Poincaré’s Equations for Cosserat Media: Application to Shells

In 1901, Henri Poincaré discovered a new set of equations for mechanics. These equations are a generalization of Lagrange’s equations for a system whose configuration space is a Lie group which is not necessarily commutative. Since then, this result has been extensively refined through the Lagrangian reduction theory. In the present contribution, we apply an extended version of these equations to continuous Cosserat media, i.e. media in which the usual point particles are replaced by small rigid bodies, called microstructures. In particular, we will see how the shell balance equations used in nonlinear structural dynamics can be easily deduced from this extension of the Poincaré’s result. In future, these results will be used as foundations for the study of squid locomotion, which is an emerging topic relevant to soft robotics.