Local micromorphic non-affine anisotropy for materials incorporating elastically bonded fibers

Abstract

There has been increasing experimental evidence of non-affine elastic deformation mechanisms in biological soft tissues. These observations call for novel constitutive models which are able to describe the dominant underlying micro-structural kinematics aspects, in particular relative motion characteristics of different phases. This paper proposes a flexible and modular framework based on a micromorphic continuum encompassing matrix and fiber phases. It features in addition to the displacement field so-called director fields which can independently deform and intrinsically carry orientational information. Accordingly, the fibrous constituents can be naturally associated with the micromorphic directors and their non-affine motion within the bulk material can be efficiently captured. Furthermore, constitutive relations can be formulated based on kinematics quantities specifically linked to the material response of the matrix, the fibres and their mutual interactions. Associated stress quantities are naturally derived from a micromorphic variational principle featuring dedicated governing equations for displacement and director