Relaxation of functionals involving homogeneous functions and invariance of envelopes (Q1600015)

It is well known that minimization problems involving functionals of the type : \(I\left( u\right) =\int_{\Omega }W\left( \nabla u\right) dx\) do not have solutions in the general case, that is without assumptions on \(W\) which imply the weak lower semicontinuity of \(I\) on appropriate Sobolev spaces. The idea is usually to introduce the quasiconvex envelope \(\widehat{W}\) of \(W\), on the space \(M_{mn}\) of \(m\times n\) real matrices, and to study the minimization problem associated to the corresponding ``relaxed'' functional. However the computation of \(\widehat{W}\) is usually a hard task. The authors consider in this paper special structures of the function \(W\) for which they are able to compute this quasiconvex envelope \(\widehat{W}\): \(W\) is supposed to be convex outside a bounded convex subset of \(M_{mn}\), or to depend on the matrix through a continuous and homogeneous function of degree \(p>0\). The computation of \(\widehat{W}\) is essentially based on a rank-one decomposition of the matrices of dimension \(m\times n\) which are involved in such a situation. The authors also study the invariance of the different envelopes with respect to some group action, indicating some groups which are relevant from the mechanical point of view (homogeneity, frame indifference or isotropy properties of the material). They conclude their paper studying examples coming from nonlinear elasticity of phase transitions in crystals.