On the Original Publication of the General Canonical Functional of Linear Elasticity

Abstract

The general canonical functional of linear elastostatics is associated with the names of Hu and Washizu, who published it independently in 1955. This note discusses how that functional, in a generalized four-field form, had been derived by B. M. Fraeijs de Veubeke in a 1951 technical report. This report presents five of the seven canonical functionals of elasticity. In addition to the general functional, it exhibits what is likely the first derivation of the strain-displacement dual of the Hellinger-Reissner functional. The tour of five variational principles takes only a relatively small portion of the report: 8 pages out of 56. The bulk is devoted to the use of energy methods for analysis of wing structures. The title, technology focus, and limited dissemination may account for the subsequent neglect of this original contribution to variational mechanics.

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