Fine Level Set Structure of Flat Isometric Immersions

A result by Pogorelov asserts that C ¹ isometric immersions u of a bounded domain \({S \subset \mathbb R^2}\) into \({\mathbb {R}^3}\) whose normal takes values in a set of zero area enjoy the following regularity property: the gradient \({f := \nabla u}\) is ‘developable’ in the sense that the nondegenerate level sets of f consist of straight line segments intersecting the boundary of S at both endpoints. Motivated by applications in nonlinear elasticity, we study the level set structure of such f when S is an arbitrary bounded Lipschitz domain. We show that f can be approximated by uniformly bounded maps with a simplified level set structure. We also show that the domain S can be decomposed (up to a controlled remainder) into finitely many subdomains, each of which admits a global line of curvature parametrization.