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The mechanical behaviour of complex materials, characterized at finer scales by the presence of heterogeneities of significant size and texture, strongly depends on their microstructural features.
By lacking in material internal scale parameters, the classical continuum does not always seem appropriate to describe the macroscopic behaviour of such materials, taking into account
the size, the orientation and the disposition of the micro heterogeneities. This calls for the need of non–classical continuum descriptions (e.g. [1]) obtained through multiscale approaches
aimed at deducing properties and relations by bridging information at proper underlying micro–level via energy equivalence criteria [...].

Composite materials, homogenization, micromorphic continua, configurational continua.