Paper detail

Dimension reduction through Gamma convergence for general prestrained thin elastic sheets

We study thin films with residual strain by analyzing the $Γ-$limit of non-Euclidean elastic energy functionals as the material's thickness tends to $0.$ We begin by extending prior results \cite{bhattacharya2016plates} \cite{agostiniani2018heterogeneous} \cite{lewicka2018dimension} \cite{schmidt2007plate}, to a wider class of films, whose prestrain depends on both the midplate and the transversal variables. The ansatz for our $Γ-$convergence result uses a specific type of wrinkling, which is built on exotic solutions to the Monge-Ampere equation, constructed via convex integration \cite{lewicka2017convex}. We show that the expression for our $Γ-$limit has a natural interpretation in terms of the orthogonal projection of the residual strain onto a suitable subspace. We also show that some type of wrinkling phenomenon is necessary to match the lower bound of the $Γ-$limit in certain circumstances. These results all assume a prestrain of the same order as the thickness; we also discuss why it is natural to focus on that regime by considering what can happen when the prestrain is larger.