I have been following this line of research since my PhD (called DPhil in Oxford) study with Guy Houlsby in Oxford. I became inspired and even obsessed with thermodynamics based constitutive modelling during that time. It's the thermodynamics spirit, from Guy, that has been keeping following me over the years. However above all was the FREEDOM I had in pursuing my own research topic under Guy's guidance. It's freedom from the beginning when I was allowed to go with anything I like, and this trend kept unchanged over my 4 years in Oxford. I was free to come up with any crazy or even stupid ideas, to argue against critical comments and more importantly to live and cope with either failure or success from those ideas. Is that what we expect from our PhD studies?
The research has been transforming from phenomenological models to more micro-mechanically inspired ones following my stops at UNM Albuquerque and Sydney. Besides the thermodynamics spirit from Guy Houlsby, inspirations from Alexander Korsunsky (size effects & exp.-num. correlations), Deborah Sulsky & Buck Schreyer (large scale issues), and Itai Einav (micro-mechanics) can be seen & are very much appreciated. Technicalities may fade away or be forgotten over the years, but the spirits/inspirations remain!!!
Phenomenological constitutive modelling
Identification and Calibration of parameters for nonlocal models