Closed-form solutions, extremality and nonsmoothness criteria in a large deformation elasticity problem

The pure azimuthal shear problem for a circular cylindrical tube of nonlinearly elastic material, both isotropic and anisotropic, is examined on the basis of a complementary energy principle. For particular choices of strain-energy function, one convex and one non-convex, closed-form solutions are obtained for this mixed boundary-value problem, for which the governing differential equation can be converted into an algebraic equation. The results for the non-convex strain energy function provide an illustration of a situation in which smooth analytic solutions of a nonlinear boundary-value problem are not global minimizers of the energy in the variational statement of the problem. Both the global minimizer and the local extrema are identified and the results are illustrated for particular values of the material parameters.      

On nonlinear universal relations in nonlinear elasticity

In the theory of nonlinear elasticity universal relations are relationships connecting the components of stress and deformation tensors that hold independently of the constitutive equation for the considered class (or sub-class) of materials. They are classified as linear or nonlinear according as the components of the stress appear linearly or nonlinearly in the relations. In this paper a general scheme is developed for the derivation of nonlinear universal relations and is applied to the constitutive law of an isotropic Cauchy elastic solid. In particular, we consider examples of quadratic and cubic universal relations. In respect of universal solutions our results confirm the general result of Pucci and Saccomandi [1] that nonlinear universal relations are necessarily generated by the linear ones. On the other hand, for non-universal solutions we develop a general method for generating nonlinear universal relations and illustrate the results in the case of cubic relations. (Received: November 9, 2005)     

Strain gradient plasticity solution for an internally pressurized thick-walled cylinder of an elastic linear-hardening material

An elastic-plastic solution is presented for an internally pressurized thick-walled plane strain cylinder of an elastic linear-hardening plastic material. The solution is derived in a closed form using a strain gradient plasticity theory. The inner radius of the cylinder enters the solution not only in non-dimensional forms but also with its own dimensional identity, which differs from that in classical plasticity based solutions and makes it possible to capture the size effect at the micron scale. The classical plasticity solution of the same problem is recovered as a special case of the current solution. To further illustrate the newly derived solution, formulas and numerical results for the plastic limit pressure are provided. These results reveal that the load-carrying capacity of the cylinder increases with decreasing inner radius at the micron scale. It is also seen that the macroscopic behavior of the pressurized cylinder can be well described by using classical plasticity based solutions.     

Thermal effects in orthotropic porous elastic beams

This paper is concerned with the linear theory of anisotropic porous elastic bodies. The extension and bending of orthotropic porous elastic cylinders subjected to a plane temperature field is investigated. The work is motivated by the recent interest in the using of the orthotropic porous elastic solid as model for bones and various engineering materials. First, the thermoelastic deformation of inhomogeneous beams whose constitutive coefficients are independent of the axial coordinate is studied. Then, the extension and bending effects in orthotropic cylinders reinforced by longitudinal rods are investigated. The three-dimensional problem is reduced to the study of two-dimensional problems. The method is used to solve the problem of an orthotropic porous circular cylinder with a special kind of inhomogeneity.      

Effective elastic moduli and stress concentrator factors in random structure aligned fiber composites

We consider a linearly elastic composite medium, which consists of a homogeneous matrix containing a statistically uniform random set of aligned fibers. Effective elastic moduli as well as the stress concentrator factors in the components are estimated. The micromechanical approach is based on the Green’s function technique as well as on the generalization of the “multiparticle effective field method” (MEFM, see for references, Buryachenko [1]). The refined version of the MEFM takes into account the variation of the effective fields acting on each pair of fibers. The dependence of effective elastic moduli and stress concentrator factors on the radial distribution function of the fiber locations is analyzed. Received: October 20, 2004     

Vanishing viscosity for hemivariational inequalities modeling dynamic problems in elasticity

In this paper we consider a mathematical model describing a dynamic linear elastic contact problem with nonmonotone skin effects. The subdifferential multivalued and multidimensional reaction–displacement law is employed. We treat an evolution hemivariational inequality of hyperbolic type which is a weak formulation of this mechanical problem. We establish a result on the existence of solutions to the Cauchy problem for the hemivariational inequality. This result is a consequence of an existence theorem for second order evolution inclusion. For the latter, using the parabolic regularization method, we obtain the solution as a limit when the viscosity term tends to zero.     

Solitary waves in a tapered prestressed fluid-filled elastic tube

In the present work, treating the arteries as a tapered, thin walled, long and circularly conical prestressed elastic tube and using the longwave approximation, we have studied the propagation of weakly nonlinear waves in such a fluid-filled elastic tube by employing the reductive perturbation method. By considering the blood as an incompressible inviscid fluid the evolution equation is obtained as the Korteweg-de Vries equation with a variable coefficient. It is shown that this type of equations admit a solitary wave type of solution with variable wave speed. It is observed that, the wave speed increases with distance for positive tapering while it decreases for negative tapering.     

