Energy minimising configurations of pre-strained multilayers

Abstract

We investigate energetically optimal configurations of thin structures with a pre-strain. Depending on the strength of the pre-strain we consider a whole hierarchy of effective plate theories with a spontaneous curvature term, ranging from linearised Kirchhoff to von Kármán to linearised von Kármán theories. While explicit formulae are available in the linearised regimes, the von Kármán theory turns out to be critical and a phase transition from cylindrical (as in linearised Kirchhoff) to spherical (as in von linearised Kármán) configurations is observed there. We analyse this behavior with the help of a whole family $({\mathcal{I}}_{\mathrm{vK}}^{\theta }{)}_{\theta \in (0,\infty )}$ of effective von Kármán functionals which interpolates between the two linearised regimes. We rigorously show convergence to the respective explicit minimisers in the asymptotic regimes $\theta \to 0$ and $\theta \to \infty$. Numerical experiments are performed for general $\theta \in (0,\infty )$ which indicate a stark transition at a critical value of $\theta$.