Bespoke two-dimensional elasticity and the nonlinear analogue of Cauchy’s relations

Abstract

Is it possible to design an architectured material or structure whose elastic energy is arbitrarily close to a specified continuous function? This is known to be possible in one dimension, up to an additive constant (Dixon et al., Bespoke extensional elasticity through helical lattice systems, Proc. R. Soc. A. (2019)). Here, we explore the situation in two dimensions. Given (1) a continuous energy function [Formula: see text], defined for two-dimensional right Cauchy–Green deformation tensors [Formula: see text] contained in some compact set and (2) a tolerance [Formula: see text], can we construct a spring-node unit cell (of a lattice) whose energy is approximately [Formula: see text], up to an additive constant, with [Formula: see text]-error no more than [Formula: see text]? We show that the answer is yes for affine [Formula: see text] s (i.e., for energies [Formula: see text] that are quadratic in the deformation gradient), but that the general situation is more subtle and is related to the generalisation of Cauchy’s relations to nonlinear elasticity.