On strong ellipticity and the Legendre-Hadamard condition (Q2638841)

The elasticity tensor A satisfies the Legendre-Hadamard condition if (1) (a\(\otimes b)\cdot A[a\otimes b]\geq 0\) for all vectors a and b, and satisfies the strong ellipticity condition if the strict version of (1) holds for all nonzero vectors a and b. This paper characterizes all fourth-order tensors that satisfy the Legendre-Hadamard and strong ellipticity conditions. An appropriate linear transformation for fourth- order tensors is defined and it is shown that if A satisfies the condition (1) then A is completely determined by projection of its transform on a 36-dimensional subspace of the space of fourth-order tensors. A strengthened version of van Hove's theorem is proved for isotropic elastic bodies. The results of this paper can be applied immediately to study the stability and wave propagation problems in the theory of elasticity.