A note on convergence of low energy critical points of nonlinear elasticity functionals, for thin shells of arbitrary geometry

We prove that the critical points of the 3d nonlinear elasticity functional on shells of small thickness $h$ and around the mid-surface $S$ of arbitrary geometry, converge as $h\to 0$ to the critical points of the von K\'arm\'an functional on $S$, recently derived in \cite{lemopa1}. This result extends the statement in \cite{MuPa}, derived for the case of plates when $S\subset\mathbb{R}^2$. We further prove the same convergence result for the weak solutions to the static equilibrium equations (formally the Euler- Lagrange equations associated to the elasticity functional). The convergences hold provided the elastic energy of the 3d deformations scale like $h^4$ and the external body forces scale like $h^3$.Comment: 15 page

Scaling laws for non-Euclidean plates and the W2,2W^{2,2} isometric immersions of Riemannian metrics

This paper concerns the elastic structures which exhibit non-zero strain at free equilibria. Many growing tissues (leaves, flowers or marine invertebrates) attain complicated configurations during their free growth. Our study departs from the 3d incompatible elasticity theory, conjectured to explain the mechanism for the spontaneous formation of non-Euclidean metrics. Recall that a smooth Riemannian metric on a simply connected domain can be realized as the pull-back metric of an orientation preserving deformation if and only if the associated Riemann curvature tensor vanishes identically. When this condition fails, one seeks a deformation yielding the closest metric realization. We set up a variational formulation of this problem by introducing the non-Euclidean version of the nonlinear elasticity functional, and establish its $\Gamma$-convergence under the proper scaling. As a corollary, we obtain new necessary and sufficient conditions for existence of a $W^{2,2}$ isometric immersion of a given 2d metric into $\mathbb R^3$.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figur