A Finite Element Procedure with Poisson Iteration Method Adopting Pattern Approach Technique for Near-Incompressible Rubber Problems

A finite element procedure is presented for the analysis of rubber-like hyperelastic materials. The volumetric incompressibility condition of rubber deformation is included in the formulation using the penalty method, while the principle of virtual work is used to derive a nonlinear finite element equation for the large displacement problem that is presented in a total-Lagrangian description. The behavior of rubber deformation is represented by hyperelastic constitutive relations based on a generalized Mooney-Rivlin model. The proposed finite element procedure using analytic differentiation exhibited results that matched very well with those from the well-known commercial packages NISA II and ABAQUS. Furthermore, the convergence of equilibrium iteration is quite slow or frequently fails in the case of near-incompressible rubber. To prevent such phenomenon even for the case that Poisson's ratio is very close to 0.5, Poisson's ratio of 0.49000 is used, first, to get an approximate solution without any difficulty; then the applied load is maintained and Poisson's ratio is increased to 0.49999 following a proposed pattern and adopting a technique of relaxation by monitoring the convergence rate. For a given Poisson ratio near 0.5, with this approach, we could reduce the number of substeps considerably.