Continuum mechanics

About: Continuum mechanics is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 5042 publications have been published within this topic receiving 181027 citations.

The Derivation of Constitutive Relations from the Free Energy and the Dissipation Function

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter examines the derivation of constitutive relations from the free energy and the dissipation function. Continuum mechanics allows one to establish constitutive relations, deducing them from a single pair of scalar functions characterizing the material. The simplest materials dealt with in continuum mechanics are elastic. More general processes and those taking place in more general materials are irreversible and require more constitutive relations, connecting the dissipative forces with the velocities. The orthogonality condition and the equivalent extremum principles have been established for velocities in the form of vectors or symmetric tensors. It is found that if the deformation of an elastic body is neither isothermal nor adiabatic, the strain tensor has to be supplemented by the additional independent state variable. The connection between stress and elastic strain is given by the generalized Hooke's law and connects the stress with the plastic strain and its time rate. It is found that orthogonality in velocity space, which is essentially responsible for the results, does not necessarily imply orthogonality in force space.

Analytical continuum mechanics à la Hamilton-Piola least action principle for second gradient continua and capillary fluids

Abstract: In this paper a stationary action principle is proved to hold for capillary fluids, i.e. fluids for which the deformation energy has the form suggested, starting from molecular arguments. We remark that these fluids are sometimes also called Korteweg–de Vries or Cahn–Allen fluids. In general, continua whose deformation energy depends on the second gradient of placement are called second gradient (or Piola–Toupin, Mindlin, Green–Rivlin, Germain or second grade) continua. In the present paper, a material description for second gradient continua is formulated. A Lagrangian action is introduced in both the material and spatial descriptions and the corresponding Euler–Lagrange equations and boundary conditions are found. These conditions are formulated in terms of an objective deformation energy volume density in two cases: when this energy is assumed to depend on either C and ∇C or on C−1 and ∇C−1, where C is the Cauchy–Green deformation tensor. When particularized to energies which characterize fluid materia...

Boundary Conditions at the Cartilage-Synovial Fluid Interface for Joint Lubrication and Theoretical Verifications

Abstract: The objective of this study is to establish and verify the set of boundary conditions at the interface between a biphasic mixture (articular cartilage) and a Newtonian or non-Newtonian fluid (synovial fluid) such that a set of well-posed mathematical problems may be formulated to investigate joint lubrication problems. A "pseudo-no-slip" kinematic boundary condition is proposed based upon the principle that the conditions at the interface between mixtures or mixtures and fluids must reduce to those boundary conditions in single phase continuum mechanics. From this proposed kinematic boundary condition, and balances of mass, momentum and energy, the boundary conditions at the interface between a biphasic mixture and a Newtonian or non-Newtonian fluid are mathematically derived. Based upon these general results, the appropriate boundary conditions needed in modeling the cartilage-synovial fluid-cartilage lubrication problem are deduced. For two simple cases where a Newtonian viscous fluid is forced to flow (with imposed Couette or Poiseuille flow conditions) over a porous-permeable biphasic material of relatively low permeability, the well known empirical Taylor slip condition may be derived using matched asymptotic analysis of the boundary layer at the interface.