A new model for spatial rods incorporating surface energy effects

A new non-classical model for spatial rods incorporating surface energy effects is developed using a surface elasticity theory. A variational formulation based on the principle of minimum total potential energy is employed, which leads to the simultaneous determination of the equilibrium equations and complete boundary conditions. The newly developed spatial rod model contains three surface elasticity constants to account for surface energy effects. The new model recovers the classical elasticity-based Kirchhoff rod model as a special case when the surface energy effects are not considered. To illustrate the new spatial rod model, two sample problems are analytically solved by directly applying the general formulas derived. The first one is the buckling of an elastic rod of circular cross-section with fixed-pinned supports, and the other is the equilibrium analysis of a helical rod deformed from a straight rod. An analytical formula is derived for the critical buckling load required to perturb the axially compressed straight rod, and two closed-form expressions are obtained for the force and couple needed in deforming the helical rod. These formulas reduce to those based on classical elasticity when the surface energy effects are suppressed. For the buckling problem, it is found that the critical buckling load predicted by the current new model is always higher than that given by the classical elasticity-based model, and the difference between the two sets of predicted values is significantly large when the radius of the rod is sufficiently small but diminishes as the rod radius increases. For the helical rod problem, the numerical results reveal that the force and couple predicted by the current model are, respectively, significantly larger and smaller than those predicted by the classical model when the rod radius is very small, but the difference is diminishing with the increase of the rod radius.