A note on the pure torsion of a circular cylinder for a compressible nonlinearly elastic material with nonconvex strain-energy

Abstract

The large deformation torsion problem for an elastic circular cylinder subject to prescribed twisting moments at its ends is examined for a particular homogeneous isotropic compressible material, namely the Blatz-Ko material. For this material, the displacement equations of equilibrium in three-dimensional elastostatics can lose ellipticity at sufficiently large deformations. For the torsion problem, it is shown that this occurs when the prescribed torque reaches a critical value. For values of the twisting moment greater than this critical value, there is an axial core of the cylinder on which ellipticity holds, surrounded by an annular region where loss of ellipticity has occurred. The physical implications in terms of localized shear bands are briefly discussed.