Minimal energy for geometrically nonlinear elastic inclusions in two dimensions

Abstract

We are concerned with a variant of the isoperimetric problem, which in our setting arises in a geometrically nonlinear two-well problem in elasticity. More precisely, we investigate the optimal scaling of the energy of an elastic inclusion of a fixed volume for which the energy is determined by a surface and an (anisotropic) elastic contribution. Following ideas from Conti and Schweizer (Commun. Pure Appl. Math.59 (2006), 830–868) and Knüpfer and Kohn (Proc. R. Soc. London Ser. A Math. Phys. Eng. Sci.467 (2011), 695–717), we derive the lower scaling bound by invoking a two-well rigidity argument and a covering result. The upper bound follows from a well-known construction for a lens-shaped elastic inclusion.