In particular, motions of a body can now involve shock waves, which themselves are surfaces across which the stress and strain fields are discontinuous, and so, one now has to carefully distinguish between this type of discontinuity and a phase boundary. We have recently explored the relationship between such mathematical admissibility criteria and the more physically based approach based on kinetic relations. While the kinetics govern the evolution of an existing phase boundary, a separate nucleation criterion is required to signal the initiation of the transformation. Appropriate ways for including this effect in the continuum model are not well understood. In the course of this investigation we have begun to develop some new results concerning the homogenized response of a material with evolving microstructure.
Current research is concerned with further questions related to the issues outlined above.
The approach is primarily analytical, and is focussed on fundamental concepts and issues. The predictions of the model during various thermo-mechanical loading processes are being studied. Some numerical work, as well as experiments are to be carried out.