We discuss the ellipticity properties of an enhanced model of poroelastic continua called dilatational strain gradient elasticity. Within the theory there exists a deformation energy density given as a function of strains and gradient of dilatation. We show that the equilibrium equations are elliptic in the sense of Douglis–Nirenberg. These conditions are more general than the ordinary and strong ellipticity but keep almost all...

We discuss the strong ellipticity (SE) condition within the Toupin–Mindlin first strain gradient elasticity theory. SE condition is closely related to certain material instabilities and describes mathematical properties of corresponding boundary-value problems. For isotropic solids, SE condition transforms into two inequalities in terms of five gradient-elastic moduli.

We discuss connections between the strong ellipticity condition and the infinitesimal instability within the nonlinear strain gradient elasticity. The strong ellipticity (SE) condition describes the property of equations of statics whereas the infinitesimal stability is introduced as the positive definiteness of the second variation of an energy functional. Here we establish few implications which simplify the further analysis...

We call nonlinear dilatational strain gradient elasticity the theory in which the specific class of dilatational second gradient continua is considered: those whose deformation energy depends, in an objective way, on the gradient of placement and on the gradient of the determinant of the gradient of placement. It is an interesting particular case of complete Toupin–Mindlin nonlinear strain gradient elasticity: indeed, in it, the...

We discuss the particular class of strain-gradient elastic material models which we called the reduced or degenerated strain-gradient elasticity. For this class the strain energy density depends on functions which have different differential properties in different spatial directions. As an example of such media we consider the continual models of pantographic beam lattices and smectic and columnar liquid crystals.