Gaussian curvature as an identifier of shell rigidity

TL;DR

This paper establishes sharp geometric rigidity estimates for shells with non-zero Gaussian curvature, revealing how the shell's curvature sign influences the scaling of Korn's inequality constants with thickness.

Contribution

It extends classical Korn's inequalities to shells with non-zero Gaussian curvature, providing new sharp scaling laws depending on curvature sign.

Findings

Positive Gaussian curvature shells have Korn constant scaling like h.

Negative Gaussian curvature shells have Korn constant scaling like h^{4/3}.

Results apply to buckling load scaling and energy estimates in shell mechanics.

Abstract

In the paper we deal with shells with non-zero Gaussian curvature. We derive sharp Korn's first (linear geometric rigidity estimate) and second inequalities on that kind of shells for zero or periodic Dirichlet, Neumann, and Robin type boundary conditions. We prove that if the Gaussian curvature is positive, then the optimal constant in the first Korn inequality scales like $h,$ and if the Gaussian curvature is negative, then the Korn constant scales like $h^{4/3},$ where $h$ is the thickness of the shell. These results have classical flavour in continuum mechanics, in particular shell theory. The Korn first inequalities are the linear version of the famous geometric rigidity estimate by Friesecke, James and M\"uller for plates [14] (where they show that the Korn constant in the nonlinear Korn's first inequality scales like $h^2$), extended to shells with nonzero curvature. We also recover the uniform Korn-Poincar\'e inequality proven for "boundary-less" shells by Lewicka and M\"uller in [37] in the setting of our problem. The new estimates can also be applied to find the scaling law for the critical buckling load of the shell under in-plane loads as well as to derive energy scaling laws in the pre-buckled regime. The exponents $1$ and $4/3$ in the present work appear for the first time in any sharp geometric rigidity estimate.