A Class of Nonlinear Elasticity Problems with No Local but Many Global Minimizers

Abstract

We present a class of models of elastic phase transitions with incompatible energy wells in an arbitrary space dimension, where in a hard device an abundance of Lipschitz global minimizers coexists with a complete lack of strong local minimizers. The analysis is based on the proof that every strong local minimizer in a hard device is also a global minimizer which is applicable much beyond the chosen class of models. Along the way we show that a new demonstration of sufficiency for a subclass of affine boundary conditions can be built around a novel nonlinear generalization of the classical Clapeyron theorem.