Abstract:
Due to their large deformation, rubber-like materials are used in many industrial applications. However, few
studies are available in the literature on the classification of rubber-like materials, their mechanical properties
and the behavior of this material due to their hyperelastic and nonlinear behavior. In this work, an
incompressible isotropic nonlinear elastic thick-walled spherical structure subjected to external pressure is
studied using analytical formulation. The study aims to analyze the behavior and the stress field of such
materials which are characterized by high deformability. Five different type strain energy functions are applied
to a pressurized thick-walled hollow sphere to model the material behavior. A closed-form analytical solution
is obtained and the results predicted from classic strain energy models (Neo-Hookean and Mooney Rivlin) and
those obtained by Isihara, Biderman and Gent-Thomas models are compared in the prescribed case. The
solution obtained, for different models, was used to determine the stress field (radial and hoop stresses) across
thickness of the sphere. Finally, the influence of some parameters such as the radial pre-stretched sphere on
stress components was examined. Comparisons are done to investigate the accuracy and evaluating the
effectiveness of some existing constitutive models in the analysis of spherical vessel under external pressure.