A cusped prismatic shell-like body under the action of concentrated moments

The elastic equilibrium problem of a cusped prismatic shell-like body, when its projection is a half-plane x ₂ ≥ 0, under the action of a concentrated moment is solved in the explicit form within the framework of the zero approximation of I.Vekua’s hierarchical models of prismatic shells. The thickness of the prismatic shell-like body is proportional to the coordinate x ₂ raised to a non-negative exponent. When the exponent equals to zero, the above solution contains the well-known solution of the classical Carothers’ problem [1] in the case of an elastic half-plane (see also [2], §39).      

Recovering complex elastic scatterers by a single far-field pattern

We consider the inverse scattering problem of reconstructing multiple impenetrable bodies embedded in an unbounded, homogeneous and isotropic elastic medium. The inverse problem is nonlinear and ill-posed. Our study is conducted in an extremely general and practical setting: the number of scatterers is unknown in advance; and each scatterer could be either a rigid body or a cavity which is not required to be known in advance; and moreover there might be components of multiscale sizes presented simultaneously. We develop several locating schemes by making use of only a single far-field pattern, which is widely known to be challenging in the literature. The inverse scattering schemes are of a totally “direct” nature without any inversion involved. For the recovery of multiple small scatterers, the nonlinear inverse problem is linearized and to that end, we derive sharp asymptotic expansion of the elastic far-field pattern in terms of the relative size of the cavities. The asymptotic expansion is based on the boundary-layer-potential technique and the result obtained is of significant mathematical interest for its own sake. The recovery of regular-size/extended scatterers is based on projecting the measured far-field pattern into an admissible solution space. With a local tuning technique, we can further recover multiple multiscale elastic scatterers.     

Stability of post-fertilization traveling waves

This paper studies the stability of a family of traveling wave solutions to the system proposed by Lane et al. [D.C. Lane, J.D. Murray, V.S. Manoranjan, Analysis of wave phenomena in a morphogenetic mechanochemical model and an application to post-fertilization waves on eggs, IMA J. Math. Appl. Med. Biol. 4 (4) (1987) 309-331], to model a pair of mechanochemical phenomena known as post-fertilization waves on eggs. The waves consist of an elastic deformation pulse on the egg's surface, and a free calcium concentration front. The family is indexed by a coupling parameter measuring contraction stress effects on the calcium concentration. This work establishes the spectral, linear and nonlinear orbital stability of these post-fertilization waves for small values of the coupling parameter. The usual methods for the spectral and evolution equations cannot be applied because of the presence of mixed partial derivatives in the elastic equation. Nonetheless, exponential decay of the directly constructed semigroup on the complement of the zero eigenspace is established. We show that small perturbations of the waves yield solutions to the nonlinear equations decaying exponentially to a phase-modulated traveling wave.     

Toward a Hybrid-Trefftz element with a hole for elasto-plasticity?

The paper deals with the modelling of riveted assemblies for full-scale complete aircraft crashworthiness. Many comparisons between experiments and FE computations of bird impacts onto aluminium riveted panels have shown that macroscopic plastic strains were not sufficiently developed (and localised) in the riveted shell FE in the impact area. Consequently, FE models never succeed in initialising and propagating the rupture in the sheet metal plates and along rivet rows as shown by experiments, without calibrating the input data (especially the damage and failure properties of the riveted shell FE). To model the assembly correctly, it appears necessary to investigate on FE techniques such as Hybrid-Trefftz finite element method (H-T FEM). Indeed, perforated FE plates developed for elastic problems, based on a Hybrid-Trefftz formulation, have been found in the open literature. Our purpose is to find a way to extend this formulation so that the super-element can be used for crashworthiness. To reach this aim, the main features of an elastic Hybrid-Trefftz plate are presented and are then followed by a discussion on the possible extensions. Finally, the interpolation functions of the element are evaluated numerically.     

Exact geometric theory of dendronized polymer dynamics

Dendronized polymers consist of an elastic backbone with a set of iterated branch structures (dendrimers) attached at every base point of the backbone. The conformations of such molecules depend on the elastic deformation of the backbone and the branches, as well as on nonlocal (e.g., electrostatic, or Lennard–Jones) interactions between the elementary molecular units comprising the dendrimers and/or backbone. We develop a geometrically exact theory for the dynamics of such polymers, taking into account both local (elastic) and nonlocal interactions. The theory is based on applying symmetry reduction of Hamilton?s principle for a Lagrangian defined on the tangent bundle of iterated semidirect products of the rotation groups that represent the relative orientations of the dendritic branches of the polymer. The resulting symmetry-reduced equations of motion are written in conservative form.     

