From elastic shallow shells to beams with elastic hinges by $$\Gamma $$-convergence
Roberto Paroni, Marco Picchi Scardaoni · Zeitschrift für angewandte Mathematik und Physik · 2024
Abstract In this paper, we study the $$\Gamma $$ Γ -limit of a properly rescaled family of energies, defined on a narrow strip, as the width of the strip tends to zero. The limit energy is one-dimensional and is able to capture (and penalize) concentrations of the midline curvature. At the best of our knowledge, it is the first paper in the $$\Gamma $$ Γ -convergence field for dimension reduction that predicts elastic hinges. In particular, starting from a purely elastic shell model with “smooth” solutions, we obtain a beam model where the derivatives of the displacement and/or of the rotation fields may have jump discontinuities. Mechanically speaking, elastic hinges can occur in the beam.