Stoneley waves and interface stability of Bell materials in compression; Comparison with rubber

TL;DR

This paper investigates the propagation of Stoneley interface waves in Bell-constrained hyperelastic materials under finite predeformations, deriving conditions for wave existence, stability bounds, and comparing results with neo-Hookean incompressible materials.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of Stoneley waves in Bell materials under finite strains, including explicit secular equations and stability conditions, with numerical comparisons to neo-Hookean models.

Findings

Stoneley wave speed varies with load and deformation.

Existence of waves depends on stretch ratios satisfying specific conditions.

Bell materials exhibit different stability bounds compared to neo-Hookean materials.

Abstract

Two semi-infinite bodies made of prestressed, homogeneous, Bell-constrained, hyperelastic materials are perfectly bonded along a plane interface. The half-spaces have been subjected to finite pure homogeneous predeformations, with distinct stretch ratios but common principal axes, and such that the interface is a common principal plane of strain. Constant loads are applied at infinity to maintain the deformations and the influence of these loads on the propagation of small-amplitude interface (Stoneley) waves is examined. In particular, the secular equation is found and necessary and sufficient conditions to be satisfied by the stretch ratios to ensure the existence of such waves are given. As the loads vary, the Stoneley wave speed varies accordingly: the upper bound is the `limiting speed' (given explicitly), beyond which the wave amplitude cannot decay away from the interface; the lower bound is zero, where the interface might become unstable. The treatment parallels the one followed for the incompressible case and the differences due to the Bell constraint are highlighted. Finally, the analysis is specialized to specific strain energy densities and to the case where the bimaterial is uniformly deformed (that is when the stretch ratios for the upper half-space are equal to those for the lower half-space.) Numerical results are given for `simple hyperelastic Bell' materials and for `Bell's empirical model' materials, and compared to the results for neo-Hookean incompressible materials.