Mathematical modeling of volumetric material growth

Growth (resp. atrophy) describes the physical processes by which a material of solid body increases (resp. decreases) its size by addition (resp. removal) of mass. In the present contribution, we propose a sound mathematical analysis of growth, relying on the decomposition of the geometric deformation tensor into the product of a growth tensor describing the local addition of material and an elastic tensor, which is characterizing the reorganization of the body. The Blatz-Co hyperelastic constitutive model is adopted for an isotropic body, satisfying convexity conditions (resp. concavity conditions) with respect to the transformation gradient (resp. temperature). The evolution law for the transplant is obtained from the natural assumption that the evolution of the material is independent of the reference frame. It involves a modified Eshelby tensor based on the specific free energy density. The heat flux is dependent upon the transplant. The model consists of the constitutive equation, the energy balance, and the evolution law for the transplant. It is completed by suitable boundary conditions for the displacement, temperature and transplant tensor. The existence of locally unique solutions is obtained, for sufficiently smooth data close to the stable equilibrium. The question of the global existence is examined in the simplified situation of quasistatic isothermal equations of linear elasticity under the assumption of isotropic growth.