Equilibrium Paths of a Hyperelastic Body Under Progressive Damage

This paper deals with equilibrium problems in nonlinear dissipative inelasticity, where inelastic effects are produced by the damage of the material. The inelastic constitutive law is obtained by modifying the classical constitutive law for a hyperelastic isotropic material through a damage function. To define this damage function, which allows to measure the effective stress and the dissipated energy, it is first used the Clausius-Duhem inequality, to have the (rate-independent) flow law of the damaged state and then it has been imposed a damage criterion based on an energy approach. After making the constitutive modeling, the boundary-value problem of the Rivlin's cube, now composed of damaged material, is formulated. The purpose is to analyze a three-dimensional body that, during the deformation process, experiences a progressively increasing damage. Equilibrium branches of symmetric and asymmetric solutions, together to bifurcation points, are computed. Emphasis is placed in investigating how the damage can alter these equilibrium paths with respect to the virgin undamaged case. In particular, the stress reductions caused by damage can give rise to transitions from hardening type to the softening one of the constitutive behavior. These changes can affect the quality of the equilibrium solutions. Accordingly, the analysis is completed by assessing the stability of the solutions. For this aim, the energetic method is extended to damaged materials.