Continuous Softening as a State of Hyperelasticity: Examples of Application to the Softening Behavior of the Brain Tissue.

The continuous softening behavior of the brain tissue, i.e., the softening in the primary loading path with an increase in deformation, is modeled in this work as a state of hyperelasticity up to the onset of failure.

Modelling the rate-dependent mechanical behaviour of the brain tissue.

A new modelling approach is employed in this work for application to the rate-dependent mechanical behaviour of the brain tissue, as an incompressible isotropic material. Extant datasets encompassing single- and multi-mode compression, tension and simple shear deformation(s) are considered, across a wide range of deformation rates from quasi-static to rates akin to blast loading conditions, in the order of 1000 s . With a simple functional form and a reduced number of parameters, the model is shown to capture the considered rate-dependent behaviours favourably, including in both single- and multi-mode deformation fits, and over all range of deformation rates.

The Ogden model of rubber mechanics: 50 years of impact on nonlinear elasticity.

We place the Ogden model of rubber elasticity, published in 50 years ago, in the wider context of the theory of nonlinear elasticity. We then follow with a short interview of Ray Ogden FRS and introduce the papers collected for this Theme Issue. This article is part of the theme issue 'The Ogden model of rubber mechanics: Fifty years of impact on nonlinear elasticity'.

Modelling brain tissue elasticity with the Ogden model and an alternative family of constitutive models.

The Ogden model is often considered as a standard model in the literature for application to the deformation of brain tissue. Here, we show that, in some of those applications, the use of the Ogden model leads to the non-convexity of the strain-energy function and mis-prediction of the correct concavity of the experimental stress-stretch curves over a range of the deformation domain. By contrast, we propose a family of models which provides a favourable fit to the considered datasets while remaining free from the highlighted shortcomings of the Ogden model.

Shear waves in a nonlinear relaxing media: A three-dimensional perspective.

An important one-dimensional rheological model for the propagation of a linearly polarized shear wave was recently obtained and proposed by Cormack and Hamilton [(2018). J. Acoust.

Managing awareness can avoid hysteresis in disease spread: an application to coronavirus Covid-19.

A SEIR-type model is investigated to evaluate the effects of awareness campaigns in the presence of factors that can induce overexposure to disease. We find that high levels of overexposure can drive system dynamics towards a backward phenomenology and that increasing people awareness through balanced and aware information can be crucial to avoid dangerous dynamical transitions as hysteresis or transient oscillations before disease eradication. Investigations in the time dependent regimes are provided to support the results.

Generalization of the Zabolotskaya equation to all incompressible isotropic elastic solids.

We study elastic shear waves of small but finite amplitude, composed of an anti-plane shear motion and a general in-plane motion. We use a multiple scales expansion to derive an asymptotic system of coupled nonlinear equations describing their propagation in all isotropic incompressible nonlinear elastic solids, generalizing the scalar Zabolotskaya equation of compressible nonlinear elasticity. We show that for a general isotropic incompressible solid, the coupling between anti-plane and in-plane motions cannot be undone and thus conclude that linear polarization is impossible for general nonlinear two-dimensional shear waves.

Linearly polarized waves of finite amplitude in pre-strained elastic materials.

We study the propagation of linearly polarized transverse waves in a pre-strained incompressible isotropic elastic solid. Both finite and small-but-finite amplitude waves are examined. Irrespective of the magnitude of the wave amplitude, these waves may propagate only if the (unit) normal to the plane spanned by the directions of propagation and polarization is a principal direction of the left Cauchy-Green deformation tensor associated with the pre-strained state.

Parametric resonance in DNA.

We consider a simple mesoscopic model of DNA in which the binding of the RNA polymerase enzyme molecule to the promoter sequence of the DNA is included through a substrate energy term modeling the enzymatic interaction with the DNA strands. We focus on the differential system for solitary waves and derive conditions--in terms of the model parameters--for the occurrence of the parametric resonance phenomenon. We find that what truly matters for parametric resonance is not the ratio between the strength of the stacking and the inter-strand forces but the ratio between the substrate and the inter-strands.

Proper formulation of viscous dissipation for nonlinear waves in solids.

To model nonlinear viscous dissipative motions in solids, acoustical physicists usually add terms linear in Ė, the material time derivative of the Lagrangian strain tensor E, to the elastic stress tensor σ derived from the expansion to the third (sometimes fourth) order of the strain energy density E=E(tr E,tr E(2),tr E(3)). Here it is shown that this practice, which has been widely used in the past three decades or so, is physically wrong for at least two reasons and that it should be corrected. One reason is that the elastic stress tensor σ is not symmetric while Ė is symmetric, so that motions for which σ+σ(T)≠0 will give rise to elastic stresses that have no viscous pendant.

Automated estimation of collagen fibre dispersion in the dermis and its contribution to the anisotropic behaviour of skin.

Collagen fibres play an important role in the mechanical behaviour of many soft tissues. Modelling of such tissues now often incorporates a collagen fibre distribution. However, the availability of accurate structural data has so far lagged behind the progress of anisotropic constitutive modelling.

Third- and fourth-order constants of incompressible soft solids and the acousto-elastic effect.

Acousto-elasticity is concerned with the propagation of small-amplitude waves in deformed solids. Results previously established for the incremental elastodynamics of exact non-linear elasticity are useful for the determination of third- and fourth-order elastic constants, especially in the case of incompressible isotropic soft solids, where the expressions are particularly simple. Specifically, it is simply a matter of expanding the expression for ρv(2), where ρ is the mass density and v the wave speed, in terms of the elongation e of a block subject to a uniaxial tension.

Weierstrass's criterion and compact solitary waves.

Weierstrass's theory is a standard qualitative tool for single degree of freedom equations, used in classical mechanics and in many textbooks. In this Brief Report we show how a simple generalization of this tool makes it possible to identify some differential equations for which compact and even semicompact traveling solitary waves exist. In the framework of continuum mechanics, these differential equations correspond to bulk shear waves for a special class of constitutive laws.

Introducing mesoscopic information into constitutive equations for arterial walls.

We propose a new elastic constitutive law for arterial tissue in which the limiting polymeric chain extensibility of both collagen and elastin fibres is accounted for. The elastic strain-energy function is separated additively into two parts: an isotropic contribution associated with the matrix (incorporating the elastin fibre network) and an anisotropic one associated with the collagen fibres. Information on the limiting extensibility in each case provides some mesoscopic input into the model.

The relevance of nonlinear stacking interactions in simple models of double-stranded DNA.

Single molecule DNA experiments provide interesting data that allow a better understanding of the mechanical interactions between the strands and the nucleotides of this molecule. In some sense, these experiments complement the classical ones about DNA thermal denaturation. It is well known that the original Peyrard-Bishop (PB) model by means of a harmonic stacking potential and a nonlinear substrate potential has been able to predict the existence of a critical temperature of full denaturation of the molecule.

Solitary and compactlike shear waves in the bulk of solids.

We show that a model proposed by Rubin, Rosenau, and Gottlieb [J. Appl. Phys.

Finite amplitude elastic waves propagating in compressible solids.

The paper studies the interaction of a longitudinal wave with transverse waves in general isotropic and unconstrained hyperelastic materials, including the possibility of dissipation. The dissipative term chosen is similar to the classical stress tensor describing a Stokesian fluid and is commonly used in nonlinear acoustics. The aim of this research is to derive the corresponding general equations of motion, valid for any possible form of the strain energy function and to investigate the possibility of obtaining some general and exact solutions to these equations by reducing them to a set of ordinary differential equations.