A dynamical interpretation of flutter instability in a continuous medium

Flutter instability in an infinite medium is a form of material instability corresponding to the occurrence of complex conjugate squares of the acceleration wave velocities. Although its occurrence is known to be possible in elastoplastic materials with nonassociative flow law and to correspond to some dynamically growing disturbance, its mechanical meaning has to date still eluded a precise interpretation. This is provided here by constructing the infinite-body, time-harmonic Green's function for the loading branch of an elastoplastic material in flutter conditions. Used as a perturbation, it reveals that flutter corresponds to a spatially blowing-up disturbance, exhibiting well-defined directional properties, determined by the wave directions for which the eigenvalues become complex conjugate. Flutter is shown to be connected to the formation of localized deformations, a dynamical phenomenon sharing geometrical similarities with the well-known mechanism of shear banding occurring under quasi-static loading. Flutter may occur much earlier than shear banding in a process of continued plastic deformation.Comment: 32 pages, 12 figure

Screw dislocations in the field theory of elastoplasticity

A (microscopic) static elastoplastic field theory of dislocations with moment and force stresses is considered. The relationship between the moment stress and the Nye tensor is used for the dislocation Lagrangian. We discuss the stress field of an infinitely long screw dislocation in a cylinder, a dipole of screw dislocations and a coaxial screw dislocation in a finite cylinder. The stress fields have no singularities in the dislocation core and they are modified in the core due to the presence of localized moment stress. Additionally, we calculated the elastoplastic energies for the screw dislocation in a cylinder and the coaxial screw dislocation. For the coaxial screw dislocation we find a modified formula for the so-called Eshelby twist which depends on a specific intrinsic material length.Comment: 19 pages, LaTeX, 2 figures, Extended version of a contribution to the symposium on "Structured Media'' dedicated to the memory of Professor Ekkehart Kr\"oner, 16-21 September 2001, Pozna\'n, Poland. to appear in Annalen der Physik 11 (2002

Development of Stresses in Cohesionless Poured Sand

The pressure distribution beneath a conical sandpile, created by pouring sand from a point source onto a rough rigid support, shows a pronounced minimum below the apex (`the dip'). Recent work of the authors has attempted to explain this phenomenon by invoking local rules for stress propagation that depend on the local geometry, and hence on the construction history, of the medium. We discuss the fundamental difference between such approaches, which lead to hyperbolic differential equations, and elastoplastic models, for which the equations are elliptic within any elastic zones present .... This displacement field appears to be either ill-defined, or defined relative to a reference state whose physical existence is in doubt. Insofar as their predictions depend on physical factors unknown and outside experimental control, such elastoplastic models predict that the observations should be intrinsically irreproducible .... Our hyperbolic models are based instead on a physical picture of the material, in which (a) the load is supported by a skeletal network of force chains ("stress paths") whose geometry depends on construction history; (b) this network is `fragile' or marginally stable, in a sense that we define. .... We point out that our hyperbolic models can nonetheless be reconciled with elastoplastic ideas by taking the limit of an extremely anisotropic yield condition.Comment: 25 pages, latex RS.tex with rspublic.sty, 7 figures in Rsfig.ps. Philosophical Transactions A, Royal Society, submitted 02/9

Theoretical and numerical comparison of hyperelastic and hypoelastic formulations for Eulerian non-linear elastoplasticity

The aim of this paper is to compare a hyperelastic with a hypoelastic model describing the Eulerian dynamics of solids in the context of non-linear elastoplastic deformations. Specifically, we consider the well-known hypoelastic Wilkins model, which is compared against a hyperelastic model based on the work of Godunov and Romenski. First, we discuss some general conceptual differences between the two approaches. Second, a detailed study of both models is proposed, where differences are made evident at the aid of deriving a hypoelastic-type model corresponding to the hyperelastic model and a particular equation of state used in this paper. Third, using the same high order ADER Finite Volume and Discontinuous Galerkin methods on fixed and moving unstructured meshes for both models, a wide range of numerical benchmark test problems has been solved. The numerical solutions obtained for the two different models are directly compared with each other. For small elastic deformations, the two models produce very similar solutions that are close to each other. However, if large elastic or elastoplastic deformations occur, the solutions present larger differences.Comment: 14 figure

Macroelement modeling of shallow foundations

The paper presents a new macroelement model for shallow foundations. The model is defined through a non-linear constitutive law written in terms of some generalized force and displacement parameters. The linear part of this constitutive law comes from the dynamic impedances of the foundation. The non-linear part comprises two mechanisms. One is due to the irreversible elastoplastic soil behavior: it is described with a bounding surface hypoplastic model, adapted for the description of the cyclic soil response. An original feature of the formulation is that the bounding surface is considered independently of the surface of ultimate loads of the system. The second mechanism is the detachment that can take place at the soil-footing interface (foundation uplift). It is totally reversible and non-dissipative and can thus be described by a phenomenological non-linear elastic model. The macroelement is qualitatively validated by application to soil-structure interaction analyses of simple real structures

Continuum Mechanics and Thermodynamics in the Hamilton and the Godunov-type Formulations

Continuum mechanics with dislocations, with the Cattaneo type heat conduction, with mass transfer, and with electromagnetic fields is put into the Hamiltonian form and into the form of the Godunov type system of the first order, symmetric hyperbolic partial differential equations (SHTC equations). The compatibility with thermodynamics of the time reversible part of the governing equations is mathematically expressed in the former formulation as degeneracy of the Hamiltonian structure and in the latter formulation as the existence of a companion conservation law. In both formulations the time irreversible part represents gradient dynamics. The Godunov type formulation brings the mathematical rigor (the well-posedness of the Cauchy initial value problem) and the possibility to discretize while keeping the physical content of the governing equations (the Godunov finite volume discretization)