Mooney-Rivlin solid 2026-10-14
An incompressible Mooney-Rivlin solid has strain energy density , with right Cauchy-Green deformation tensor , and when . It extends the neo-Hookean solid by a second invariant. A convention means , ; the minus sign must be retained when comparing material constants.
Here . Substitute the neo-Hookean solid energy into the twist and inflation of an incompressible tube work identity. Differentiating with respect to gives the integrand , with . Integrating between the two reference radii proves the displayed pressure when the outer surface is traction free.
For axial stretch and twist per reference length, an incompressible neo-Hookean solid has current radius . In local cylindrical orthonormal bases the deformation gradient is . The Cauchy stress tensor is . Radial equilibrium gives , and a traction-free curved surface gives . The nominal end traction is the displayed vector, measured per reference area. Its moment about the axis is . This calculation uses current moment arms with reference-area tractions.
Use the material-first nominal stress tensor convention , whose reference-volume power is . At a regular constraint point, , all admissible deformation rates satisfy . Equality of mechanical power and the derivative of the strain energy density gives
for every vector in this eight-dimensional tangent hyperplane. Its orthogonal complement is the span of . Consequently the constraint reaction in hyperelastic stress is
The scalar Lagrange multiplier is not determined by the work identity: its contribution vanishes on every allowed rate. Regularity matters. For example, replacing a regular incompressibility constraint by would give zero gradient on the same admissible set and could not represent an arbitrary pressure reaction through that gradient.
For incompressibility use the regular function , with . Differentiating the alternating-tensor expression for gives
The first expression is the cofactor entry; contracting it with gives , proving the inverse formula. On this yields
With this plus-sign convention is the negative of the usual pressure multiplier.
For an equibiaxially stretched sheet, incompressibility requires the principal stretches . The printed sheet expression's is inconsistent with this constraint and must be ; the balloon expression later on the same PDF page has the correct exponent. Let denote the derivative with respect to principal stretch , evaluated on this constrained path. With no applied thickness-direction traction,
Isotropy gives at equal in-plane stretches. Hence
The equibiaxial nominal tension of an incompressible sheet is therefore
The two equal in-plane nominal tensions do work per reference volume; the thickness-direction nominal stress does no work because it is zero. That is exactly the constrained energy differential, explaining energy conservation. As a check that the printed exponent is a genuine error, a neo-Hookean solid gives , zero at the undeformed state. The derivative with the erroneous exponent would instead give at that state.
For the thin spherical balloon, use the leading reference shell volume . Its two tangential stretches are , while its thickness stretch is and its current thickness is . Define . Its total elastic energy at leading thin-shell order is
During a quasistatic increment , the enclosed volume changes by , and . Equating energy change to work of the internal excess pressure gives
This is the inflation pressure of a thin incompressible elastic balloon. The approximation neglects through-thickness variation and curvature corrections beyond leading order, and requires . It also agrees with membrane force balance: , , and . Here pressure is force per current area, while is force per reference area; confusing them would lose a factor of .
Let , and . Differentiating the deformation gives
For the neo-Hookean solid, . The constrained nominal stress tensor is therefore . The multiplier cannot be set arbitrarily to a constant; equilibrium and the traction-free curved surface determine it.
Push the nominal stress to the Cauchy stress tensor: since , . In the current cylindrical orthonormal basis, the left Cauchy-Green deformation tensor has entries
Thus , , and . Static radial equilibrium without body force gives
The current outer radius is . Setting integrates the reaction field:
The other curved-surface traction components vanish because .
On the reference end , the outward reference normal is , and the nominal traction has components . The third row of is . Hence the nominal end traction of a twisted neo-Hookean cylinder is
The current here are evaluated at . These components are per unit reference area, not per unit current area.
For the moment, use current lever arms and reference-area traction. Its axial component is
The axial traction gives no axial moment. This torque also agrees with the reference-energy derivative at fixed axial stretch: the twist-dependent energy per reference length is . It is important that is twist per reference length, not twist per current length.
Write and assume that the material constraint is regular, so . Differentiating the constraint shows that admissible rates of the deformation gradient satisfy . The given stress-power identity says that annihilates this tangent hyperplane. Its orthogonal complement is the one-dimensional span of , so a Lagrange multiplier gives the constraint reaction in hyperelastic stress:
The sign of is a convention; the virtual work identity determines no constitutive value for this reaction. Regularity matters: a singular equation describing the same constraint need not have a nonzero gradient.
For incompressibility, take . Differentiating the expression using the Levi-Civita symbol gives
The middle expression is the corresponding entry of the cofactor matrix. Since , the nominal stress is therefore
For the neo-Hookean solid, , so in the material-first convention . The identity matrix satisfies the prescribed dead loading with , proving that the undeformed cube is always an equilibrium.
To obtain the homogeneous tensile bifurcation of a neo-Hookean cube, first seek , with . This has unit determinant. The two distinct diagonal stress equations are and . Eliminating gives
Thus the nontrivial branch is
The function decreases on and increases on , because . Its minimum is . Above this threshold there are two positive roots . For , neither root is one, and the three choices of the exceptional coordinate for each root give six distinct diagonal deformation gradients, in addition to .
At , however, and the three smaller-root matrices coincide with : it would be incorrect to count those as three new deformations. The requested existence of seven distinct homogeneous deformations nevertheless holds even at this value. For any unit vector , put
Its positive eigenvalues are , and its determinant is one. Since is an orthogonal conjugate of the diagonal solution, the same gives . Choose the six directions
Their outer products are distinct, and , so the six are distinct from one another and from . Constant nominal stress satisfies equilibrium and the prescribed surface tractions. Hence seven distinct homogeneous equilibria exist whenever . This is an existence count, not an exhaustive classification: rotated principal axes actually give a continuous family. The conventional seven axis-aligned positive-stretch branches coalesce to four distinct matrices at .
