Exactly isochoric deformations of soft solids

¹ Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge - JJ Thomson Ave, Cambridge, CB3 0HE, UK
² School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University - Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
³ Department of Physics, Harvard University - Cambridge, MA 02138, USA

^(a) lm@seas.harvard.edu

Received: 9 July 2014
Accepted: 10 November 2014

Abstract

Many materials of contemporary interest, such as gels, biological tissues and elastomers, are easily deformed but essentially incompressible. Traditional linear theory of elasticity implements incompressibility only to first order and thus permits some volume changes, which become problematically large even at very small strains. Using a mixed coordinate transformation originally due to Gauss, we enforce the constraint of isochoric deformations exactly to develop a linear theory with perfect volume conservation that remains valid until strains become geometrically large. We demonstrate the utility of this approach by calculating the response of an infinite soft isochoric solid to a point force that leads to a nonlinear generalization of the Kelvin solution. Our approach naturally generalizes to a range of problems involving deformations of soft solids and interfaces in two-dimensional and axisymmetric geometries, which we exemplify by determining the solution to a distributed load that mimics muscular contraction within the bulk of a soft solid.