Analytical solutions to general anti-plane shear problems in finite elasticity

This paper presents a pure complementary energy variational method for solving a general anti-plane shear problem in finite elasticity. Based on the canonical duality–triality theory developed by the author, the nonlinear/nonconvex partial differential equations for the large deformation problem are converted into an algebraic equation in dual space, which can, in principle, be solved to obtain a complete set of stress solutions. Therefore, a general analytical solution form of the deformation is obtained subjected to a compatibility condition. Applications are illustrated by examples with both convex and nonconvex stored strain energies governed by quadratic-exponential and power-law material models, respectively. Results show that the nonconvex variational problem could have multiple solutions at each material point, the complementary gap function and the triality theory can be used to identify both global and local extremal solutions, while the popular convexity conditions (including rank-one condition) provide mainly local minimal criteria and the Legendre–Hadamard condition (i.e., the so-called strong ellipticity condition) does not guarantee uniqueness of solutions. This paper demonstrates again that the pure complementary energy principle and the triality theory play important roles in finite deformation theory and nonconvex analysis.