The stress concentration near a rigid line inclusion in a pre-stressed, elastic material. Part II - Implications on shear band nucleation, growth and energy release rate

The full-field and asymptotic solutions derived in Part I of this article (for a lamellar rigid inclusion, embedded in a uniformly prestressed, incompressible and orthotropic elastic sheet, subject to a far-field deformation increment) are employed to analyse shear band formation, as promoted by the near-tip stress singularity. Since these solutions involve the prestress as a parameter, stress and deformation fields can be investigated near the boundary of ellipticity loss (but still within the elliptic range). In the vicinity of this boundary, the incremental stress and displacement fields evidence localized deformations with patterns organized into shear bands, evidencing inclinations corresponding to those predicted at ellipticity loss. These localized deformation patterns are shown to explain experimental results on highly deformed soft materials containing thin, stiff inclusions. Finally, the incremental energy release rate and incremental J-integral are derived, related to a reduction (or growth) of the stiffener. It is shown that this is always positive (or negative), but tends to zero approaching the Ellipticity boundary, which implies that reduction of the lamellar inclusion dies out and, simultaneously, shear bands develop.