Gabrio Piola’s scientific papers have been underestimated in mathematical physics literature. Indeed, a careful reading of them proves that they are original, deep and far-reaching. Actually, even if his contribution to the mechanical sciences is not completely ignored, one can undoubtedly say that the greatest part of his novel contributions to mechanics, although having provided a great impetus to and substantial influence on the work of many preeminent mechanicians, is in fact generally ignored. It has to be remarked that authors Capecchi and Ruta dedicated many efforts to the aim of unveiling the true value of Gabrio Piola as a scientist; however, some deep parts of his scientific results remain not yet sufficiently illustrated. Our aim is to prove that non-local and higher-gradient continuum mechanics were conceived already in Piola’s works and to try to explain the reasons for the unfortunate circumstance which caused the erasure of the memory of this aspect of Piola’s contribution. Some relevant differential relationships obtained in Piola (Memoria intorno alle equazioni fondamentali del movimento di corpi qualsivogliono considerati secondo la naturale loro forma e costituzione, 1846) are carefully discussed, as they are still too often ignored in the continuum mechanics literature and can be considered the starting point of Levi-Civita’s theory of connection for Riemannian manifolds.

In this paper reflection and transmission of compression and shear waves at structured interfaces between second-gradient continua is investigated. Two semi-infinite spaces filled with the same second-gradient material are connected through an interface which is assumed to have its own material properties (mass density, elasticity and inertia). Using a variational principle, general balance equations are deduced for the bulk system, as well as jump duality conditions for the considered structured interfaces. The obtained equations include the effect of surface inertial and elastic properties on the motion of the overall system. In the first part of the paper general 3D equations accounting for all surface deformation modes (including bending) are introduced. The application to wave propagation presented in the second part of the paper, on the other hand, is based on a simplified 1D version of these equations, which we call “axial symmetric” case.