ON 3-DIMENSIONAL ELASTIC PERCOLATION NETWORKS WITH BOND-BENDING FORCES

This is a comment on a recent paper by Jian Wang (1989) regarding the elastic energy of three-dimensional percolation networks with bond-bending forces. The authors give the details of the elastic energy that was used in their recent simulation of such systems and show that, contrary to Wang's claim, for a simple cubic network used in the study, their elastic energy is equivalent to that given by him, and is rotationally invariant. From the elastic energy of the system they also derive a rotationally invariant continuum representation of the system. The relation between this model and several other models that have previously been developed for studying elastic properties of disordered media is also clarified.