QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF SPHERICAL CAVITY NUCLEATION AND GROWTH FOR INCOMPRESSIBLE GENERALIZED VALANIS-LANDEL HYPERELASTIC MATERIALS

I. INTRODUCTION In practice, cavity formulation in materials is recognized as precursors to failure. Thus void nucleationand growth in solid materials have a great in?uence on failure mechanism. Gent and Lindley[1] have observed experimentally the phe…

Qualitative Analysis of Spherical Cavity Nucleation and Growth for Incompressible Generalized Valanis-Landel Hyperelastic Materials

A cavitated bifurcation problem is examined for a sphere composed of a class of generalized Valanis-Landel materials subjected to a uniform radial tensile dead-load. A cavitated bifurcation equation is obtained. An explicit formula for the critical value associated with the vari- ation of the imperfection parameters is presented. The distinguishing between the left-bifurcation and right-bifurcation of the nontrivial solution of the cavitated bifurcation equation at the critical point is made. It is proved that there exists a secondary turning bifurcation point on the nontrivial solution branch, which bifurcates locally to the left. It is shown that the dimensionless cavitated bifurcation equation is equivalent to normal forms with single-sided constraint conditions at the critical point by using the singularity theory. The stability and catastrophe of the solutions of the cavitated bifurcation equation are discussed.