Analysis of electroelastic tubes

A team of engineers from Tufts University, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, and Universidad de Chile recently published new research in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. Their paper was part of a theme issue on the Ogden material model, which describes the behavior of complex materials like polymers, biological tissue, and rubber.

Professor Luis Dorfmann was corresponding author, working with colleagues Andrey Melkinov, a postdoctoral research scholar; Professor Jose Merodio; and Professor Roger Bustamante. The researchers used Haughton and Ogden’s prominent theory on “the bifurcation from a circular cylindrical configuration of an elastic tube of finite wall thickness subjected to combined axial loading and internal pressure” as their starting point.

The team studied a residually-stressed circular cylindrical tube that was subjected to internal and external pressure, radial electric field, and axial load. They derived the basic equations of nonlinear electroelasticity and their incremental specialization. In their solution, they specialized the system of equations for neo-Hookean and Ogden electroelastic models and solved for a thin-walled tube.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A is the oldest English-language scientific journal in the world, established in 1665. Dorfmann is a professor in the Tufts Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His research interests lie in the nonlinear behavior of materials capable of large deformations, including mathematical models of material behavior, the biomechanics of soft materials, and rubber elasticity and inelasticity.