Limit points in the free inflation of a magnetoelastic toroidal membrane

One common phenomenon native to inflation of membranes is the elastic limit-point instability—a bifurcation point at which the membrane begins to deform enormously at the slightest increase of pressure. In the case of magnetoelastic materials, there is another possible phenomenon which we call magnetic limit-point instability, a state referring to the non-existence of an equilibrium state – either stable or unstable. In this work, we are concerned with such instabilities in an incompressible isotropic magnetoelastic toroidal membrane with an initial circular cross-section. A non-uniform magnetic field is generated using a circular current carrying loop placed inside the membrane in addition to inflation by a uniform hydrostatic pressure. An energy formulation based on magnetization is used to model the magneto-mechanical coupling along with a Mooney–Rivlin constitutive model for the elastic strain energy density. Computations show that the magnetic field strongly influences the location of elastic limit points and in some cases can cause them to vanish. Multiple equilibrium states are obtained as solutions of the governing equations and a criterion based on second variation is employed to determine their stability. Existence and dependence of magnetic limit point on the magnetic field is demonstrated. While the quantitative results obtained here are specific to the toroidal geometry, the deformation behaviour can be generalized to any magnetoelastic membrane.