On tensile instabilities and ellipticity loss in fiber-reinforced incompressible non-linearly elastic solids

Loss of ellipticity and associated failure in fiber-reinforced non-linearly elastic solids is examined for uniaxial plane deformations. We consider separately fiber reinforcement that either endows the material with additional stiffness only in the fiber direction or introduces additional stiffness under shear deformations. In the first case it is shown that loss of ellipticity under tensile loading in the fiber direction corresponds to a turning point of the nominal stress and requires concavity of the Cauchy stress-stretch curve. For the second example loss of ellipticity occurs after the nominal stress maximum and prior to a turning point of the Cauchy stress. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.