From non-linear elasticity to linear elasticity with initial stress via Gamma-convergence

We consider a initially stressed hyperelastic body in equilibrium in its undeformed configuration under a system of dead loads. We give sufficient conditions on the stored energy which guarantee that when the loads undergo a small perturbation, the energy functional Γ converges, after some re-scaling, to the energy functional of linear elasticity with initial stress. We also show, under stronger conditions, that quasi-minimizers of the non-linear problem converge to a minimizer of the incremental problem. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.