PREFACE: Continuum Models and Discrete Systems Symposia (CMDS-12)

The 12th International Symposium on Continuum Models and Discrete Systems (CMDS-12) (http://www.saha.ac.in/cmp/cmds.12/) took place at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics in Kolkata from 21–25 February 2011. Previous CMDS symposia were held in Kielce (Poland, 1975), Mont Gabriel (Canada, 1977), Freudenstadt (Federal Republic of Germany, 1979), Stockholm (Sweden, 1981), Nottingham (United Kingdom, 1985), Dijon (France, 1989), Paderborn (Germany, 1992), Varna (Bulgaria, 1995), Istanbul (Turkey, 1998), Shoresh (Israel, 2003) and Paris (France, 2007). The broad interdisciplinary character, limited number of participants (not exceeding 100) and informal and friendly atmosphere of these meetings has made them a well-acknowledged place to make highly fruitful contacts and exchange ideas, methods and results. The purpose of CMDS is to bring together scientists with different backgrounds who work on continuum theories of discrete mechanical and thermodynamical systems in the fields of mathematics, theoretical and applied mechanics, physics, material science, and engineering. The spirit of the CMDS meetings is to stimulate extensive and active interdisciplinary research. The International Scientific Committee members of this conference were: David J Bergman (Chairman CMDS 10), Tel Aviv University, Israel; Bikas K Chakrabarti (Chairman CMDS 12), Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, India; Alex Hansen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway; Hans Jurgen Herrmann, Institute for Building Materials, ETH, Switzerland; Esin Inan (Chairman CMDS 9), Istanbul Technical University, Turkey; Dominique Jeulin (Chairman CMDS 11), Ecole des Mines de Paris, France; Frank Juelicher, Max-Planck-Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Germany; Hikaru Kawamura, University of Osaka, Japan; Graeme Milton, University of Utah, USA; Natalia Movchan, University of Liverpool, UK; and Ping Sheng, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong. At CMDS-12 the topics of interest were: Thermodynamics, transport theory and statistical mechanics in the context of continuum modeling discrete systems; Statistical mechanics and dynamics of fluid flows; Continuum mechanics of complex fluids and deformable solids with microstructure; Fundamentals of fracture, defect dynamics, fatigue, and fracture dynamics; Statics and dynamics of dislocations, dislocation mediated phase transitions and plasticity; Granular materials: statics and dynamics; Physics and mechanics of earthquakes; Transport in composite materials; and Continuum theory of soft matter systems of biological motivation and living structures. The scientific program consisted of General Lectures and Research Communications. The four General Lectures (40 min + 5 min) introduced the most recent ideas and advances in the fields covered. The 25 Research Communications reported new results and methods in these fields and were presented orally (30 min + 5 min). In addition there were 15 posters which also presented interesting results and five of these posters were selected by a special committee chaired by David J Bergman to contribute to this proceedings. The selected five posters were presented by Moutushi D Choudhury, Morten Grova, Arya Paul, Arnab Saha and Amartya Sarkar. We were happy to note that 32 scientists from ten countries and a large number of students (both from India and other countries) participated in this symposium. The talks and poster sessions generated a lot of discussions, arguments and collaborations. The articles that appear in this proceedings are based on the invited talks and selected poster presentations. We would like to thank the Journal of Physics Conference Series (IOP Publishing) for publishing the proceedings of the conference. We would also like to thank all the contributors to this proceedings for their kind co-operation and the referees for their prompt and active support. A number of invited participants (Amit Acharya, Alexander Altland, Kamal K Bardhan, Davide Bigoni, Andrej Cherkaev, Hikaru Kawamura, Subhasish Mazumder, Srutarshi Pradhan, Jacques Prost, Sriram Ramaswamy, Ping Sheng, Asok K Sen) were unable to contribute to this proceedings volume; on the other hand, although Kamal could not participate in the symposium, he contributed to the proceedings volume. We are grateful to Lucilla de Arcangelis, Kamal K Bardhan, Abhik Basu, Jayanta K Bhattacharjee, Andrej Cherkaev, Yilong Han, Alex Hansen, Takahiro Hatano, Esin Inan, Hikaru Kawamura, Pradeep K Mohanty, Akio Nakahara, Surajit Sengupta, Ping Sheng, Sujata Tarafdar and Uwe Tauber for reviewing the papers submitted to this proceedings volume. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the members of the organizing committee and acknowledge the financial support received from the Centre for Applied Mathematics and Computational Science, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata. We look forward to meeting you all at the next event in this series, CMDS 13, to be held in 2014/2015 in Utah, USA. Bikas K ChakrabartiChairman of CMDS 12Kolkata, 8 August 2011 Editors of the proceedings Abhik Basu abhik.basu@saha.ac.inBikas K Chakrabarti bikask.chakrabarti@saha.ac.inAnjan Kumar Chandra anjan.chandra@saha.ac.inSaha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Sector-I, Block - AF, Bidhannagar, Kolkata 700064, India