A general hyperelastic model for incompressible fiber-reinforced elastomers (Q835855)

The authors present a general hyperelastic model for finitely deformed incompressible fiber-reinforced elastomers. For that, the matrix and fiber phases are assumed to be incompressible isotropic hyperelastic solids. Moreover, the fibers are considered to be perfectly aligned and distributed randomly and isotropically in the transverse plane, leading to overall transversely isotropic behavior of the composite. The modeling equations are derived by means of the ``second-order'' homogenization theory which makes use of suitably designed variational principles utilizing the idea of a ``linear comparison composite''. The present model allows to study the behavior of constituent phases that is more general than neo-Hookean behavior. In a special case, the present model reduces to these models considering neo-Hookean behavior. The work is well written and may find several readers working in the area of finitely deformed fiber-reinforced composite materials.