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This article presents important constitutive refinements and simplifications in the theory of polar elasticity of materials reinforced by a single family of fibers resistant in bending. One of these simplifications is achieved by paying attention to forms of the strain energy which are symmetric with respect to the symmetric and the antisymmetric parts of the fiber gradient tensor. This leads to the identification of a restricted version of the theory that is predominantly influenced by the fiber-splay mode of deformation. The lack of ellipticity of the governing equations of polar elasticity and the anticipation of existence of weak discontinuity surfaces even in the small deformation regime are also investigated. The manner in which potential activation of such surfaces is related with the action of either the fiber-bending or the fiber-splay deformation mode, as well as with their conjoined combination and coupling with their fiber-twist counterpart, is examined. The proposed constitutive equations can be simplified via the use of a new set of fourteen independent spectral invariants of the deformation. This set serves as an irreducible functional basis of relevant invariants or as an irreducible integrity basis of polynomial invariants. For instance, its use here enables identification of fourteen classical invariants that emerge as mutually independent from the known set of thirty-three in total classical invariants. In the special case of polynomial invariants, this result paves the way for identification of a corresponding minimal integrity basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the literature, residual stress problems are generally formulated using classical invariants despite most of them having an unclear physical meaning and not having experimental advantages. In this article, we give an alternative formulation for residual stress problems using a set of spectral invariants. These invariants have a clear physical meaning which may facilitate the design of a residual stress experiment. For the case of an energy function that depends on the right Cauchy tensor and the residual stress tensor, we show that only nine of the classical invariants are independent, not 10 as commonly assumed. Details of the spectral formulation are given and several boundary value problems are illustrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Classical invariants, despite most of them having unclear physical interpretation and not having experimental advantages, have been extensively used in modeling nonlinear magneto-elastic materials. In this paper, a new set of spectral invariants, which have some advantages over classical invariants, is proposed to model the behavior of transversely isotropic nonlinear magneto-elastic bodies. The novel spectral invariant formulation, which is shown to be more general, is used to analytically solve some simple magneto-mechanical boundary value problems. With the aid of the proposed spectral invariants it is possible to study, in a much simpler manner, the effect of different types of deformations on the response of the magneto-elastic material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]