Non-periodic homogenization of bending–torsion theory for inextensible rods from 3D elasticity

Abstract

We derive, by means of \(\Gamma \)-convergence, the equations of homogenized bending rod starting from 3D nonlinear elasticity equations. The main assumption is that the energy behaves like \(h^2\) (after dividing by \(h^2\), the order of vanishing volume), where h is the thickness of the body. We do not presuppose any kind of periodicity and work in the general framework. The result shows that, on a subsequence, we always obtain the equations of the same type as in bending–torsion rod theory and identifies, in an abstract formulation, the limiting quadratic form connected with that model. This result is the generalization of periodic homogenization of bending–torsion rod theory already present in the literature.