Ricerc@Sapienza

Cosserat continua demonstrated to have peculiar mechanical properties, with respect to classic Cauchy continua, because they are able to more accurately describe heterogeneous materials, as particle composites and masonry-like material, taking into account size effects. Many studies have been devoted to their numerical implementation. In this paper, some reference benchmarks, referred to an isotropic heterogeneous sample, are shown by comparing the solutions provided by strong and weak formulations.

The macroscopic behavior of materials with anisotropic microstructure described as micropolar continua is investigated in the present work. Micropolar continua are characterized by a higher number of kinematical and dynamical descriptors than classical continua and related stress and strain measures, namely the micro-rotation gradient (curvature) and the relative rotation with their work conjugated counterparts, the micro-couple, and the skew-symmetric part of the stress, respectively.