The purpose of the book is to present some recent progress in two active and related areas of continuum mechanics: fracture mechanics and structured deformations. The book may be divided into two parts. The first part deals with the theory of structured deformations, a basic concept that can be used to describe smooth and nonsmooth geometrical changes at different length scales, including, for example, both slip and microslip and, of particular interest in the second part of this course, both macroscopic fracture and microfracture.
The work presents an updated account of the state-of-the-art in the subject.