Harmonic dipoles and the relaxation of the neo-Hookean energy in 3D elasticity (Q6116670)

The authors consider the neo-Hookean energy \(E(u)=\int_{\Omega }[\left\vert Du\right\vert ^{2}+H(\det Du)]dx\), where \(H:(0,\infty )\rightarrow \lbrack 0,\infty )\) is a convex function satisfying \(\lim_{t\rightarrow \infty }\frac{ H(t)}{t}=\lim_{s\rightarrow 0}H(s)=\infty \), \(\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^{3}\) represents the reference configuration of an elastic body, and \(u\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{3}\) is the deformation map. They also introduce the set \( \mathcal{A}=\{u\in H^{1}(\Omega ,\mathbb{R}^{3}):E(u)<\infty \), \(u\) is injective a.e.\(\}\).\ Assuming that \(\Omega \Subset \widetilde{\Omega }\), where \(\widetilde{\Omega }\) is a smooth and bounded domain of \(\mathbb{R}^{3} \), that the deformation \(u\) coincide with a bounded, orientation-preserving, and \(C^{1}\)-diffeomorphism \(b:\widetilde{\Omega }\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{3}\) in \(\widetilde{\Omega }\setminus \Omega \), that it is injective a.e. on the whole of \(\widetilde{\Omega }\), and that \(\Omega \), \(\widetilde{\Omega }\) and \(b\) are axisymmetric, the authors define the subclass \(\mathcal{A} _{s}=\{u\in H^{1}(\Omega ,\mathbb{R}^{3}):\) \(u\) is injective a.e. and axisymmetric, \(\det Du>0\) a.e., \(u=b\) in \(\widetilde{\Omega }\setminus \Omega \) , and \(E(u)\leq E(b)\}\). The main result proves that the energy \(F\), defined as \(F(u)=E(u)+2\left\vert D^{s}u_{3}^{-1}\right\vert (b(\widetilde{\Omega })) \), with \(\left\vert D^{s}u_{3}^{-1}\right\vert (b(\widetilde{\Omega }))\) being the total variation of the singular part of the distributional gradient of \( u_{3}^{-1}\), has a minimizer in \(\mathcal{B}=\{u\in \mathcal{A} _{s}:b=\operatorname{im}_{G}(u,\widetilde{\Omega })\) a.e. and \( u^{-1}=(u_{1}^{-1},u_{2}^{-1},u_{3}^{-1})\in W^{1,1}(b(\widetilde{\Omega }), \mathbb{R}^{2})\times BV(b(\widetilde{\Omega }))\}\), where \(\operatorname{im}_{G}(u, \widetilde{\Omega })\) is the geometric image of \(\widetilde{\Omega }\) under \( u\). Moreover, if this minimizer belongs to \(\mathcal{A}_{s}^{r}=\{u\in \mathcal{A}_{s}:\operatorname{Div}(\mathrm{adj}\,Du)g\circ u=(\operatorname{div} g)\circ u\det Du\), \(\forall g\in C_{c}^{1}(\mathbb{R}^{3},\mathbb{R}^{3})\}\), it is also a minimizer of the original neo-Hookean energy \(E\). The authors first prove that the energy \(E\) has a minimizer in \(\mathcal{A}_{s}\). To establish this existence result, the authors prove that if \(\{u_{n}\}_{n}\) is a sequence in \(\mathcal{A}_{s}\) , there exists \(u\in \mathcal{A}_{s}\) such that, up to a subsequence, \( u_{n}\rightarrow u\) in \(H^{1}(\widetilde{\Omega },\mathbb{R}^{3})\), \( \det Du_{n}\rightarrow \det Du\) in \(L^{1}(\widetilde{\Omega })\), and \(E(u)\leq \liminf_{n\rightarrow \infty }E(u_{n})\). They prove the weak lower semi-continuity of \(E\) and the sequential weak compactness of \(\mathcal{A} _{s}\). They give the appropriate definition of the inverse of maps in \( \mathcal{A}_{s}\) and they prove that its first two components satisfy Sobolev regularity. The authors recall the definitions of the classical degree for continuous functions and of the Brézis-Nirenberg degree for Sobolev maps. They prove regularity properties of weak limits of maps in \(\mathcal{A} _{s}^{r}\). They finally prove a lower semi-continuity result for the relaxed energy.