Hysteresis in discrete systems of possibly interacting elements with a double-well energy

Summary

We study in this paper the hysteretic behavior of a discrete system constituted by a finite number of elements (“snap-springs”) whose energy has two parabolic wells. The guideline idea is that, in many circumstances, hysteresis can be due to the presence of relative minimizers of a potential (“metastable states”) in which the system might get locked during its quasistatic evolution. A careful investigation is thus carried out of the relative minimizers of the total energy of our system of snap-springs under imposed total displacement, and of the barriers separating them. This is done both in the case of noninteracting elements and in the case in which some interaction is present that gives rise in the energy to an extra “coherence” term of special form. The results allow discussion of various hysteretic phenomena, also in the presence of vibrational motion of the elements. This study of a simple but suggestive discrete system will hopefully prove itself of help in understanding the implications regarding hysteresis of certain continuum theories recently proposed to model phase transitions in the solid state, in which the energy density is assumed, as here, to be biparabolic, and in which the coherence energy term we adopt arises in a natural way when equilibria involving mixtures of kinematically noncoherent phases are considered. In these cases the optimal microstructures are known to be layered, and physically this gives a good basis to our discrete calculation.