Wave propagation in 1D elastic solids in presence of long-range central interactions

In this paper wave propagation in non-local elastic solids is examined in the framework of the mechanically based non-local elasticity theory established by the author in previous papers. It is shown that such a model coincides with the well-known Kroner-Eringen integral model of non-local elasticity in unbounded domains. The appeal of the proposed model is that the mechanical boundary conditions may easily be imposed because the applied pressure at the boundaries of the solid must be equilibrated by the Cauchy stress. In fact, the long-range forces between different volume elements are modelled, in the body domain, as central body forces applied to the interacting elements. It is shown that the shape change of travelling disturbances coalesces with those predicted by the non-local integral theory of elasticity in unbounded domains, but several differences arise in the case of bounded domains. The wave propagation problem has been formulated by means of the Hamiltonian functional of the proposed mechanically based model of non-local elasticity, introducing an additional term to the elastic potential energy that accounts for elastic long-range interactions. In this way, the wave equation may be obtained in a weak formulation and be further used to provide approximate analytical solutions to the governing equation in the context of standing wave analysis. An equivalent discrete point-spring model, similar to lattice-type networks, has also been introduced to show the mechanical equivalence of the non-local elastic model as well as to provide a mechanical scheme suitable for the numerical treatment of pressure waves travelling in non-local bounded domains.