Discontinuous equilibrium solutions and cavitation in nonlinear elasticity

Abstract A study is made of a class of singular solutions to the equations of nonlinear elastostatics in which a spherical cavity forms at the centre of a ball of isotropic material placed in tension by means of given surface tractions or displacements. The existence of such solutions depends on the growth properties of the stored-energy function W for large strains and is consistent with strong ellipticity of W. Under appropriate hypotheses it is shown that a singular solution bifurcates from a trivial (homogeneous) solution at a critical value of the surface traction or displacement, at which the trivial solution becomes unstable. For incompressible materials both the singular solution and the critical surface traction are given explicitly, and the stability of all solutions with respect to radial motion is determined. For compressible materials the existence of singular solutions is proved for a class of strongly elliptic materials by means of the direct method of the calculus of variations, an important step in the analysis being to show that the only radial equilibrium solutions without cavities are homogeneous. Work of Gent & Lindley (1958) shows that the critical surface tractions obtained agree with those observed in the internal rupture of rubber.