Bulk and interfacial energy densities for structured deformations of continua (Q1362187)

In this long memoir of analytical style, the authors aim at providing a sound basis for the applications of techniques from the calculus of variations to what they call nonclassical deformations of continua. By this must be understood structured deformations suitable for the study of equilibrium configurations of defective crystals. More mathematically, the question raised relates to the energy penalization due to slips or more general defects, i.e., how do frictional effects due to slips should be accounted for in the energy functional to be minimized. Here a mechanism taking account of microscopic defects via limits of configurations with small interfaces -- which diffuse in the limit -- is discussed. A print of this is left in the ``bulk energy''. The work follows or generalizes previous works, essentially by \textit{M. Chipot} and \textit{D. Kinderlehrer} [Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal. 103, No. 3, 237-277 (1988; Zbl 0673.73012)] and \textit{G. Del Piero} and \textit{D. R. Owen} [Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal. 124, No. 2, 99-155 (1993; Zbl 0795.73005)], and uses many intermediate mathematical results of the Italian school of applied functional analysis (E. M. Di Giorgi and co-workers and/or disciples). The reasonings use the notions of functions with bounded variation, finite Radon measure and Radon-Nikodým derivative. The mathematical proofs are very technical and there is not much physics in the whole so that, with the added difficulty due to uncommon vocabulary, this will be difficult -- or impossible -- reading to those mechanicians and solid-state physicists who could have been a priori interested in the subject matter. What must be retained from this heavily abstract paper, is the role played by sharp gradients and/or jumps. In some cases, the latter may be more ``economical'' than the former, contrary to intuition. But interfacial energy appears to be a critical ingredient which comes into the picture when one realizes that the mathematical formulas indeed mean that the creation of a non-trivial microstructure obtained by piecing together elastic crystals at a finer and finer scale cannot be achieved without adding such a contribution to the bulk free energy.