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Fiber-reinforced composites are materials that display a great potentiality in many applications for their multifaceted features. The employment of curved fibers contributes to enhancing this already wide range of possibilities further. In this paper, we propose two particular fiber arrangements with the intention of realizing ultra-stiff and ultra-soft composites. For this purpose, we explore the texture based on isostatic lines, which is bio-inspired to obtain a high strength composite and the pantographic pattern, which enables considerable displacement with very low resistance. To model these particular lattice plates, we consider an in-plane orthotropic lamina within the framework of the strain-gradient elasticity theory. Numerical simulations have been performed using the finite element method to investigate the mechanical behavior of the considered textures. A regular straight texture with fibers parallel to the edges of a rectangular sample has been taken into account as reference texture for comparison. Through some tests, we show that for the considered textures, namely the isostatic and the pantographic ones, the displacement force graphs differ by several orders of magnitude, justifying the characterization of their behavior.

We study instability of a Newtonian Couette flow past a gel-like film in the limit of vanishing Reynolds number. Three models are explored including one hyperelastic (neo-Hookean) solid, and two viscoelastic (Kelvin–Voigt and Zener) solids. Instead of using the conventional Lagrangian description in the solid phase for solving the displacement field, we construct equivalent “differential” models in an Eulerian reference frame, and solve for the velocity, pressure, and stress in both fluid and solid phases simultaneously. We find the interfacial instability is driven by the first-normal stress difference in the base-state solution in both hyperelastic and viscoelastic models. For the neo-Hookean solid, when subjected to a shear flow, the interface exhibits a short-wave (finite-wavelength) instability when the film is thin (thick). In the Kelvin–Voigt and Zener solids where viscous effects are incorporated, instability growth is enhanced at small wavenumber but suppressed at large wavenumber, leading to a dominant finite-wavelength instability. In addition, adding surface tension effectively stabilizes the interface to sustain fluid shear.

The propagation of finite-amplitude time-harmonic shear horizontal waves, in a pre-stressed compressible elastic layer of finite thickness embedded between two identical compressible elastic half-spaces, is investigated. This is accomplished by combining finite-amplitude linearly polarized inhomogeneous transverse plane wave solutions in the half-spaces and finite-amplitude linearly polarized unattenuated transverse plane wave solutions in the layer. The layer and half-spaces are made of different pre-stressed compressible neo-Hookean materials. The dispersion relation which relates wave speed and wavenumber is obtained in explicit form. The special case where the interfaces between the layer and the half-spaces are principal planes of the left Cauchy–Green deformation tensor is also investigated. Numerical results are presented showing the variation of the shear horizontal wave speed with the pre-stress and the propagation angle.

Morphoelastic theories have demonstrated that elastic instabilities can occur during the growth of soft materials, initiating the transition toward complex patterns. Within the framework of non-linear elasticity, the theory of incremental elastic deformations is classically employed for solving stability problems with finite strains. In this work, we define a variational method to study the bifurcation of growing cylinders with circular section. Accounting for a constant axial pre-stretch, we define a set of canonical transformations in mixed polar coordinates, providing a locally isochoric mapping. Introducing a generating function to derive an implicit gradient form of the mixed variables, the incompressibility constraint for the elastic deformation is solved exactly. The canonical representation allows to transform a generic boundary value problem, characterized by conservative body forces and surface traction loads, into a completely variational formulation. The proposed variational method gives a straightforward derivation of the linear stability analysis, which would otherwise require lengthy manipulations on the governing incremental equations. The definition of a generating function can also account for the presence of local singularities in the elastic solution. Bifurcation analysis is performed for few constrained growth problems of biomechanical interests, such as the mucosal folding of tubular tissues and surface instabilities in tumor growth. In a concluding section, the theoretical results are discussed for clarifying how anisotropy, residual strains and external constraints can affect the stability properties of soft tissues in growth and remodeling processes.

Eulerian shock-capturing schemes have advantages for modelling problems involving complex non-linear wave structures and large deformations in solid media. Various numerical methods now exist for solving hyperbolic conservation laws that have yet to be applied to non-linear elastic theory. In this paper one such class of solver is examined based upon characteristic tracing in conjunction with high-order monotonicity preserving weighted essentially non-oscillatory (MPWENO) reconstruction. Furthermore, a new iterative method for finding exact solutions of the Riemann problem in non-linear elasticity is presented. Access to exact solutions enables an assessment of the performance of the numerical techniques with focus on the resolution of the seven wave structure. The governing model represents a special case of a more general theory describing additional physics such as material plasticity. The numerical scheme therefore provides a firm basis for extension to simulate more complex physical phenomena. Comparison of exact and numerical solutions of one-dimensional initial values problems involving three-dimensional deformations is presented.

