Foreword -- Modeling fracture by material-point erosion -- Crack front perturbations revisited -- Localisation near defects and filtering of flexural waves in structured plates -- Fracture process in cortical bone: X-FEM analysis of microstructured models -- Minimum theorems in 3D incremental linear elastic fracture mechanics -- Crack patterns obtained by unidirectional drying of a colloidal suspension in a capillary tube: experiments and numerical simulations using a two-dimensional variational approach -- Damage mechanisms in the dynamic fracture of nominally brittle polymers -- Tight sedimentary covers for CO sequestration -- Calibration of brittle fracture models by sharp indenters and inverse analysis -- Statistics of ductile fracture surfaces: the effect of material parameters -- Efficient pseudo-spectral solvers for the PKN model of hydrofracturing -- A solution to the parameter-identification conundrum: multi-scale interaction potentials -- Remarks on application of different variables for the PKN model of hydrofracturing: various fluid-flow regimes -- Prediction of grain boundary stress fields and micro crack initiation induced by slip band impingement -- Modeling the heterogeneous effects of retained austenite on the behavior of martensitic high strength steels -- Crack nucleation from a notch in a ductile material under shear dominant loading.

This book contains contributions presented at the IUTAM Symposium "Fracture Phenomena in Nature and Technology" held in Brescia, Italy, 1-5 July, 2012.The objective of the Symposium was fracture research, interpreted broadly to include new engineering and structural mechanics treatments of damage development and crack growth, and also large-scale failure processes as exemplified by earthquake or landslide failures, ice shelf break-up, and hydraulic fracturing (natural, or for resource extraction or CO2 sequestration), as well as small-scale rupture phenomena in materials physics including, e.g., inception of shear banding, void growth, adhesion and decohesion in contact and friction, crystal dislocation processes, and atomic/electronic scale treatment of brittle crack tips and fundamental cohesive properties.Special emphasis was given to multiscale fracture description and new scale-bridging formulations capable to substantiate recent experiments and tailored to become the basis for innovative computational algorithms.