Void nucleation in tensile dead-loading of a composite incompressible nonlinearly elastic sphere

Abstract

In this paper, the effect of material inhomogeneity on void formation and growth in incompressible nonlinearly elastic solids is examined. A bifurcation problem is considered for a solid composite sphere composed of two neo-Hookean materials perfectly bonded across a spherical interface. Under a uniform radial tensile dead-load, a branch of radially symmetric configurations involving a traction-free internal cavity bifurcates from the underformed configuration. Such a configuration is the only stable solution for sufficiently large loads. In contrast to the situation for a homogeneous neo-Hookean sphere, bifurcation here may occur either locally to the right orto the left. In the latter case, the cavity has finite radius on first appearance. This discontinuous change in stable equilibrium configurations is reminiscent of the snap-through buckling phenomenon observed in certain structural mechanics problems. Since this paper was written, the authors have carried out further analysis of the class of problems of concern here [11]. In particular the stress distribution in the composite neo-Hookean sphere has been described in [11].