Polar continuum mechanics

Abstract

The existing polar continuum theory contains unresolved indeterminacies in the spherical part of the couple-stress tensor. This severely restricts its applicability in the study of micro and nano-scale solid and fluid mechanics and, perhaps more importantly, in the investigation of fluid turbulence phenomena, which involve a broad range of scales. In this paper, we rely on the energy equation, along with some kinematical considerations, to establish a consistent couple-stress theory for polar continua that resolves all indeterminacies. After presenting the general formulation and obtaining conservation laws, we concentrate exclusively on couple stress theory for polar fluid mechanics. We specialize the theory for linear viscous flow and consider several boundary value problems in couple-stress fluid mechanics. More generally, the resulting theory presented here may provide a basis for fundamental continuum-level studies at the finest scales.