Surface effects in anti-plane deformations of a micropolar elastic solid: integral equation methods

Abstract

The theory of linear micropolar elasticity is used in conjunction with a new representation of micropolar surface mechanics to develop a comprehensive model for the deformations of a linearly micropolar elastic solid subjected to anti-plane shear loading. The proposed model represents the surface effect as a thin micropolar film of separate elasticity, perfectly bonded to the bulk. This model captures not only the micro-mechanical behavior of the bulk which is known to be considerable in many real materials but also the contribution of the surface effect which has been experimentally well observed for bodies with significant size-dependency and large surface area to volume ratios. The contribution of the surface mechanics to the ensuing boundary-value problem gives rise to a highly nonstandard boundary condition not accommodated by classical studies in this area. Nevertheless, the corresponding interior and exterior mixed boundary-value problems are formulated and reduced to systems of singular integro-differential equations using a representation of solutions in the form of modified single-layer potentials. Analysis of these systems demonstrates that the classical Noether theorems reduce to Fredholms theorems leading to results on well-posedness of the corresponding mathematical model.