A non-ellipticity result, or the impossible taming of the logarithmic strain measure

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the fundamental limitations in constructing convex or elliptic energy functions based solely on the logarithmic strain measure in nonlinear elasticity, especially in dimensions three and higher.

Contribution

It proves the impossibility of formulating strictly monotone, convex energy functions based on the logarithmic strain measure for finite deformations in dimensions three and above.

Findings

No strictly monotone function yields Legendre-Hadamard elliptic energy based on log U.

Polyconvex energy functions in terms of deviatoric log U do not exist for n≥3.

Decoupled volumetric-isochoric energy functions with these strains cannot be rank-one convex.

Abstract

The logarithmic strain measures $\lVert\log U\rVert^2$, where $\log U$ is the principal matrix logarithm of the stretch tensor $U=\sqrt{F^TF}$ corresponding to the deformation gradient $F$ and $\lVert\,.\,\rVert$ denotes the Frobenius matrix norm, arises naturally via the geodesic distance of $F$ to the special orthogonal group $\operatorname{SO}(n)$. This purely geometric characterization of this strain measure suggests that a viable constitutive law of nonlinear elasticity may be derived from an elastic energy potential which depends solely on this intrinsic property of the deformation, i.e. that an energy function $W\colon\operatorname{GL^+}(n)\to\mathbb{R}$ of the form \begin{equation} W(F)=\Psi(\lVert\log U\rVert^2) \tag{1} \end{equation} with a suitable function $\Psi\colon[0,\infty)\to\mathbb{R}$ should be used to describe finite elastic deformations. However, while such energy functions enjoy a number of favorable properties, we show that it is not possible to find a strictly monotone function $\Psi$ such that $W$ of the form (1) is Legendre-Hadamard elliptic. Similarly, we consider the related isochoric strain measure $\lVert\operatorname{dev}_n\log U\rVert^2$, where $\operatorname{dev}_n \log U$ is the deviatoric part of $\log U$. Although a polyconvex energy function in terms of this strain measure has recently been constructed in the planar case $n=2$, we show that for $n\geq3$, no strictly monotone function $\Psi\colon[0,\infty)\to\mathbb{R}$ exists such that $F\mapsto \Psi(\lVert\operatorname{dev}_n\log U\rVert^2)$ is polyconvex or even rank-one convex. Moreover, a volumetric-isochorically decoupled energy of the form $F\mapsto \Psi(\lVert\operatorname{dev}_n\log U\rVert^2) + W_{\mathrm{vol}}(\det F)$ cannot be rank-one convex for any function $W_{\mathrm{vol}}\colon(0,\infty)\to\mathbb{R}$ if $\Psi$ is strictly monotone.