English

A conservation law formulation of nonlinear elasticity in general relativity

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2012-07-25 v1

Abstract

We present a practical framework for ideal hyperelasticity in numerical relativity. For this purpose, we recast the formalism of Carter and Quintana as a set of Eulerian conservation laws in an arbitrary 3+1 split of spacetime. The resulting equations are presented as an extension of the standard Valencia formalism for a perfect fluid, with additional terms in the stress-energy tensor, plus a set of kinematic conservation laws that evolve a configuration gradient. We prove that the equations can be made symmetric hyperbolic by suitable constraint additions, at least in a neighbourhood of the unsheared state. We discuss the Newtonian limit of our formalism and its relation to a second formalism also used in Newtonian elasticity. We validate our framework by numerically solving a set of Riemann problems in Minkowski spacetime, as well as Newtonian ones from the literature.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1107.2551,
  title  = {A conservation law formulation of nonlinear elasticity in general relativity},
  author = {Carsten Gundlach and Ian Hawke and Stephanie J. Erickson},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1107.2551},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

31 pages, 21 pdf figures