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A certain type of defectivity applicable to binary mixtures of uniform solids and liquid crystals is identified as arising from the possible lack of uniformity of the composite as a result of a misalignment between the structures of the underlying constituents. Various local measures of misalignment are derived for the case of a smectic-A combined with solids with discrete or continuous symmetry groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The potential of a finite-element technique based on an egalitarian meshing of the space–time domain D of physical problems described by parabolic or hyperbolic differential equations is explored. A least-squares minimization technique is applied in the meshed domain D to obtain stiffness-like matrices associated with various linear differential operators. Applications discussed include problems of boundary growth, and diffusive coalescence, in which D cannot be regarded as the Cartesian product of two independent domains in space and time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although it is often asserted that, in view of their reduced length, axially compressible beams have a higher buckling load than their inextensible counterparts, a detailed analysis demonstrates that this is not necessarily the case. The argument to arrive at this conclusion is made in terms of relatively straightforward concepts of elasticity and structural mechanics. It is shown that for certain classes of materials, the reduced prebuckling length is more than compensated for by a softening of the elastic response, leading to a reduction of the Euler critical load. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For any body-time manifold R × B there exists a groupoid, called the material groupoid, encoding all the material properties of the material evolution. A smooth distribution, the material distribution, is constructed to deal with the case in which the material groupoid is not a Lie groupoid. This new tool provides a unified framework to deal with general non-uniform material evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A pseudo-rigid coin is a thin disk that can deform only to the extent of undergoing an arbitrary affine deformation in its own plane. The coupling of the classical rolling problem with this deformability, albeit limited, may shed light on such phenomena as the production of noise by a twirling dish. From the point of view of analytical dynamics, one of the interesting features of this problem is that the rolling constraint turns out to be nonholonomic even in the case of motion on a straight line in a vertical plane. After the analytical formulation of the general problem, explicit solutions are obtained for special shape-preserving motions. For more general motions, numerical studies are carried out for various initial conditions. [DOI: 10.1115/1.1979515]

Under given prestress conditions, solitary waves in fluid-filled elastic tubes are confined to a rather narrow set of combinations of the background fluid velocity and the wave speed. This set, which we call the domain of existence, is bounded by several curves that represent various physical and mathematical restrictions. Remarkably, these restrictions can be cast as purely algebraic conditions to be imposed upon the governing system of differential equations. Paramount among the physical restrictions are the avoidance of wrinkles and the self-impenetrability of the wave profile. In particular, the existence of a critical wave speed of impending wrinkling, independent of the background fluid velocity, is established rigorously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]