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All seminars (unless otherwise stated) will take place on Tuesdays at 3.00pm in Room 505 which is located on the 5th floor of the Mathematics Department. See How to Find Us for further details. There will be tea afterwards in Maths Room 606. If you require any more information on the Applied seminars please contact Prof Slava Kurylev e-mail: y.kurylev AT ucl.ac.uk or tel: 020-7679-7896.
27 May 2014
Harrie Massey Lecture Theatre, 25 Gordon Street
Dr Yuri Obukhov - Russian Academy of Sciences
Title: Models of matter with microstructure
Abstract:
In classical continuum mechanics, a material medium consists of structureless points. In the early 20th century, the Cosserat brothers proposed a generalization of this simple picture, in which the material body or fluid is formed by particles whose microscopic properties contribute to the macroscopic dynamics of the medium. These more complex continuous mechanical models are known under different names, such as the theories of multipolar, micromorphic, or oriented media. Important particular cases of continua with microstructure is represented by the spinning fluids and bodies, ferromagnetic materials, cracked media, liquid crystals, superfluids, and granular media. We discuss the Lagrangian theories of material media with microstructure in flat and curved spacetime. The symmetries, conservation laws and the equations of motion are derived for the models of fluids, particles and extended bodies with microstructure. Their possible applications as detectors of the geometrical structure of spacetime are reviewed.