Effect of elastomer slight compressibility

This paper is concerned with the constitutive equation for slightly compressible elastic material under finite deformations. We show that material slight compressibility can be effectively taken into account in the case of high hydrostatic pressure or highly confined material. In all other situations the application of the incompressible and nearly incompressible material theories gives practically the same results. Therefore it is of interest to consider the problem in which allowing for material slight compressibility leads to results essentially different from those obtained with help of the incompressible material model. In the present paper this difference has been demonstrated for the problem of high hydrostatic pressure causing an increase of the 'bulk' and 'shear' material moduli. The behavior of a long hollow cylinder of real material under finite deformations is analyzed. The cylinder is subjected to internal pressure and axial and circular displacements at the outer surface. This problem has been solved analytically using the small parameter method. The solution obtained predicts a decrease of the axial and circular displacements of the outer surface under fixed shear (axial and circular) forces when the internal pressure is applied. (C) 2001 Editions scientifiques et medicales Elsevier SAS.