Journal article An unconstrained, non-linearly elastic, semi-infinite solid is maintained in a state of large static plane strain. A power¿law relation between the pre-stretches is assumed and it is shown that this assumption is well motivated physically and is likely to describe the state of pre-stretch for a wide class of materials. A general class of strain-energy functions consistent with this assumption is derived. For this class of materials, the secular equation for incremental surface waves and the bifurcation condition for surface instability are shown to reduce to an equation involving only ordinary derivatives of the strain-energy equation. A compressible neo-Hookean material is considered as an example and it is found that finite compressibility has little quantitative effect on the speed of a surface wave and on the critical ratio of compression for surface instability. Marie Curie Fellowship, Grant Agreement number 219800 peer-reviewed

Mass growth on cylindrical and spherical substrates is a phenomenon which can be related to the biochemical creation of an elastic actin gel shell by polymerization and cross linking of actin filaments either in vivo on bacteria cylindrical surfaces as a means for their motility or in vitro on spherical beads as a means for experimentally studying the previous in vivo case. Such mass growth is strongly effected by the developed stress field. The objective of this paper is to accurately determine this stress field assuming elasticity of the growing mass and symmetrical growth. Based on the special kinematics of mass growing on spherical and cylindrical substrates, inwards or outwards from them, and various isotropic constitutive laws for both small and finite elastic strains, it is possible to obtain the solution for the stress field in closed analytical form for all cases considered. This expands very significantly recent findings [Dafalias, Y.F., Pitouras, Z., 2008. Stress field in actin gel growing on spherical substrate. Biomechanics and Modeling in Mechanobiology, doi:10.1007/s10237-007-0113-y .] for some constitutive laws and outwards growth on spherical substrates only. The effect of biomass compressibility is shown to be of cardinal importance for the developed stress field, questioning the validity of the simplifying assumption of a zero value Poisson ratio usually made in the relevant biomechanics literature for simplicity. Few selected graphs of stress variation along the radial direction illustrate the analytical findings. The obtained closed form analytical expressions for stress can be a standard reference tool in this important area of stress-modulated soft tissue growth.

This paper presents projection methods to treat the incompressibility constraint in small- and large-deformation elasticity and plasticity within the framework of Isogeometric Analysis. After reviewing some fundamentals of isogeometric analysis, we investigate the use of higher-order Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS) within the B ¯ projection method. The higher-continuity property of such functions is explored in nearly incompressible applications and shown to produce accurate and robust results. A new non-linear F ¯ projection method, based on a modified minimum potential energy principle and inspired by the B ¯ method is proposed for the large-deformation case. It leads to a symmetric formulation for which the consistent linearized operator for fully non-linear elasticity is derived and used in a Newton–Raphson iterative procedure. The performance of the methods is assessed on several numerical examples, and results obtained are shown to compare favorably with other published techniques.

In this work finite element simulations are conducted based on the micro structure of polymers in order to transfer the information of the micro level to the macro level. The micro structure of polymers is characterized by chain-like macromolecules linked together at certain points. In this way an irregular three-dimensional network is formed. Many authors use the tool of statistical mechanics to describe the deformation behaviour of the entire network. Most of these concepts can be reformulated as traditional continuum mechanical formulations. They are, however, restricted to affine deformation, regular chain arrangements and purely elastic material behaviour. For this reason, in the present contribution, we propose a new finite element-based simulation method for polymer networks which enables us to include non-affinity and arbitrary chain configurations. It can be easily extended to include chain breakage and reconnection. The polymer structure to be investigated, e.g. a rubber boot or a seal, is discretized by means of tetrahedral elements. To each edge of a tetrahedral element one truss element is attached which models the force–stretch behaviour of a bundle of polymer chains. Each of these tetrahedral unit cells represents the micro mechanical material behaviour in a certain point of the network. The proposed method provides the possibility to observe how changes at the microscopic level influence the macroscopic material behaviour. Such information is especially valuable for the polymer industry.

This article deals with a family of non-linear hyperelastic materials M (e) depending on a parameter e varying from 0 to 1; M (0) is a masonry-like material and M (1) is linear elastic. Some properties of the function T ( E ;e) delivering the Cauchy stress corresponding to the infinitesimal strain E, are proved; in particular, it is shown that T ( E ;e) is strongly monotone for e >0 and monotone for e=0. Moreover, denoting by [ u (·;e), E (·;e), T (·;e)] the solution to the equilibrium problem for solids made of a material M (e), the convergence of [ u (·;e), E (·;e), T (·;e)] for e going to 0 and 1, is investigated.