This textbook is designed to give students an understanding and appreciation of continuum-level material modeling. The mathematics and continuum framework are presented as a tool for characterizing and then predicting the response of materials. The textbook attempts to make the connection between experimental observation and model development in order to put continuum-level modeling into a practical context. This comprehensive treatment of continuum mechanics gives students an appreciation for the manner in which the continuum theory is applied in practice and for the limitations and nuances of constitutive modeling.

This book is intended as a text for both an introductory continuum mechanics course and a second course in constitutive modeling of materials. The objective of this text is to demonstrate the application of continuum mechanics to the modeling of material behavior. Specifically, the text focuses on developing, parameterizing, and numerically solving constitutive equations for various types of materials. The text is designed to aid students who lack exposure to tensor algebra, tensor calculus, and/or numerical methods. This text provides step-by-step derivations as well as solutions to example problems, allowing a student to follow the logic without being lost in the mathematics.

The first half of the textbook covers notation, mathematics, the general principles of continuum mechanics, and constitutive modeling. The second half applies these theoretical concepts to different material classes. Specifically, each application covers experimental characterization, constitutive model development, derivation of governing equations, and numerical solution of the governing equations.