A model of continuous granular medium. Waves in the reduced Cosserat continuum

In the description of vibrational properties of deformable bodies, it is usually assumed that the size of the oscillating particles is negligible in comparison with the average distance between them, so to describe the kinematics of such media only the displacement vector is used. In the majority of work is considered that when the independent rotational degrees of freedom are taken into account it become necessary to introduce the couple stress. Such models of continuous media are well known, for example, moment theory of elasticity or Cosserat media. A distinctive feature of the reduced Cosserat medium is that the stress tensor is asymmetric, and in static problems, this tensor becomes symmetric. Thus, in statics the reduced Cosserat media is indistinguishable from the the classical continuum in which the rotational degrees of freedom are not independent, as they are expressed in terms of displacement and the stress tensor is symmetric. In this paper we investigate the wave motion of a three-dimensional, isotropic, elastic reduced Cosserat medium, the characteristic velocities of wave propagation are finding, we also construct and analyze the dispersion curve for the dynamic equations.