Hyperelastic Membranes with Implicitly Defined, Continuously Embedded Fibers

Abstract

A novel mechanical model and corresponding finite element method for anisotropic, hyperelastic, curved membranes are proposed. Hyperelastic fibers are embedded into the otherwise isotropic membrane, being relevant, for example, in reduced models for biological tissues and textiles. The geometrically nonlinear mechanics is formulated based on first principles of continuum mechanics (finite strain theory). The employed differential operators are formulated in a coordinate-free manner, through a framework known as tangential differential calculus. This enables a (semi-)implicit description of the fiber geometry through the intersection of level sets of some scalar function with the explicitly defined membrane surface. The mechanical model of the implicit fibers is then coupled to the mechanics of the membrane. For the numerical analysis, finite elements are applied such that the resulting scheme is a hybrid between classical Surface FEM and fictitious domain methods. For smooth physical fields, higher-order convergence rates are obtained and confirm the success of the numerical method.