  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.
