Local material symmetry group for first- and second-order strain gradient fluids

Using an unified approach based on the local material symmetry group introduced for general first- and second-order strain gradient elastic media, we analyze the constitutive equations of strain gradient fluids. For the strain gradient medium there exists a strain energy density dependent on first- and higher-order gradients of placement vector, whereas for fluids a strain energy depends on a current mass density and its gradients. Both models found applications to modeling of materials with complex inner structure such as beam-lattice metamaterials and fluids at small scales. The local material symmetry group is formed through such transformations of a reference placement which cannot be experimentally detected within the considered material model. We show that considering maximal symmetry group, i.e. material with strain energy that is independent of the choice of a reference placement, one comes to the constitutive equations of gradient fluids introduced independently on general strain gradient continua.