Sensitivity phenomena for certain thin elastic shells with edges

We consider two kinds of shells which are sensitive, i.e. they are geometri cally rigid and as the thickness epsilon tends to zero the limit problem is unstable in the sense that there are very smooth loadings (belonging to th e space D of test functions of distributions) such that the corresponding s olutions go out of the energy space, The first situation occurs when there is an edge and the middle surface is elliptic on both sides of it. The seco nd one occurs when there is an edge Gamma(0), the surface is respectively e lliptic and hyperbolic on both sides of it and the determination domain' in the hyperbolic region issued from Gamma(0) intersects another edge Gamma(0 ). Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.