Characteristic foliations of material evolution: from remodeling to aging.

For any body-time manifold R × B there exists a groupoid, called the material groupoid, encoding all the material properties of the material evolution. A smooth distribution, the material distribution, is constructed to deal with the case in which the material groupoid is not a Lie groupoid. This new tool provides a unified framework to deal with general non-uniform material evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]