Using the variational point of view, the constitutive equations of an elastic one-dimensional string are deduced from the stress-strain relations of nonlinear three-dimensional elasticity, by passing to the limit when the other dimensions go to zero. The assumptions made on the three-dimensional model are not very restrictive.

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61Anzellotti, G., Baldo, S., and D. Percivale, Dimension reduction in variational problems, asymptotic development in rconvergence and thin structures in elasticity, Asymptotic Analysis 9 (1994) 61-100.We consider families of variational problems :F. over domains [}. whose extension in one or more directions is small compared to the extension in the other directions, and goes to zero while ~ tends to zero. We study then the "variational" convergence of the functionals:F. to a new functional defined on a domain A in a lower dimensional space, where those "dimensions" that were small in [}. disappear. A general framework is presented in the first part of the paper and an application to the elastic rod and the elastic plate is given in the second part.

A limit elastic energy for pure traction problem is derived from re-scaled nonlinear energy of an hyperelastic material body subject to an equilibrated force field. We show that the strains of minimizing sequences associated to re-scaled non linear energies weakly converge, up to subsequences, to the strains of minimizers of a limit energy, provided an additional compatibility condition is fulfilled by the force field. The limit energy is different from classical energy of linear elasticity; nevertheless the compatibility condition entails the coincidence of related minima and minimizers. A strong violation of this condition provides a limit energy which is unbounded from below, while a mild violation may produce a limit energy with infinitely many extra minimizers which are not minimizers of standard linear elastic energy and whose strains are not uniformly bounded. A relevant consequence of this analysis is that a rigorous validation of linear elasticity fails for compressive force fields that do not fulfil such compatibility condition.

We study the mechanics of a reversible decohesion (unzipping) of an elastic layer subjected to quasi-static end-point loading. At the micro level the system is simulated by an elastic chain of particles interacting with a rigid foundation through breakable springs. Such system can be viewed as prototypical for the description of a wide range of phenomena from peeling of polymeric tapes, to rolling of cells, working of Gecko's fibrillar structures and denaturation of DNA. We construct a rigorous continuum limit of the discrete model which captures both stable and metastable configurations and present a detailed parametric study of the interplay between elastic and cohesive interactions. We show that the model reproduces the experimentally observed abrupt transition from an incremental evolution of the adhesion front to a sudden complete decohesion of a macroscopic segment of the adhesion layer. As the microscopic parameters vary the macroscopic response changes from quasi-ductile to quasi-brittle, with corresponding decrease in the size of the adhesion hysteresis. At the micro-scale this corresponds to a transition from a 'localized' to a 'diffuse' structure of the decohesion front (domain wall). We obtain an explicit expression for the critical debonding threshold in the limit when the internal length scales are much smaller than the size of the system. The achieved parametric control of the microscopic mechanism can be used in the design of new biological inspired adhesion devices and machines