On structured surfaces with defects: geometry, strain incompatibility, internal stress, and natural shapes

Abstract

Given a distribution of defects on a structured surface, such as those represented by 2-dimensional crystalline materials, liquid crystalline surfaces, and thin sandwiched shells, what is the resulting stress field and the deformed shape? Motivated by this concern, we first classify, and quantify, the translational, rotational, and metrical defects allowable over a broad class of structured surfaces. With an appropriate notion of strain, the defect densities are then shown to appear as sources of strain incompatibility. The strain incompatibility relations, with appropriate kinematical assumptions on the decomposition of strain into elastic and plastic parts, and the stress equilibrium relations, with a suitable choice of material response, provide the necessary equations for determining both the internal stress field and the deformed shape. We demonstrate this by applying our theory to Kirchhoff-Love shells with a kinematics which allows for small in-surface strains but moderately large rotations.