  We show theoretically that essentially perfect elastostatic mechanical
cloaking of a circular inclusion in a homogeneous surrounding medium can be
achieved by means of a simple cloak comprising three concentric annuli, each
formed of a homogeneous isotropic linear elastic material of prescribed shear
modulus. Importantly, we find that the same combination of annuli will cloak
any possible mode of imposed deformation or loading, for any randomly chosen
admixture of imposed compression, pure shear and simple shear, without the need
to re-design the cloak for different deformation modes. A full range of
circular inclusions can be cloaked in this way, from soft to stiff. In
consequence, we suggest that an inclusion of any arbitrary shape can also be
cloaked, by first enveloping it in a stiff circle, then cloaking the combined
structure with three annuli as described. Given that a single inclusion can be
fully cloaked in this way, even at near field close to the cloaking perimeter,
it also follows that multiple such neutral inclusions arranged with arbitrarily
high packing fraction in a surrounding medium can also be cloaked. We confirm
this by direct simulation. This indicates a possible route to fabricating
composite materials with the same global mechanical response as a counterpart
homogeneous material, and with uniform strain and stress fields outwith the
cloaked inclusions.
