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The paper is devoted to the linearization of the non linear Signorini functional in the incompressible case. The limit functional, in the sense of Gamma-convergence, may coincide with the expected one only in some particular cases.

A new energy functional for pure traction problems in elasticity has been deduced in [23] as the variational limit of nonlinear elastic energy functional for a material body subject to an equilibrated force field: a sort of Gamma limit with respect to the weak convergence of strains when a suitable small parameter tends to zero. This functional exhibits a gap that makes it different from the classical linear elasticity functional. Nevertheless a suitable compatibility condition on the force field ensures coincidence of related minima and minimizers. Here we show some relevant properties of the new functional and prove stronger convergence of minimizing sequences for suitable choices of nonlinear elastic energies., Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1810.01339