Paul Germain (1983) founded micromorphic continuum mechanics on the principle of
virtual power. He derived the strong formulation for equilibrium and natural
boundary conditions without introducing any constitutive relations. In this paper,
based on these results, we prove the corresponding potential and complementary
energy theorems in the case of linearized deformation measures. More specifically,
starting from convex volume deformation energies, we prove that natural equilibrium
conditions imply minimality of the total energy for the class of first gradient
micromorphic media.
Keywords
micromorphic media, energy theorem, principle of virtual
work
