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In this work, we make a distinction between the differential geometric notion of an isometry relationship among two dimensional surfaces embedded in three-dimensional point space and the continuum mechanical notion of an isometric deformation of a two dimensional material surface. We illustrate the importance of separating the abstract theory of surfaces in differential geometry and their related differential geometric features from the physical notion of a material surface which is subject to a deformation from a given reference configuration. In differential geometry, while two surfaces may be isometric, the mapping between them that characterizes the isometry is simply a mapping between the points of the surfaces and not necessarily between corresponding material particles of a single deformed material surface.We review two equivalent characterizations of a smooth isometric deformation of a flat material surface into a curved surface, and emphasize the requirement that the referential directrix and rulings, and their deformed counterparts, must provide a basis for establishing a complete curvilinear coordinate covering of the material surface in both the reference and deformed states. Because this covering requirement has been overlooked in recent publications concerning the isometric bending of ribbons, we illustrate its importance in properly defining the deformation of a ribbon in the two examples of a flat rectangular material strip that is isometrically deformed into either (i) a portion of a circular cylindrical surface, or (ii) a portion of a circular conical surface. We then show how the accurate calculation of the bending energy in these two examples is influenced by this oversight. In example (i), the curvature along the generators of the deformed surface, generally helical in form, is constant. In this special circumstance overlooking the covering requirement, as has been done in the literature by integrating the specific bending energy, dependent only on the curvature, over a domain on the supporting circular cylindrical surface equal in area, though not equal in geometric form, to that of the deformed ribbon, gives the correct bending energy result. In example (ii), the curvature along a generator of the cone is not constant and the calculation of the bending energy is, indeed, compromised by this oversight.The historically important dimensional reductions that Sadowsky and Wunderlich introduced to study the bending energy and the equilibrium configurations of isometrically deformed rectangular strips have gained classical notoriety within the subject of elastic ribbons and Möbius bands. We show that the Sadowsky and Wunderlich functionals also overlook the covering requirement and that the exact bending energy is underestimated by these functionals, the Sadowsky functional being the lowest. We then show that the error in using these functionals can be great for a rectangular strip of given length and width w, depending on the form of the isometric deformation and the size of the half-len...

We derive, via simultaneous homogenization and dimension reduction, the Γ-limit for thin elastic plates whose energy density oscillates on a scale that is either comparable to, or much smaller than, the film thickness. We consider the energy scaling that corresponds to Kirchhoff's nonlinear bending theory of plates.

Let S R 2 be a bounded domain with boundary of class C 1 , and let g ij D ı ij denote the flat metric on R 2 . Let u be a minimizer of the Willmore functional within a subclass (defined by prescribing boundary conditions on parts of @S) of all W 2;2 isometric immersions of the Riemannian manifold .S; g/ into R 3 . In this article we derive the Euler-Lagrange equation and study the regularity properties for such u. Our main regularity result is that minimizers u are C 3 away from a certain singular set † and C 1 away from a larger singular set † [ † 0 . We obtain a geometric characterization of these singular sets, and we derive the scaling of u and its derivatives near † 0 .Our main motivation to study this problem comes from nonlinear elasticity: On isometric immersions, the Willmore functional agrees with Kirchhoff's energy functional for thin elastic plates.

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We consider thin plates whose energy density is a quadratic function of the difference between the second fundamental form of the deformed configuration and a "natural" curvature tensor. This tensor either denotes the second fundamental form of the stress-free configuration, if it exists, or a target curvature tensor. In the latter case, residual stress arises from the geometrical frustration involved in the attempt to achieve the target curvature: as a result, the plate is naturally twisted, even in the absence of external forces or prescribed boundary conditions. Here, starting from this kind of plate energies, we derive a new variational one-dimensional model for naturally twisted ribbons by means of Γ-convergence. Our result generalizes, and corrects, the classical Sadowsky energy to geometrically frustrated anisotropic ribbons with a narrow, possibly curved, reference configuration.

Abstract. We perform a detailed analysis of first order Sobolev-regular infinitesimal isometries on developable surfaces without affine regions. We prove that given enough regularity of the surface, any first order infinitesimal isometry can be matched to an infinitesimal isometry of an arbitrarily high order. We discuss the implications of this result for the elasticity of thin developable shells.

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