This short course consists of 6 two-hours lectures on following topics:

Lecture 1 starts with basic definitions and goals of the Continuum Damage Mechanics viewed as a branch of Applied Mechanics. The brief description of the subject development is given, as well as references to some review papers.

Lectures 2 and 3 deal with a basic concepts of CDM: damage definitions, measurements, and thermodynamic backgrounds. These lectures are based mostly on the contributions by leading researches of world-wide scientific community.

In contrast to this, the Lectures 4 and 5 are based predominantly on author’s own contributions, or on research done by his co-workers.

Lecture 4 is about CDM applications to creep and fatigue conditions. It comprises also the concept of CDM motivated safety factor under combined creep and instantaneous failure.

Lecture 5 deals with a combine fracture and damage mechanics to describe advanced stages of fracture process. Again, the results obtain by author’s group are presented and further development sketched.

Finally, the Lecture 6 is a bit "futuristic" and several unconventional approaches to material deterioration has been pointed out, basing on the contributions by other authors.

A word students’ perception of the subject . The notes contain only the basic statements and forms a skeleton for detailed presentation during the lectures (for examples some formulas given in the notes will be derived during lectures, and additional figures shown will illustrate discussed problems). Active participation in these lectures is therefore considered as a vital part of a course. The students should not relay entirely on these notes, and should use them as a guide to the subject.

References included into the notes do not - by far - form a complete list of huge amount of related publications. These should be only dealt with as an introductory readings, and as a bit more detailed review of author's group contributions. The inherent part of the courseware is a database in the form Ahston-Tate dBASEIII file cdm.dbf (and associated files .frm and .ndx), compiled by the author. This database contains about 400 entries, which - again - does not pretend to be a complete list of publications. The file has an open structure, and new entries can be easily added by those who may feel interest in the subject.

Author wants to finish these introductory remarks with his sincere acknowledgement to the University of Pisa, and in particular to Professor Enrico Manfredi of this University, for offering him the possibility to deliver the lectures to its students. This custom of inviting a foreign professor to deliver lectures to home students, which is of high appreciation, brings a kind of enlightenment to both parties: the students and the professor, as well. To the former - by bringing to their ears and eyes a different approach to the subject of their study in engineering. To the latter - by active participation in the academic life of the country with a generous university heritage.

Author wishes to express sincere gratitude to his Italian colleagues for their continuous support and friendly cooperation (not only at this particular University: let me name friend of mine, Professor Aldo Del Puglia of the University of Florence).

I am happy that - even to the very small scale - I can be involved into the multi-century cultural exchange between Italy, the motherland of modern university system, and Poland, the country of independent thinking.

Kraków-Pisa, April/May 1992