DETERMINATION OF LIMITING PRESSURE IN SIMULTANEOUS ELONGATION AND INFLATION OF NON-LINEAR ELASTIC TUBES

A nonlinear elastic tubular membrane bonded at its ends to rigid plates is subjected to internal pressure and elongation. For a fixed elongation, pressure initially increases with radius, reaches a local maximum and then decreases. The purpose of this work is to determine this limiting pressure for each prescribed elongation. The usual boundary value problem formulation is such that a two dimensional search must be conducted. This can be computationally very costly. A method is presented which reduces the determination of the limiting pressure to a one-dimensional search. A numerical example is presented. © 1979.