Mass sources and modeling of near-surface heterogeneity in deformable solids (Q2808472)

The authors propose an approach for the description of thermoelastic processes in deformable solids with allowance for structural heterogeneity of the material and geometric heterogeneity of the body surface. The basic relations are formulated in terms of the methods of nonequilibrium thermodynamics and mechanics of solids. The material structure is modeled by an irreversible component of mass flux vector. The geometric heterogeneity of the body surface is modeled by introducing mass sources that simulate its properties, and by the dependencies of the material characteristics, the elasticity moduli included, on the mass density. The equilibrium state of the half-space is studied. It is shown that the stress and density distributions are characterized by two typical sizes, one of which is associated with the structural heterogeneity of the material, and the other -- with the geometric heterogeneity of a real body surface. The applicability of the local gradient approach in a linearized approximation is discussed.