Acceleration Waves in Complex Materials

A framework for modeling acceleration waves propagation in complex materials is presented. Coupled propagation of elasto-acoustic, microstructural and thermal waves is investigated in the full three dimensional case. The presence of microstructure inside each material element is taken into account without introducing additional hypotheses on the physical nature of the microstructure itself, thus obtaining a general theory that is suitable for the whole class of complex bodies. In particular, jump conditions across the discontinuity interface that identifies the acceleration wave are obtained and the amplitude evolution equation is derived.