Mechanical experiments to identify homogeneous bodies

All bodies are inhomogeneous at some scale but experience has shown that some of these bodies can be idealized as a homogeneous body. Here we examine which bodies can be idealized as a homogeneous body when they are subjected to a non-dissipative mechanical process. This is done by studying circumstances in which an inhomogeneous body admits pure stretch homogeneous deformations. Then, we devise experiments wherein these circumstances are prevented. If homogeneous deformation is observed in these devised experiments, the body could be modeled as a homogeneous body. We limit our analysis to a class of isotropic elastic bodies deforming from a stress free reference configuration whose Cauchy stress is explicitly related to left Cauchy–Green deformation tensor. It is further assumed that the constitutive relation is differentiable function of the position vector of material particles in the stress free reference configuration. Then, we find that a cuboid made of compressible and isotropic material could be modeled as a homogeneous body if it deforms homogeneously due to the application of the normal stresses on all of its six faces and the magnitude of the normal stresses on three orthogonal faces are different. A cuboid made of incompressible and isotropic material could be modeled as a homogeneous body, if it deforms homogeneously in two different biaxial experiments, such that the plane in which the forces are applied in the two biaxial experiments is mutually orthogonal.