Hyperelastic stability landscape: A check for HILL stability of isotropic, incompressible hyperelasticity depending on material parameters

TL;DR

This paper introduces a standardized analytical method to verify the Hill stability of isotropic, incompressible hyperelastic materials, highlighting how stability depends on material parameters and energy functions, which is crucial for reliable finite element simulations.

Contribution

The paper provides a novel, uniform approach to analytically check Hill stability in hyperelastic models, visualizing stability regions in the invariant plane based on material parameters.

Findings

Stability regions depend on energy function choice and parameters.

Unstable behavior can occur even if uniaxial tension appears stable.

The method reveals potential stability issues for finite element applications.

Abstract

In this paper, we describe a uniform and standardized approach for analytically verifying the stability of isotropic, incompressible hyperelastic material models. Here, we address {\sl stability} as fulfillment of the {\sc Hill} condition -- i.e.\ the positive definiteness of the material modulus in the {\sc Kirchhoff} stress -- log--strain relation. For incompressible material behavior, all mathematically and mechanically possible deformations lie within a range bounded, on the one hand, by uniaxial states and, on the other hand, by biaxial states; shear {deformation} states lie in between. This becomes particularly clear when the possible states are represented in the invariant plane. This very representation is now also used to visualize the regions of unstable material behavior depending on the selected strain energy function and the respective data set of material parameters. This demonstrates how, for some constellations of energy functions, with appropriate selection or calibration of parameters, stable and unstable regions can be observed. If such cases occur, it is no longer legitimate to use them to initiate, for example, finite element simulations. This is particularly striking when, for example, a fit appears stable in uniaxial tension, but the same parameter set for shear states results in unstable behavior without this being specifically investigated. The presented approach can reveal simple indicators for this.