Bending of thin periodic plates

Abstract

We show that nonlinearly elastic plates of thickness $h\to 0$ with an $\varepsilon$-periodic structure such that $\varepsilon^{-2}h\to 0$ exhibit non-standard behaviour in the asymptotic two-dimensional reduction from three-dimensional elasticity: in general, their effective stored-energy density is "discontinuously anisotropic" in all directions. The proof relies on a new result concerning an additional isometric constraint that deformation fields must satisfy on the microscale.