This research is centered in the areas of thermomechanics and the mechanics of solids. It is especially concerned with nonlinear constitutive theory, and most of the issues are related to the notion of materials stability. When certain bodies are loaded, or heated, or placed in a chemical environment or electrical field, they will experience transformations such as materials symmetry changes and domain switching, local strain concentrations, buckling, bifurcation of their equilibrium field structure, or catastrophic swelling or collapse. These transformations often have pronounced effects and can be used to story energy and toughen or weaken materials, they can cause anomalous behavior of characteristic material moduli, permit polymeric gels to react as muscle fibers, and aid in the storage of light images in ferroelectric crystals. This program emphasizes the theoretical investigation of fundamental problems concerning materials that exhibit such phenomenological behavior.
