Nonlinear Elasticity has a long and distinguished history in modelling the mechanics of soft materials. Originally developed to capture the behaviour of rubber and polymers, it is currently experiencing a strong revival due to newly found applications in, for instance, the high-tech industry and healthcare. It is continuously being expanded to describe new materials and new multi-physics fields such as electromagnetic forces in dielectric elastomers, surface tension, residual stress, swelling and growth in hydrogels and biological soft tissues, etc. Novel problems are being attempted and understood with the development of advanced numerical, experimental, and theoretical techniques.

A leading light in this field has been provided for more than fifty years by Professor Ray Ogden FRS , who will celebrate his 80 ^th birthday on 19 September 2023. This Euromech Colloquium will celebrate his achievements and use the occasion to review the state of the art and explore future directions of research for nonlinear elasticity.

Topics to be discussed include, but are not confined to

(1)    Multi-physics modelling of soft materials: coupling with electromagnetic fields, residual stresses, growth, chemistry and biology;
(2)    Wrinkles, creases and morphology of soft solids under multi-physics loads: bifurcation and stability, pattern formation, controlled mechanical buckling for self-assembly, reduced models;
(3)    Non-destructive evaluation of the material properties of soft solids: acoustics, nonlinear waves, model-free methods;
(4)    Advanced numerical and experimental tools for soft materials: isogeometric analysis, asymptotic numerical method, physics-inspired neural networks, acquisition of 3D displacement fields.