Bifurcations in the regularized Ericksen bar model

We consider the regularized Ericksen model of an elastic bar on an elastic foundation on an interval with Dirichlet boundary conditions as a two-parameter bifurcation problem. We explore, using local bifurcation analysis and continuation methods, the structure of bifurcations from double zero eigenvalues. Our results provide evidence in support of Müller’s conjecture [18] concerning the symmetry of local minimizers of the associated energy functional and describe in detail the structure of the primary branch connections that occur in this problem. We give a reformulation of Müller’s conjecture and suggest two further conjectures based on the local analysis and numerical observations. We conclude by analysing a “loop” structure that characterizes (k, 3k) bifurcations.