For homogeneous, isotropic, nonlinearly elastic materials, the form of the homogeneous deformation consistent with the application of a Cauchy shear stress is derived here for both compressible and incompressible materials. It is shown that this deformation is not simple shear, in contrast to the situation in linear elasticity. Instead, it consists of a triaxial stretch superposed on a classical simple shear deformation, for which the amount of shear cannot be greater than 1. In other words, the faces of a cubic block cannot be slanted by an angle greater than 45 • by the application of a pure shear stress alone. The results are illustrated for those materials for which the strain energy function does not depend on the principal second invariant of strain. For the case of a block deformed into a parallelepiped, the tractions on the inclined faces necessary to maintain the derived deformation are calculated.

The classical problem of simple shear in nonlinear elasticity has played an important role as a basic pilot problem involving a homogeneous deformation that is rich enough to illustrate several key features of the nonlinear theory, most notably the presence of normal stress effects. Here our focus is on certain ambiguities in the formulation of simple shear arising from the determination of the arbitrary hydrostatic pressure term in the normal stresses for the case of an incompressible isotropic hyperelastic material. A new formulation in terms of the principal stretches is given. An alternative approach to the determination of the hydrostatic pressure is proposed here: it will be required that the stress distribution for a perfectly incompressible material be the same as that for a slightly compressible counterpart. The form of slight compressibility adopted here is that usually assumed in the finite element simulation of rubbers. For the particular case of a neo-Hookean material, the different stress distributions are compared and contrasted.

The modelling of off-axis simple tension experiments on transversely isotropic nonlinearly elastic materials is considered. A testing protocol is proposed where normal force is applied to one edge of a rectangular specimen with the opposite edge allowed to move laterally but constrained so that no vertical displacement is allowed. Numerical simulations suggest that this deformation is likely to remain substantially homogeneous throughout the specimen for moderate deformations. It is therefore further proposed that such tests can be modelled adequately as a homogenous deformation consisting of a triaxial stretch accompanied by a simple shear. Thus the proposed test should be a viable alternative to the standard biaxial tests currently used as material characterisation tests for transversely isotropic materials in general and, in particular, for soft, biological tissue. A consequence of the analysis is a kinematical universal relation for off-axis testing that results when the strain-energy function is assumed to be a function of only one isotropic and one anisotropic invariant, as is typically the case. The universal relation provides a simple test of this assumption, which is usually made for mathematical convenience. Numerical simulations also suggest that this universal relation is unlikely to agree with experimental data and therefore that at least three invariants are necessary to fully capture the mechanical response of transversely isotropic materials.

The phenomenological approach to the modelling of the mechanical response of arteries usually assumes a reduced form of the strain-energy function in order to reduce the mathematical complexity of the model. A common approach eschews the full basis of seven invariants for the strain-energy function in favour of a reduced set of only three invariants. It is shown that this reduced form is not consistent with the corresponding full linear theory based on infinitesimal strains. It is proposed that compatibility with the linear theory is an essential feature of any nonlinear model of arterial response. Two approaches towards ensuring such compatibility are proposed. The first is that the nonlinear theory reduces to the full six-constant linear theory, without any restrictions being imposed on the constants. An alternative modelling strategy whereby an anisotropic material is compatible with a simpler material in the linear limit is also proposed. In particular, necessary and sufficient conditions are obtained for a nonlinear anisotropic material to be compatible with an isotropic material for infinitesimal deformations. Materials that satisfy these conditions should be useful in the modelling of the crimped collagen fibres in the undeformed configuration.

Incompressible nonlinearly hyperelastic materials are rarely simulated in Finite Element numerical experiments as being perfectly incompressible because of the numerical difficulties associated with globally satisfying this constraint. Most commercial Finite Element packages therefore assume that the material is slightly compressible. It is then further assumed that the corresponding strain-energy function can be decomposed additively into volumetric and deviatoric parts. We show that this decomposition is not physically realistic, especially for anisotropic materials, which are of particular interest for simulating the mechanical response of biological soft tissue. The most striking illustration of the shortcoming is that with this decomposition, an anisotropic cube under hydrostatic tension deforms into another cube instead of a hexahedron with non-parallel faces. Furthermore, commercial numerical codes require the specification of a 'compressibility parameter' (or 'penalty factor'), which arises naturally from the flawed additive decomposition of the strainenergy function. This parameter is often linked to a 'bulk modulus', although this notion makes no sense for anisotropic solids; we show that it is essentially an arbitrary parameter and that infinitesimal changes to it result in significant changes in the predicted stress response. This is illustrated with numerical simulations for biaxial tension experiments of arteries, where the magnitude of the stress response is found to change by several orders of magnitude when infinitesimal changes in 'Poisson's ratio' close to the perfect incompressibility limit of 1/2 are made.

We identify three distinct shearing modes for simple shear deformations of transversely isotropic soft tissue which allow for both positive and negative Poynting effects (that is, they require compressive and tensile lateral normal stresses, respectively, in order to maintain simple shear). The positive Poynting effect is that usually found for isotropic rubber. Here, specialisation of the general results to three strain-energy functions that are quadratic in the anisotropic invariants, linear in the isotropic strain invariants and are consistent with the linear theory, suggests that there are two Poynting effects that can accompany the shearing of soft tissue: a dominant negative effect in one mode of shear and a relatively small positive effect in the other two modes. We propose that the relative inextensibility of the fibres relative to the matrix is the primary mechanism behind this large negative Poynting effect.

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Finite Element simulations of rubbers and biological soft tissue usually assume that the material being deformed is slightly compressible. It is shown here that in shearing deformations the corresponding normal stress distribution can exhibit extreme sensitivity to changes in Poisson's ratio. These changes can even lead to a reversal of the usual Poynting effect. Therefore the usual practice of arbitrarily choosing a value of Poisson's ratio when numerically modelling rubbers and soft tissue will, almost certainly, lead to a significant difference between the simulated and actual normal stresses in a sheared block because of the difference between the assumed and actual value of Poisson's ratio. The worrying conclusion is that simulations based on arbitrarily specifying Poisson's ratio close to 1/2 cannot accurately predict the normal stress distribution even for the simplest of shearing deformations. It is shown analytically that this sensitivity is due to the small volume changes which inevitably accompany all deformations of rubber-like materials. To minimise these effects, great care should be exercised to accurately determine Poisson's ratio before simulations begin.Comment: 17 page