We prove the following uniqueness result for the buckling plate. Assume there exists a smooth domain which minimizes the first buckling eigenvalue for a plate among all smooth domains of given volume. Then the domain must be a ball. The proof uses th
e second variation for the buckling eigenvalue and an inequality by L. E. Payne to establish this result.
We consider the energy of the torsion problem with Robin boundary conditions in the case where the solution is not a minimizer. Its dependence on the volume of the domain and the surface area of the boundary is discussed. In contrast to the case of p
ositive elasticity constants, the ball does not provide a minimum. For nearly spherical domains and elasticity constants close to zero the energy is largest for the ball. This result is true for general domains in the plane under an additional condition on the first non-trivial Steklov eigenvalue. For more general elasticity constants the situation is more involved and it is strongly related to the particular domain perturbation. The methods used in this paper are the series representation of the solution in terms of Steklov eigenfunctions, the first and second shape derivatives and an isoperimetric inequality of Payne and Weinberger cite{PaWe61} for the torsional rigidity.
An inequality for the reverse Bossel-Daners inequality is derived by means of the harmonic transplantation and the first shape derivative. This method is then applied to elliptic boundary value problems with inhomogeneous Neumann conditions. The firs
t variation is computed and an isoperimetric inequality is derived for the minimal energy.
In this paper the first and second domain variation for functionals related to elliptic boundary and eigenvalue problems with Robin boundary conditions is computed. Minimality and maximality properties of the ball among nearly circular domains of giv
en volume are derived. The discussion leads to the investigation of the eigenvalues of a Steklov eigenvalue problem. As a byproduct a general characterization of the optimal shapes is obtained.
We consider Cheeger-like shape optimization problems of the form $$minbig{|Omega|^alpha J(Omega) : Omegasubset Dbig}$$ where $D$ is a given bounded domain and $alpha$ is above the natural scaling. We show the existence of a solution and analyze as $J
(Omega)$ the particular cases of the compliance functional $C(Omega)$ and of the first eigenvalue $lambda_1(Omega)$ of the Dirichlet Laplacian. We prove that optimal sets are open and we obtain some necessary conditions of optimality.
