Anti-plane shear deformations in compressible transversely isotropic materials

Anti-plane shear deformations in a compressible, transversely isotropic hyperelastic material are under investigation. The displacement is assumed to be along the direction of the symmetry axis and is independent of the axial position. The resulting equations of equilibrium form an overdetermined system of partial differential equations for which solutions do not exist in general. Necessary and sufficient conditions are derived for such materials to sustain anti-plane shear deformations in the sense that every solution to the axial equation automatically satisfies the other two in-plane equations. Comparison is made with results for isotropic materials. A weaker version of the conditions specialized to axisymmetric anti-plane shear deformations is also obtained.