The membrane shell model in nonlinear elasticity: A variational asymptotic derivation

Summary We consider a shell-like three-dimensional nonlinearly hyperelastic body and we let its thickness go to zero. We show, under appropriate hypotheses on the applied loads, that the deformations that minimize the total energy weakly converge in a Sobolev space toward deformations that minimize a nonlinear shell membrane energy. The nonlinear shell membrane energy is obtained by computing the Γ-limit of the sequence of three-dimensional energies. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Juan C. Simo This paper was solicited by the editors to be part of a volume dedicated to the memory of Juan Simo.