Computational mechanics, as a science employed for the numerical model ing of processes in nature and engineering, has over the last few decades developed two strands. The first concerns the putting of more and more powerful software packages into computational practice, using increas ingly high-performance computers with increasingly large memory. The traditional finite element and finite difference approaches are still preva lent. Over the years however, researchers have met with new problems; their solutions on the basis of traditional methods are at best difficult and at worst impossible...