Determination of the midsurface of a deformed shell from prescribed surface strains and bendings via the polar decomposition

We show how to determine the midsurface of a deformed thin shell from known geometry of the undeformed midsurface as well as the surface strains and bendings. The latter two fields are assumed to have been found independently and beforehand by solving the so-called intrinsic field equations of the non-linear theory of thin shells. By the polar decomposition theorem the midsurface deformation gradient is represented as composition of the surface stretch and 3D finite rotation fields. Right and left polar decomposition theorems are discussed. For each decomposition the problem is solved in three steps: (a) the stretch field is found by pure algebra, (b) the rotation field is obtained by solving a system of first-order PDEs, and (c) position of the deformed midsurface follows then by quadratures. The integrability conditions for the rotation field are proved to be equivalent to the compatibility conditions of the non-linear theory of thin shells. Along any path on the undeformed shell midsurface the system of PDEs for the rotation field reduces to the system of linear tensor ODEs identical to the one that describes spherical motion of a rigid body about a fixed point. This allows one to use analytical and numerical methods developed in analytical mechanics that in special cases may lead to closed-form solutions.