Necking of thin-walled cylinders via bifurcation of incompressible nonlinear elastic solids

Necking localization under quasi-static uniaxial tension is experimentally observed in ductile thin-walled cylindrical tubes, made of soft polypropylene. Necking nucleates at multiple locations along the tube and spreads throughout, involving the occurrence of higher-order modes, evidencing trefoil and fourth-foiled (but rarely even fifth-foiled) shaped cross-sections. No evidence of such a complicated necking occurrence and growth was found in other ductile materials for thin-walled cylinders under quasi-static loading. With the aim of modelling this phenomenon, as well as all other possible bifurcations, a two-dimensional formulation is introduced, in which only the mean surface of the tube is considered, paralleling the celebrated Flügge 's treatment of axially-compressed cylindrical shells. This treatment is extended to include tension and a broad class of nonlinear-hyperelastic constitutive law for the material, which is also assumed to be incompressible. The theoretical framework leads to a number of new results, not only for tensile axial force (where necking is modelled and, as a particular case, the classic Considère formula is shown to represent the limit of very thin tubes), but also for compressive force, providing closed-form formulae for wrinkling (showing that a direct application of the Flügge equation can be incorrect) and for Euler buckling. It is shown that the J₂-deformation theory of plasticity (the simplest constitutive assumption to mimic through nonlinear elasticity the plastic branch of a material) captures multiple necking and occurrence of higher-order modes, so that experiments are explained. The presented results are important for several applications, ranging from aerospace and automotive engineering to the vascular mechanobiology, where a thin-walled tube (for instance an artery, or a catheter, or a stent) may become unstable not only in compression, but also in tension.