Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2002 / iii / Paper 53 / 3 / a / Solution

With its material state fixed by a prescribed deformation history, the differential pom-pom model is a simple-fluid constitutive law. The stress depends on the local history of a material element through its molecular stretch and orientation, without gradients of that history between neighbouring elements. A differential representation does not prevent a material from being a simple fluid.

To see the history dependence explicitly, use the component-first velocity gradient $K$, so the tensor evolution is $D_{t}A=KA+A{K}^T-(A-I)/{\tau }_1$. Let $F(t,s)$ be the relative deformation gradient, satisfying ${\partial }_{t}F=K(t)F$ and $F(s,s)=I$. Along a material trajectory, an integrating factor givesThus $A$ is a functional of the local deformation history and its prepared initial state. If the initial $A$ is a positive-definite matrix, it retains that property, so $B=A/\mathrm{tr}A$ is well defined. Given this $B(t)$, the scalar stretch solves $\dot{\lambda }=r(t)\lambda +1/{\tau }_2$, where $r=B:K-1/{\tau }_2$. Its variation of constants formula again depends only on that local history:The differential pom-pom model also satisfies material frame indifference. Under an observer rotation, $A$ and $B$ transform as objective tensors, while $\lambda$ is a scalar. The extra skew part of the transformed velocity gradient has zero contraction with symmetric $B$, so the stretch equation is unchanged. The tensor evolution uses an upper-convected derivative, and the final stress transforms objectively. Initial values cannot be independently forgotten when specifying a finite-past experiment: a fully specified prepared state, such as rest, is part of the history specification.