On the extremum complementary energy principles for nonlinear elastic shells (Q802912)

For a theory of elastic shells which obey the Kirchhoff hypothesis and which experience only small strains and ``moderately'' large rotations (unfortunately this last assumption or its effect is not explained), the authors state a variational principle in the displacement variables, the potential energy, whose stationary points satisfy the equilibrium equations. The dual variational problem (in the sense of convex analysis) is not the complementary energy however, and the \(\sup \inf =\inf \sup\) theorem does not hold. The difference is called the duality gap function. If this function is positive, stationary points of the complementary energy indeed maximize the complementary energy. In this case a generalized variational saddle point problem may be posed, such that the saddle points satisfy the equilibrium equations.