Growth instabilities and folding in tubular organs: A variational method in non-linear elasticity

Morphoelastic theories have demonstrated that elastic instabilities can occur during the growth of soft materials, initiating the transition toward complex patterns. Within the framework of non-linear elasticity, the theory of incremental elastic deformations is classically employed for solving stability problems with finite strains. In this work, we define a variational method to study the bifurcation of growing cylinders with circular section. Accounting for a constant axial pre-stretch, we define a set of canonical transformations in mixed polar coordinates, providing a locally isochoric mapping. Introducing a generating function to derive an implicit gradient form of the mixed variables, the incompressibility constraint for the elastic deformation is solved exactly. The canonical representation allows to transform a generic boundary value problem, characterized by conservative body forces and surface traction loads, into a completely variational formulation. The proposed variational method gives a straightforward derivation of the linear stability analysis, which would otherwise require lengthy manipulations on the governing incremental equations. The definition of a generating function can also account for the presence of local singularities in the elastic solution. Bifurcation analysis is performed for few constrained growth problems of biomechanical interests, such as the mucosal folding of tubular tissues and surface instabilities in tumor growth. In a concluding section, the theoretical results are discussed for clarifying how anisotropy, residual strains and external constraints can affect the stability properties of soft tissues in growth and remodeling processes. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.