General invariant representations of the constitutive equations for isotropic nonlinearly elastic materials

This paper develops general invariant representations of the constitutive equations for isotropic nonlinearly elastic materials. Different sets of mutually orthogonal unit tensor bases are constructed from the strain argument tensor by using the representation theorem and corresponding irreducible invariants are defined. Their relations and geometrical interpretations are established in three dimensional principal space. It is shown that the constitutive law linking the stress and strain tensors is revealed to be a simple relationship between two vectors in the principal space. Relative to two different sets of the basis tensors, the constitutive equations are transformed according to the transformation rule of vectors. When a potential function is assumed to exist, the vector associated with the stress tensor is expressed in terms of its gradient with respect to the vector associated with the strain tensor. The Hill's stability condition is shown to be that the scalar product of the increment of those two vectors must be positive. When potential function exists, it becomes to be that the 3 x 3 constitutive matrix derived from its second order derivative with respect to the vector associated with the strain must be positive definite. By decomposing the second order symmetric tensor space into the direct sum of a coaxial tensor subspace and another one orthogonal to it, the closed form representations for the fourth order tangent operator and its inversion are derived in an extremely simple way. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.