Energy change to insertion of inclusions associated with the Reissner-Mindlin plate bending model

The topological derivative concept has been proved to be useful in many relevant applications such as topology optimization, inverse problems, image processing, multi-scale constitutive modeling, fracture mechanics and damage evolution modeling. The topological asymptotic analysis has been fully developed for a wide range of problems modeled by partial differential equations. On the other hand, the topological derivatives associated with coupled problems have been derived only in their abstract forms. In this paper, therefore, we deal with the Reissner-Mindlin plate bending model, which is written in the form of a coupled system of partial differential equations. In particular, the topological asymptotic analysis of the associated total potential energy is developed and the topological derivative with respect to the nucleation of a circular inclusion is derived in its closed form. Finally, we provide the estimates for the remainders of the topological asymptotic expansion and perform a complete mathematical justification for the derived formulas.