Journal of Elasticity

By means of the combined invariance restrictions due to material frame-indifference and material symmetry, the present paper provides general reduced forms for non-polynomial elastic constitutive equations of all 32 classes of crystals and transversely isotropic solids.

In many problems of interest the (Cauchy) surface traction is given as a function of position on the deformed surface. A class of loadings sufficiently general to include these problems is considered and within the context of finite elasticity a number of uniqueness results are established. A key ingredient is the result of Gurtin and Spector that uniqueness holds in any convex, stable set of deformations.

Invaginations are partial enclosures formed by surfaces. Typically formed by biological membranes; they abound in nature. In this paper, we consider fundamentally different structures: elastically stabilized invaginations. Focusing on spherical invaginations formed by elastic membranes, we carried out experiments and mathematical modeling to understand the stress and strain fields underlying stable structures. Friction plays a key role in stabilization, and consequently the required force balance is an inequality. Using a novel scheme, we were able to find stable solutions of the balance equations for different models of elasticity, with reasonable agreement with experiments.

We consider an anti-plane shear of an elastic cylinder with a non-convex stored energy function. So, we look for solutions of a non-convex problem of the calculus of variations with Dirichlet boundary conditions. We give sufficient conditions on the boundary data to get existence or non-existence results for this non-convex problem. We also prove some uniqueness results for the relaxed problem associated with the initial problem.

In this paper we show a striking contrast in the symmetries of equilibria and extremisers of the total elastic energy of a hyperelastic incompressible annulus subject to pure displacement boundary conditions. Indeed upon considering the equilibrium equations, here, the nonlinear second order elliptic system formulated for the deformation $u=(u_{1}, \ldots, u_{N})$ : $$ {\mathbb{E}} {\mathbb{L}}[u, {\mathbf {X}}] = \left \{ \textstyle\begin{array}{l@{\quad}l} \Delta u = \operatorname{div}(\mathscr{P} (x) \operatorname{cof} \nabla u) & \textrm{in }{\mathbf {X}},\\ \det\nabla u = 1 & \textrm{in }{\mathbf {X}},\\ u \equiv\varphi& \textrm{on }\partial{\mathbf {X}}, \end{array}\displaystyle \right . $$ where ${\mathbf {X}}$ is a finite, open, symmetric $N$ -annulus (with $N \ge2$ ), $\mathscr{P}=\mathscr{P}(x)$ is an unknown hydrostatic pressure field and $\varphi$ is the identity mapping, we prove that, despite the inherent rotational symmetry in the system, when $N=3$ , the problem possesses no non-trivial symmetric equilibria whereas in sharp contrast, when $N=2$ , the problem possesses an infinite family of symmetric and topologically distinct equilibria. We extend and prove the counterparts of these results in higher dimensions by way of showing that a similar dichotomy persists between all odd vs. even dimensions $N \ge4$ and discuss a number of closely related issues.