Stress concentration factors for the Lam\'e system arising from composites

Abstract

For two neighbouring stiff inclusions, the stress, which is the gradient of a solution to the Lam\'{e} system of linear elasticity, may exhibit singular behavior as the distance between these two inclusions becomes arbitrarily small. In this paper, a family of stress concentration factors, which determine whether the stress will blow up or not, are accurately constructed in the presence of the generalized $m$-convex inclusions in all dimensions. We then use these stress concentration factors to establish the optimal upper and lower bounds on the stress blow-up rates in any dimension and meanwhile give a precise asymptotic expression of the stress concentration for interfacial boundaries of inclusions with different principal curvatures in dimension three. Finally, the corresponding results for the perfect conductivity problem are also presented.