Cylinder hydrogel is simple in geometry and easy to synthesize, therefore was widely used to investigate the swelling/shrinking instability of hydrogel and many instability patterns were accumulated in the literature. The mechanism of instability pattern formation of this unique configuration, nevertheless, is far from being fully understood. We applied and extended the re- cently developed nonlinear theory of polymer gels into cylindrical coordinates, and performed linear perturbation analysis of swelling-induced stability of a constrained cylinder hydrogel. We derived the incremental formulations of stresses and the associated equilibrium equations. We obtained the critical conditions for the onset of instability and probed in details the effects of var- ious parameters on the stability diagram of the hydrogel. The physical meaning of the variation of stability diagram was also interpreted.
A novel method for calculating the magnetic stiffness matrix was proposed for the numerical analysis of the magneto-elastic stability of complicated current-carrying structures aim- ing for application in the magneto-elastic behavior of the tokamak system. A code based on the proposed method was developed and applied to the numerical analysis of two typical current- carrying structures. The good consistency of the numerical and analytical results validated the proposed method and the related numerical code.
The quasi-static indentation behavior of sandwich beams with a metal foam core was investigated. An analytical model was developed to predict the large deflections of indention of the sandwich beams with a metal foam core subjected to a concentrated loading. The interaction of plastic bending and stretching in the local deformation regions of the face sheet was considered in the analytical model. Moreover, the effects of the shear strength of the foam core on the indentation behavior were discussed in detail. The finite element simulations were preformed to validate the theoretical model. Comparisons between the analytical predictions and finite element results were conducted and good agreement was achieved. The results show that the membrane force dominates indentation behavior of the sandwich beams when the maximum deflection exceeds the thickness of the face sheet.
Abstract In periodic cellular structures, novel pattern transformations are triggered by a reversible elastic instability under the axial compression. Based on the deformation-triggered new pattern, periodic cellular structures can achieve special mechanical properties. In this paper, the designed architecture materials which include elastomer matrixes containing empty holes or filled holes with hydrogel material are modeled and simulated to investigate the mechanical property of the periodic materials. By analyzing the relationship between nominal stress and nominal strain of periodic material, and the corresponding deformed patterns, the influence of geometry and shapes of the holes on the mechanical property of architecture material is studied in more details. We hope this study can provide future perspectives for the deformation-triggered periodic structures.
Abstract Hydrogel can swell to many times of its dry volume, resulting in large deformation which is vital for its function. The swelling process is regulated by many physical and chemical mechanisms, and can, to some extent, be fairly described by the poroelasticity theory. Implementation of the poroelastieity theory in the framework of finite element method would aid the design and optimization of hydrogel-based soft devices. Choosing chemical potential and displacement as two field variables, we present the implementation of poroelastieity tailored for hydrogel swelling dynamics, detail the normalization of physical parameters and the treatment of boundary conditions. Several examples are presented to demonstrate the feasibility and correctness of the proposed strategy.
