Macroscopic strain potentials in nonlinear porous materials

By taking a hollow sphere as a representative volume element (RVE), the macroscopic strain potentials of porous materials with power-law incompressible matrix are studied in this paper. According to the principles of the minimum potential energy in nonlinear elasticity and the variational procedure, static admissible stress fields and kinematic admissible displacement fields are constructed, and hence the upper and the lower bounds of the macroscopic strain potential are obtained. The bounds given in the present paper differ so slightly that they both provide perfect approximations of the exact strain potential of the studied porous materials. It is also found that the upper bound proposed by previous authors is much higher than the present one, and the lower bounds given by Cocks is much lower. Moreover, the present calculation is also compared with the variational lower bound of Ponte Castañeda for statistically isotropic porous materials. Finally, the validity of the hollow spherical RVE for the studied nonlinear porous material is discussed by the difference between the present numerical results and the Cocks bound.