A note on the stability of certain deformations of compressible nonlinearly elastic media (Q1266906)

The author considers a class of homogeneous and isotropic hyperelastic materials, namely the harmonic materials introduced by \textit{F. John} [Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 13, 239-296 (1960; Zbl 0094.37001), and ibid. 19, 309-341 (1966; Zbl 0139.43401)]. The strain energy function for such materials has the form \(w=2\mu [h(i_1) -i_3]\), where \(\mu>0\) is a constant, \(h\) is a real-valued function satisfying the conditions \(h(3)=h'(3)= 1\), \(h''(3)>0\), and \(i_1,i_2,i_3\) are the principal invariants of the left Cauchy-Green strain tensor. It is shown that a deformation with prescribed value on the boundary is in a stable equilibrium relative to \(w\) if and only if \(h'(i_1) \geq 0\). The equilibrium stability conditions are also obtained for deformations with \(i_1=c\) \((c>0\) is a constant) for generalized harmonic materials whose strain energy function has the form \(w=2\mu [h(i_1)+ i_3k (i_1)]\), where \(k\) is a \(C^2\) real-valued function satisfying the conditions \(k(c)= -1\), \(k'(c)=0\), and \(k''(i_1)>0\) when \(i_1>0\). An example is considered to illustrate the results obtained.