Relaxation of a model energy for the cubic to tetragonal phase transformation in two dimensions

Abstract

We consider a two-dimensional problem in nonlinear elasticity which corresponds to the cubic-to-tetragonal phase transformation. Our model is frame invariant and the energy density is given by the squared distance from two potential wells. We obtain the quasiconvex envelope of the energy density and therefore the relaxation of the variational problem. Our result includes the constraint of positive determinant.