Superposition of Generalized Plane Strain on Anti-Plane Shear Deformations in Isotropic Incompressible Hyperelastic Materials

The purpose of this research is to investigate the basic issues that arise when generalized plane strain deformations are superimposed on anti-plane shear deformations in isotropic incompressible hyperelastic materials. Attention is confined to a subclass of such materials for which the strain-energy density depends only on the first invariant of the strain tensor. The governing equations of equilibrium are a coupled system of three nonlinear partial differential equations for three displacement fields. It is shown that, for general plane domains, this system decouples the plane and anti-plane displacements only for the case of a neo-Hookean material. Even in this case, the stress field involves coupling of both deformations. For generalized neo-Hookean materials, universal relations may be used in some situations to uncouple the governing equations. It is shown that some of the results are also valid for inhomogeneous materials and for elastodynamics.