A direct approach to fiber and membrane reinforced bodies. Part II. Membrane reinforced bodies

The paper deals with membrane reinforced bodies with the membrane treated as a two-dimensional surface with concentrated material properties. The bulk response of the matrix is treated separately in two cases: (a) as a coercive nonlinear material with convex stored energy function expressed in the small strain tensor, and (b) as a no-tension material (where the coercivity assumption is not satisfied). The membrane response is assumed to be nonlinear in the surface strain tensor. For the nonlinear bulk response in Case (a), the existence of states of minimum energy is proved. Under suitable growth conditions, the equilibrium states are proved to be exactly states of minimum energy. Then, under appropriate invertibility condition of the stress function, the principle of minimum complementary energy is proved for equilibrium states. For the no-tension material in Case (b), the principle of minimum complementary energy (in the absence of the invertibility assumption) is proved. Also, a theorem is proved stating that the total energy of the system is bounded from below if and only if the loads can be equilibrated by a stress field that is statically admissible and the bulk stress is negative semidefinite. Two examples are given. In the first, we consider the elastic semi-infinite plate with attached stiffener on the boundary (Melan’s problem). In the second example, we present a stress solution for a rectangular panel with membrane occupying the main diagonal plane.