Wave front shape for a constrained cylindrically anisotropic elastic solid

The two-dimensional wave front shape caused by a point impulse excitation in a cylindrically anisotropic elastic solid is considered. The elastic parameters of the solid are constrained such that E = G This constraint allows the parametric equations of the wave front to be expressed exactly in terms of elementary transcendental functions. The precise location of double and cusp points on the front is treated in detail. Time histories of several wave front patterns are presented and an interesting feature of the front is generalized to the unconstrained solid.     

A Chebyshev spectral collocation method for solving Burgers’-type equations

In this paper, we elaborated a spectral collocation method based on differentiated Chebyshev polynomials to obtain numerical solutions for some different kinds of nonlinear partial differential equations. The problem is reduced to a system of ordinary differential equations that are solved by Runge–Kutta method of order four. Numerical results for the nonlinear evolution equations such as 1D Burgers’, KdV–Burgers’, coupled Burgers’, 2D Burgers’ and system of 2D Burgers’ equations are obtained. The numerical results are found to be in good agreement with the exact solutions. Numerical computations for a wide range of values of Reynolds’ number, show that the present method offers better accuracy in comparison with other previous methods. Moreover the method can be applied to a wide class of nonlinear partial differential equations.     

Chaos in the beam equation

We show the existence of chaotic solutions for certain weakly damped linear beam equations with slowly periodic perturbations resting on weakly non-linear elastic bearings.     

Elastic fields in two imperfectly bonded half-planes with a thermal inclusion of arbitrary shape

A general method is presented for the rigorous solution of Eshelby’s problem concerned with an arbitrary shaped inclusion embedded within one of two dissimilar elastic half-planes in plane elasticity. The bonding between the half-planes is considered to be imperfect with the assumption that the interface imperfections are uniform. Using analytic continuation, the basic boundary value problem is reduced to a set of two coupled nonhomogeneous first-order differential equations for two analytic functions defined in the lower half-plane which is free of the thermal inclusion. Using diagonalization, the two coupled differential equations are decoupled into two independent nonhomogeneous first-order differential equations for two newly defined analytic functions. The resulting closed-form solutions are given in terms of the constant imperfect interface parameters and the auxiliary function constructed from the conformal mapping which maps the exterior of the inclusion onto the exterior of the unit circle. The method is illustrated using several examples of an imperfect interface. In particular, when the same degree of imperfection is realized in both the normal and tangential directions between the two half-planes, a thermal inclusion of arbitrary shape in the upper half-plane does not cause any mean stress to develop in the lower half-plane. Alternatively, when the imperfect interface parameters are not equal, then a nonzero mean stress will be induced in the lower half-plane by the thermal inclusion of arbitrary shape in the upper half-plane. Detailed results are presented for the mean stress and the interfacial normal and shear stresses caused by a circular and elliptical thermal inclusion, respectively. Results from these calculations reveal that the imperfect bonding condition has a significant effect on the internal stress field induced within the inclusion as well as on the interfacial normal and shear stresses existing between the two half-planes especially when the inclusion is near the imperfect interface.     

Effective transverse elastic moduli of composites at non-dilute concentration of a random field of aligned fibers

We consider a transversal loading of a linearly elastic isotropic media containing the identical isotropic aligned circular fibers at non-dilute concentration c. By the use of solution obtained by the Kolosov–Muskhelishvili complex potential method for two interacting circles subjected to three different applied stresses at infinity, and exact integral representations for both the stress and strain distributions in a microinhomogeneous medium, one estimates the effective moduli of the composite accurately to order c². Received: March 4, 2003; revised: August 8, 2003     

Classification of Material <Emphasis Type="Italic">G</Emphasis>-Structures

A geometrical interpretation of the G-structures associated to elastic material bodies is given. In addition, characterizations of their integrability are obtained. Since the lack of integrability is a geometrical measure of the lack of homogeneity, the corresponding inhomogeneity conditions are obtained.     

On the equivalence of strong ellipticity in the material and spatial settings of finite elasticity

It is known from Shield’s theorem that the equilibrium equations for the inverse deformation in finite elasticity are equivalent to those for the primary deformation. We review this result for compressible elastic solids and then use it to provide a simple proof that strong ellipticity in the material setting is equivalent to that in the spatial setting. The result is then extended to incompressible materials.     

A variational framework for nonlinear viscoelastic models in finite deformation regime

This work presents a general framework for constitutive viscoelastic models in the finite deformation regime. The approach is qualified as variational since the constitutive updates consist of a minimization problem within each load increment. The set of internal variables is strain-based and uses a multiplicative decomposition of strain in elastic and viscous components. Spectral decomposition is explored in order to accommodate, into analytically tractable expressions, a wide set of specific models. Moreover, it is shown that, through appropriate choices of the constitutive potentials, the proposed formulation is able to reproduce results obtained elsewhere in the literature. Finally, numerical examples are included to illustrate the characteristics of the present formulation.