Physical simulation of environmentally induced thin shell deformation

Abstract

We present a physically accurate low-order elastic shell model that incorporates active material response to dynamically changing stimuli such as heat, moisture, and growth. Our continuous formulation of the geometrically non-linear elastic energy derives from the principles of differential geometry, and as such naturally incorporates shell thickness, non-zero rest curvature, and physical material properties. By modeling the environmental stimulus as local, dynamic changes in the rest metric of the material, we are able to solve for the corresponding shape changes by integrating the equations of motions given this non-Euclidean rest state. We present models for differential growth and shrinking due to moisture and temperature gradients along and across the surface, and incorporate anisotropic growth by defining an intrinsic machine direction within the material. Comparisons with experiments and volumetric finite elements show that our simulations achieve excellent qualitative and quantitative agreement. By combining the reduced-order shell theory with appropriate physical models, our approach accurately captures all the physical phenomena while avoiding expensive volumetric discretization of the shell volume.