INFLATION OF NONLINEARLY DEFORMED ANNULAR ELASTIC MEMBRANES

The inflation of an isotropic, nonlinear elastic membrane by means of a volume independent hydrostatic pressure is studied. In particular, w e consider annular membranes which, on the inner boundary, have been s ubjected to an axial twist and a displacement normal to the plane of t he membrane, with the outer boundary fixed. A direct two-dimensional a pproach is adopted and by introducing a relaxed strain-energy function the occurrence of wrinkled solutions is considered. The governing equ ations are found to reduce to a system of first order differential equ ations, which are then solved numerically for a Mooney-Rivlin material , over a range of boundary value problems.