A Critical Study of Efrati et al.'s Elastic Theory of Unconstrained non-Euclidean Plates

Abstract

In our analysis, we show that Efrati et al.'s publication is inconsistent with the mathematics of plate theory. However it is more consistent with the mathematics of shell theory, but with an incorrect strain tensor. Thus, the authors' numerical results imply that a thin object can be stretched substantially with very little force, which is physically unrealistic and mathematically disprovable. All the theoretical work of the authors, i.e. nonlinear plate equations in curvilinear coordinates, can easily be rectified with the inclusion of both a sufficiently differentiable diffeomorphism and a set of external loadings, such as an external strain field.