Approximation of Large Bending Isometries with Discrete Kirchhoff Triangles

We devise and analyze a simple numerical method for the approximation of large bending isometries. The discretization employs a discrete Kirchhoff triangle to deal with second order derivatives and convergence of discrete solutions to minimizers of the continuous formulation is proved. Unconditional stability and convergence of an iterative scheme for the computation of discrete minimizers that is based on a linearization of the isometry constraint is verified. Numerical experiments illustrate the performance of the proposed method.