On plane thermoelastic waves in hemitropic micropolar continua

The paper deals with the coupled heat transport and dynamic equations of the hemitropic thermoelastic micropolar continuum formulated in terms of displacements, microrotations and temperature increment which are to be determined in applied problems. The mechanism of thermal conductivity is considered as simple thermodiffusion. Hemitropic constitutive constants are reduced to a minimum set nevertheless retaining hemitropic constitutive behaviour and thermoelastic semi-isotropy. Solutions of thermoelastic coupled equations in the form of propagating plane waves are studied. Their spatial polarizations are determined. An algebraic bicubic equation for the determination of wavenumbers is obtained. It is found that for a coupled thermoelastic wave actually there are exactly three normal complex wavenumbers. Athermal wave is also investigated. Spatial polarizations in this case form (together with the wave vector) a spatial trihedron of mutually orthogonal directions. For an athermal wave there are (depending on the case) either two real normal wavenumbers or single wavenumber.