Cavitation in soft materials*

Cavitation in soft materials have been intensively studied both theoretically and experimentally in the past. In the presentation, we would like to discuss some of our recent progresses on cavitation in soft materials. By introducing a small ring-crack on the wall of a cavity in a soft material, we investigated the cavitation-induced fracture in soft materials. We found that depending on the loading conditions and material properties, cavitation in soft material may lead to steady or unsteady growth of a crack. Our results will be very useful for understanding the entire cavitating process in soft materials. Considering most soft biological tissues and some engineering soft materials are not homogenous, we also studied cavitation in inhomogeneous soft materials. It is found that dramatically different from cavitation in homogenous material, the pressure vs. cavity volume curve can become nonmonotonic for inhomogeneous materials, which may result in snap-through instabilities.