Relaxed Energy for Transversely Isotropic Two-Phase Materials

The paper gives a simple derivation of the relaxed energy W ^qc for the quadratic double-well material with equal elastic moduli and analyzes W ^qc in the transversely isotropic case. We observe that the energy W is a sum of a degenerate quadratic quasiconvex function and a function that depends on the strain only through a scalar variable. For such a W, the relaxation reduces to a one-dimensional convexification. W ^qc depends on a constant g defined by a three-dimensional maximum problem. It is shown that in the transversely isotropic case the problem reduces to a maximization of a fraction of two quadratic polynomials over 0,1]. The maximization reveals several regimes and explicit formulas are given in the case of a transversely isotropic, positive definite displacement of the wells. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.