Open Access

ARTICLE

Elastic Instability of Pseudo-Elastic Rubber Balloons

Ren Jiusheng¹

1 Department of Mechanics, Shanghai Institute of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, China

Computers, Materials & Continua 2008, 7(1), 25-32. https://doi.org/10.3970/cmc.2008.007.025

Abstract

Elastic instability for the inflation and deflation of a thin-walled spherical rubber balloon is examined within the framework of finite pseudo-elasticity. When a spherical rubber balloon is inflated, it is subject to a complex deformation after a pressure maximum has been obtained. One part of the balloon is lightly stretched while the remainder becomes highly stretched. So an aspherical deformation is observed after the initial spherical inflation. A pseudo-elastic strain energy function including a damage variable which may model the loading, unloading and reloading of rubber is used. The balloon is idealized as an elastic membrane and the inflation, deflation and re-inflation of the balloon is described in detail. Instability of solutions is discussed through energy comparison. Furthermore, the effect of temperature is discussed with a thermo-hyperelastic model and the residual strain is analyzed with a pseudo-elastic strain energy function including a residual strain variable.

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