Characterization of the symmetry class of an elasticity tensor using polynomial covariants

Abstract

We formulate effective necessary and sufficient conditions to identify the symmetry class of an elasticity tensor, a fourth-order tensor which is the cornerstone of the theory of elasticity and a toy model for linear constitutive laws in physics. The novelty is that these conditions are written using polynomial covariants. As a corollary, we deduce that the symmetry classes are affine algebraic sets, a result which seems to be new. Meanwhile, we have been lead to produce a minimal set of 70 generators for the covariant algebra of a fourth-order harmonic tensor and introduce an original generalized cross-product on totally symmetric tensors. Finally, using these tensorial covariants, we produce a new minimal set of 294 generators for the invariant algebra of the elasticity tensor.