A geometrically exact Cosserat shell model for defective elastic crystals. Justification via \(\Gamma\)-convergence (Q2474614)

We derive the \(\Gamma\)-limit to a three-dimensional Cosserat model as the aspect ratio \(h>0\) of a flat domain tends to zero. The bulk model involves already exact rotations as a second independent field intended to describe the rotations of the lattice in defective elastic crystals. The \(\Gamma\)-limit based on the natural scaling consists of a membrane like energy and a transverse shear energy both scaling with \(h\), augmented by a curvature energy due to the Cosserat bulk, also scaling with \(h\). A technical difficulty is to establish equi-coercivity of the sequence of functionals as the aspect ratio \(h\) tends to zero. Usually, equi-coercivity follows from a local coerciveness assumption. While the three-dimensional problem is well-posed for the Cosserat couple modulus \(\mu_c\geq 0\), equi-coercivity needs a strictly positive \(\mu_c>0\). Then the \(\Gamma\)-limit model determines the midsurface deformation \(m\in H^{1,2}(\omega,\mathbb R^3)\). For the true defective crystal case, however, \(\mu_c=0\) is appropriate. Without equi-coercivity, we obtain first an estimate of the \(\Gamma\)-\(\liminf\) and \(\Gamma\)-\(\limsup\) which can be strengthened to the \(\Gamma\)-convergence result. The Reissner-Mindlin model is ``almost'' the linearization of the \(\Gamma\)-limit for \(\mu_c=0\).