Amit Patil

Free and constrained inflation of a pre-stretched cylindrical membrane

This paper presents the free and constrained inflation of a pre-stretched hyperelastic cylindrical membrane and a subsequent constrained deflation. The membrane material is assumed as a homogeneous and isotropic Mooney–Rivlin solid. The constraining soft cylindrical substrate is assumed to be a distributed linear stiffness normal to the undeformed surface. Both frictionless and adhesive contact are modelled during the inflation as an interaction between the dry surfaces of the membrane and the substrate. An adhesive contact is modelled during deflation. The free and constrained inflation yields governing equations and boundary conditions, which are solved by a finite difference method in combination with a fictitious time integration method. Continuity in the principal stretches and stresses at the contact boundary is dependent on the contact conditions and inflation–deflation phase. The pre-stretch has a counterintuitive softening effect on free and constrained inflation. The variation of limit point pressures with pre-stretch and the occurrence of a cusp point is shown. Interesting trends are observed in the stretch and stress distributions after the interaction of the membrane with soft substrate, which underlines the effect of material parameters, pre-stretch and constraining properties.

Instability investigation on fluid-loaded pre-stretched cylindrical membranes

This paper discusses the evaluation of instabilities on the quasi-static equilibrium path of fluid-loaded pre-stretched cylindrical membranes and the switching to a secondary branch at a bifurcation point. The membrane is represented by only the in-plane stress components, for which an incompressible, isotropic hyperelastic material model is assumed. The free inflation problem yields governing equations and boundary conditions, which are discretized by finite differences and solved by a Newton–Raphson method. An incremental arclength-cubic extrapolation method is used to find generalized equilibrium paths, with different parametrizations. Limit points and bifurcation points are observed on the equilibrium path when fluid level is seen as the controlling parameter. An eigen-mode injection method is employed to switch to a secondary equilibrium branch at the bifurcation point. A limit point with respect to fluid level is observed for a partially filled membrane when the aspect ratio (length/radius) is high, whereas for smaller aspect ratios, the limit point with respect to fluid level is observed at over-filling. Pre-stretch is observed to have a stiffening effect in the pre-limit zone and a softening effect in the post-limit zone.