Stress Concentration in a Rubber Sheet Under Axially Symmetric Stretching

Abstract

A class of axially symmetric problems, concerning a highly elastic, circular rubber sheet with (a) a centered circular hole, (b) a rigid circular inclusion under outward radial loading at outer boundary, and (c) a rigid outer boundary and a concentric hole under inward radial loading around the hole, is solved. The solution of (a) has been obtained by Rivlin and Thomas [1] by solving simultaneously a set of differential equations numerically. In this paper, their equations are reduced to a single second-order differential equation governing the deformation function ρ(r). This is further reduced to two decoupled first-order equations after introducing the phase plane (λ1 – λ2 plane). The solutions are obtained conveniently in the phase plane by Picard’s method and by straightforward numerical integration.