On the theory of relaxation in nonlinear elasticity with constraints on the determinant (Q2354686)

The authors deal with the vectorial variational problems for a functional \[ I:W^{1,p}(\Omega;\mathbb{R}^m)\to \mathbb{R},\;I[u]=\int_\Omega W(Du)\,dx,\;W\in C^0(\mathbb{R}_+^{n\times n};[0,\infty)). \] The relaxation of \(I\) is given by \(I^*[u]=\int_\Omega W^{\text{qc}}(Du)\,dx\;\), where \( W^{\text{qc}}\) is the quasiconvex envelope of \(W\). It is continuous on matrices with a positive determinant and diverges to infinity along sequences of matrices whose determinant is positive and tends to zero. The main result is that under suitable growth assumptions for any \(u\in W^{1,p}(\Omega;\mathbb{R}^m)\) there is a sequence \((u_j)_{j\in \mathbb{N}}\subset W^{1,p}(\Omega;\mathbb{R}^m)\) with \(u_j-u\in W_0^{1,p}(\Omega;\mathbb{R}^m)\) for all \(j\in \mathbb{N}\) which tends weakly to \(u\) and is such that \[ \limsup_{j\to \infty}\int_\Omega W(Du_j)\,dx\leq \int_\Omega W^{\text{qc}}(Du)\,dx. \] A full relaxation is received if \(W^{\text{qc}}\) is polyconvex.