Gyrocontinua

We consider a body endowed with the fine structure of very many, very small gyroscopes and describe it as a sort of composite (perhaps constrained) Co sserat continuum (gyrocontinuum). The gyroscopes are supposed to interact s ignificantly with the macroscopic motion of the body via the torques genera ted by changes of moment of momentum imposed upon them by the macromotion. Thus, we focus essentially on the consequences of constraining the spins to have fixed intensity about some material axis. We conclude the paper study ing how the behaviour of a vibrating beam is affected by the special micros tructure, A linear discrete gyroelastic body was already considered; (D' El euterio, G.M.T., 1984. J, Appl. Mech. 55, 488-489; D' Eleuterio, G.M.T., Hu ghes, P.C., 1984. J. Appl. Mech. 51, 415-422); we generalise, expand and gu t their ideas on a firm basis. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights re served.