The strain gradient elasticity via nonlocal considerations

Abstract: Strain gradient elasticity and nonlocal elasticity are two enhanced elastic theories intensively used over the last fifty years to explain static and dynamic phenomena that classical elasticity fails to do. The nonlocal elastic theory has a clear differentiation from the classical case by considering stresses in a point of the continuum as an integral of all stresses defined in the treated elastic body. On the other hand, strain gradient elasticity is characterized as a non-classical theory because considers both potential and kinetic energy densities as not only functions of strains and velocities, respectively but also functions of their gradients. Although the two considerations seem to be completely different from each other, it is a common belief that strain gradient elasticity has a lot in common with nonlocal elasticity. The goal of the present work is to derive all the strain gradient elastic theories appearing so far in the literature via nonlocal definitions of the potential and kinetic energy densities. Such a derivation demonstrates the common roots of the two theories and explains the nature of the involved intrinsic parameters in strain gradient elastic theories. For the sake of simplicity and brevity, only one-dimensional wave propagation phenomena are considered.