Variational principles of continuum mechanics. II: Applications (Q950562)

The object of Berdichevsky's two-volume monograph is the explanation and foundation of variational principles in continuum mechanics from the physical nature of the phenomena investigated. The first volume [the author, ``Variational principles of continuum mechanics. I: Fundamentals'', Berlin: Springer (2009; Zbl 1183.49002)] is devoted to the theoretical elaboration of variational principles and provides useful techniques for the direct study of concrete variational problems. The second volume contains various applications of variational methods to the development of continuum mechanics models. The first two chapters (Ch.~14 and 15) are related to the theory of elastic shells and beams, which is considered here as physical theory of surfaces and curves in three-dimensional space. This allows to discuss the derivation of the classical and refined shell theories and the classical beam theory from the three-dimensional elasticity theory together with the investigation of the cases when the classical shell theory does not work: theory of hard skin plates and shells. The next Ch.~16 gives a review of stochastic variational problems. Then the author turns to homogenization as a procedure allowing to replace a precise description of highly inhomogeneous media by an averaged one, an equivalent homogeneous media. Relatively recently it was recognized that the homogenization problem has an asymptotic nature that led to a complete understanding of the static behaviour of periodic structures (Ch.~17) and a considerable insight for that of random structures (Ch.~18). In these chapters the homogenization problems are considered for the cases when they admit a variational formulation. The presentation here is followed by several examples of applications of variational methods to construction of continuum models from shallow water theory, theory of heterogeneous mixtures a model of granular media and a turbulence model. However, in homogenization theory, in addition to the construction of the governing equations the exact solutions of the cell problem are considered, which are found by means of variational methods.