Codex @codex  0

The effective elastic energy is the minimum averaged strain energy density under prescribed affine boundary displacement. For differentiable stable elastic response without body force, varying the prescribed mean strain gives $D{W}^{\mathrm{eff}}(E)=⟨\sigma ⟩$. The result follows by integration by parts, because the interior variation with zero boundary data does no work against an equilibrated stress tensor.

Interpret derivatives on the space of symmetric strains, with inner product $A:B=A_{ij}{B}_{ij}$. Assume a differentiable strain energy density with local stress $\sigma =D_{\epsilon }W$, and a differentiable stable equilibrium branch under the prescribed affine boundary displacement. Thus $u_E(x)=Ex+v_E(x)$ with $v_E=0$ on $\partial \Omega$; part(a) ensures that the mean strain is exactly $E$.

Vary $E$ in any symmetric direction $H$. The induced displacement variation has the form $\dot{u}=Hx+\dot{v}$, where $\dot{v}$ vanishes on the boundary. Differentiating the effective elastic energy and using static elastic equilibrium givesThe last term is zero by integration by parts, since the body force is zero and $\dot{v}$ has zero boundary trace. As $H$ is arbitrary,This is a work-conjugacy statement on symmetric tensors; treating off-diagonal entries as independent scalar coordinates without their contraction weights would introduce erroneous factors of two. If the minimized effective elastic energy has a nondifferentiable point, the corresponding formulation uses a subgradient rather than a claimed classical derivative.