In the Voigt elastic approximation, every local strain is . The corresponding local stress is . Differentiating the averaged strain energy density under the integral gives
The uniform strain need not generate an equilibrated local stress; this calculation concerns the stated approximation, not an assertion that it solves the heterogeneous boundary problem.
For the Reuss elastic approximation, use the convex conjugate
Under differentiable strictly convex duality, the local strain produced by uniform stress is . Set . Averaging the local strains gives . At the maximizing stress in , the stationarity condition is precisely . Consequently
Thus the derivative of each approximate energy is its own mean stress, including
For positive linear elasticity, and , giving the useful check and . More general convex duality gives the same conjugacy relation with subgradients when differentiability or strict convexity is absent.
The Voigt elastic approximation assumes uniform strain. Differentiating its averaged strain energy density gives the averaged local stress. For linear elasticity the predicted elastic stiffness tensor is . The uniform strain is an admissible affine displacement trial field, so this gives an upper elastic energy bound for convex local energy.