Use orthonormal cylindrical bases in the reference and deformed configurations. The radial coordinate remains , the angular coordinate becomes , and the axial coordinate is unchanged. Removing the rotation of the cylindrical basis, the deformation gradient is
It is a local simple shear with unit determinant. The squared principal stretches are the eigenvalues of
One principal stretch is one. The remaining squared principal stretches have product one and sum . Consequently they can be written and , where
For negative their ordering reverses, which is immaterial to the strain energy density of an isotropic material.
Let the reference length be . By material isotropy, the total elastic energy and end rotation are
For a quasistatic change, incompressibility makes the constraint reaction do no work. The velocity on an end section is its rigid rotational velocity; its traction power is the resultant torque times the angular velocity. Thus conservation of energy, or equivalently the torque and axial force of a twisted incompressible cylinder work identity, gives and
The radius is fixed in this derivative. This argument computes the required end torque along the prescribed deformation family; proving that a suitable end-only traction distribution sustains that family is unnecessary here.
For a neo-Hookean solid, the identity gives . Therefore
This is the signed torque in the twist direction; its magnitude is . For the positive twist convention the signed value equals the magnitude.
Use reference cylindrical coordinates and current coordinates . The prescribed map has , and . In the corresponding orthonormal cylindrical bases, differentiate physical line elements to obtain the deformation gradient
The radial direction is an eigenvector of the right Cauchy-Green deformation tensor with eigenvalue . Its other block is
Its trace is and its determinant is . Thus its eigenvalues solve . The principal stretches are the positive square roots of these eigenvalues:
Their product is one, independently checking incompressibility.
The strain energy density is per reference volume, so stored energy per initial cylinder height is . The end rotation is and the current height is , giving applied power per initial height . For quasistatic reversible loading, equate this with for independent changes of . This proves the torque and axial force of a twisted incompressible cylinder formulas
In the second derivative hold , the twist per initial length, fixed. Holding twist per current length instead would mix the generalized forces.
For the Mooney-Rivlin solid, compute invariants directly from rather than differentiating individual eigenvalue square roots:
The second identity follows from when . Retain the paper's minus sign on its term. Integrating and gives
Consequently
As checks, untwisted unit stretch gives , and setting recovers the neo-Hookean solid formulas. A convention with a positive second-invariant coefficient corresponds to replacing this by its negative.
For fixed nominal boundary tractions and dead body forces, use the total potential
The dead-load terms are linear in the deformation map. Let be a constraint-preserving perturbation path through equilibrium, with and . Differentiating twice gives and . Equilibrium has nominal stress tensor . Its virtual-work relation, applied to , gives the otherwise remaining first-derivative contribution . Therefore the constrained second variation is
For a time-dependent linearized perturbation , the incremental reaction stress contains , but its power vanishes because . Multiply the incremental momentum equation by , integrate by parts, and use zero incremental dead-load traction or the prescribed displacement condition. One obtains
Positive is therefore the standard constrained second-variation stability in elasticity criterion: perturbations cannot grow in this quadratic energy norm. A statement in a specified displacement norm also uses the usual coercivity and boundary conditions removing uncontrolled rigid-motion modes; translations with are not tested by the displayed condition. This is a small-perturbation energy argument, not a claim of global nonlinear stability.
For the cube use incompressibility in the form . A neo-Hookean solid has , and hence the spatial-index-first transpose of nominal stress is . On the diagonal family, equality to gives
The first relation immediately gives . Eliminating and factoring yields
Thus .
Let and . Its derivative vanishes only at , where and . Also at both ends of . Therefore has two distinct positive roots for , one repeated root at , and none below. There is an exception to the printed assertion that both roots differ from one: at , one root is exactly . Indeed, with , the equation becomes , so the only other positive stretch is .
Evaluate the stability form directly on the prescribed uniform perturbation
It satisfies . The determinant Hessian identity is
Meanwhile . For the unit reference cube,
On the trivial branch, and
Thus the undeformed state is stable in this perturbation family for , unstable for , and quadratically neutral at .
On a nontrivial branch, substitute and put :
The smaller root always has , hence , and is stable. For , the larger root lies between and one, so and it is unstable; the trivial branch is the second stable equilibrium. For , the larger root lies above one and has , so it is stable; the trivial branch is now unstable. Whenever there are three distinct equilibria in this family, precisely two are stable and one unstable against the specified uniform perturbations. This does not establish stability to every nonuniform or symmetry-breaking perturbation.
The homogeneous tensile bifurcation of a neo-Hookean cube has a nontrivial-branch fold at and a meeting with the undeformed branch at . The latter is the bifurcation from the undeformed state. Stating both values distinguishes this branch intersection from the earlier creation of the two nontrivial solutions.
Put and use reference cylindrical coordinates and current coordinates . The deformation map is , , . In the associated orthonormal bases its deformation gradient is
Its determinant is one, as required by incompressibility. The radial principal stretch is . The other two squared principal stretches are the eigenvalues of the tangential-axial block of :
Writing , they are
The positive square roots give , and .
The strain energy density is per reference volume, so the energy per height is
The work rates per height are from the end torque and from the inner pressure. The outer surface contributes no work because it is traction free, and the fixed height has zero axial work. Thus the virtual work identities for twist and inflation of an incompressible tube are
For a neo-Hookean solid, an irrelevant energy constant can be omitted:
Differentiating under the finite integral gives
An antiderivative divided by is . With , the neo-Hookean tube pressure under twist and inflation is therefore
It vanishes for an untwisted undeformed tube, and the twist contributes the last term at fixed radii.