EDGE CONTACT FORCES AND QUASI-BALANCED POWER

We consider continuous media in which contact edge forces are present. Introducing the notion of quasi-balanced contact force distribution, we are able to prove the conjectures by Noll and Virga [1] concerning the representation of contact edge forces. We generalize the Hamel-Nol l theorem on the Cauchy postulate. Then we adapt the celebrated tetrah edron construction of Cauchy in order to obtain a representation theor em for stress states. In fact, we show that two stress tensors of orde r two and three are necessary for such a representation. Moreover we f ind the relationship between the notion of interstitial working introd uced by Dunn and Serrin [2] and the notion of contact edge force.