NonLinearly Elastic Membrane Model For Heterogeneous Shells by Using a New Double Scale Variational Formulation: A Formal Asymptotic Approach

This paper is concerned with the asymptotic analysis of shells with periodically rapidly varying heterogeneities. The asymptotic analysis is performed when both the periods of changes of the material properties and the thickness of the shell are of the same orders of magnitude. We consider a shell made of Saint Venant–Kirchhoff type materials for which we justify a new two-scale variational formulation. We assume that both the data and the displacement field admit a formal asymptotic expansion with a negative order of the leading term. We prove that the lowest order term of the displacement field must be of order zero. When the space of nonlinear inextensional displacement is reduced to , this displacement field is a solution of a two-dimensional membrane model which is obtained by solving two coupled problems. The first, posed on the middle surface of the shell is two-dimensional and global and the second, posed on the periodicity cell, is three-dimensional and local.