A n rights reserved.