Homogeneous Equilibrium Configurations of a Hyperelastic Compressible Cube under Equitriaxial Dead-Load Tractions

摘要

Non-uniqueness, bifurcation and stability of homogeneous solutions to the equilibrium problem of a hyperelastic cube subject to equitriaxial dead-load tractions are investigated. Besides the basic and theoretical questions raised by the analysis, the study is motivated by the somewhat surprising feature of this nonlinear problem for which the symmetric load may give rise to asymmetric stable deformations. In reality, the equilibrium problem, formulated for general homogeneous compressible isotropic materials with polyconvex energy function, may exhibit primary and secondary bifurcations. A primary bifurcation occurs when there exist paths of equilibrium states that bifurcate from the primary path of three equal principal stretches. These bifurcation branches have two coinciding stretches and along them, through secondary bifurcations, other completely asymmetric bifurcation branches, which are characterized by all three stretches different, may risen. In this case, the cube transforms into an oblique parallelepiped. With increasing loads, they are also possible discontinuous paths of equilibria which evince prompt jumps in the deformation process. Of course, the set of asymmetric solutions admitted by the equilibrium problem depends on the specific form of the stored energy function adopted. In this paper, expressions governing the global development of asymmetric equilibrium branches are derived. In particular, conditions to have bifurcation points are individualized. For compressible neo-Hookean and Mooney-Rivlin materials a wide parametric analysis is carried out showing by means of graphs the most interesting branches. Finally, using the energy criterion, a detailed study is performed to assess the stability of the computed solutions.