SERRIN INTEGRALS AND 2ND-ORDER PROBLEMS OF PLASTICITY

We use the modern tools of the duality principles and the calculus of variations to formulate, analyse and solve a class of plasticity problems involving second order partial derivatives. The Serrin-type integrals can most appropriately facilitate the existence statements for the extrema from either side of the duality relation in a larger class of BV functions, and interpret the solutions with possible discontinuities on sets of measure zero. The exact solutions of a beam and numerical solutions of a circular plate are presented to demonstrate the theoretical conclusions.