FRACTAL GEOMETRY AND FRACTAL MATERIAL BEHAVIOR IN SOLIDS AND STRUCTURES

The present paper discusses certain methods which permit us to consider the influence of the fractal geometry and the fractal material behaviour in solid and structural mechanics. The method of fractal interpolation function is introduced and the fractal quantities (boundary geometry, interface geometry and stress-strain laws) are considered as the fixed points of a given set-valued transformation. Our first aim here is to define the mechanical quantities on fractal sets using some elementary results of the theory of Besov spaces. Then we try to extend the classical finite element method for the case of fractal bodies and fractal boundaries and corresponding error estimates are derived. The fractal analysis permits the formulation and the treatment of complicated or yet unsolved problems in the theory of deformable bodies.