Energy change due to the appearance of cavities in elastic solids

The paper presents an overview of the problem of assessing an increment of strain energy due to the appearance of small cavities in elastic solids. The following approaches are discussed: the compound asymptotic method by Mazja et al., the Eshelby-like method used in the classical works on the mechanics of composites, the homogenization method, and the topological derivative method proposed by Sokolowski and Zochowski. The increment of energy is expressed by a quadratic form with respect to strains referring to the virgin solid. All the methods lead to the same formula for the increment of energy. It is expressed by a quadratic form with respect to strains referring to the virgin solid. This quadratic form turns out to be unconditionally positive definite. Explicit formulae are derived for an elliptical hole and for a spherical cavity. The results derived determine the characteristic function of the bubble method of the optimal shape design of elastic 2D and 3D structures.