The asymptotically sharp geometric rigidity interpolation estimate in thin bi-Lipschitz domains

Abstract

This work is part of a program of development of asymptotically sharp geometric rigidity estimates for thin domains. A thin domain in three dimensional Euclidean space is roughly a small neighborhood of regular enough two dimensional compact surface. We prove an asymptotically sharp geometric rigidity interpolation inequality for thin domains with little regularity. In contrast to that celebrated Friesecke-James-M\"uller rigidity estimate [\textit{Comm. Pure Appl. Math.,} 55(11):1461-1506, 2002] for plates, our estimate holds for any proper rotations $\BR\in SO(3).$ Namely, the estimate bounds the $L^p$ distance of the gradient of any $\By\in W^{1,p}(\Omega,\mathbb R^3)$ field from any constant proper rotation $\BR\in SO(3)$, in terms of the average $L^p$ distance (nonlinear strain) of the gradient $\nabla\By$ from the rotation group $SO(3)$, and the average $L^p$ distance of the field itself from the set of rigid motions corresponding to the rotation $\BR$. There are several remarkable facts about the estimate: 1. The constants in the estimate are sharp in terms of the domain thickness scaling for any thin domains with the required regularity. 2. In the special cases when the domain has positive or negative Gaussian curvature, the inequality reduces the problem of estimating the gradient $\nabla\By$ in terms of the prototypical nonlinear strain $\int_\Omega\mathrm{dist}^p(\nabla\By(x),SO(3))dx$ to the easier problem of estimating only the vector field $\By$ in terms of the nonlinear strain without any loss in the constant scalings as the Ans\"atze suggest. The later will be a geometric rigidity Korn-Poincar\'e type estimate. This passage is major progress in the thin domain rigidity problem. 3. For the borderline energy scaling (bending-to-stretching), the estimate implies improved strong compactness on the vector fields for free.