Room P3.10, Mathematics Building

Lucia Scardia, Hausdorff Center for Mathematics, Bonn, Germany
Convergence of equilibria for thin elastic plates under physical growth conditions

The asymptotic behaviour of the equilibrium configurations of a thin elastic plate is studied, as the thickness h of the plate goes to zero. More precisely, it is shown that critical points of the functional E h describing the elastic energy of the thin plate converge to critical points of the Γ-limit of E h, in the von Kármán regime. This is proved under the physical assumption that the elastic energy blows up in the case of total compression.