Compressible and incompressible constituents in anisotropic poroelasticity: The problem of unconfined compression of a disk

The governing equations for the theory of anisotropic poroelastic materials with incompressible constituents undergoing small deformations are developed from the theory of anisotropic poroelastic materials without the constituent incompressibility constraint. The development of the constituent specific incompressibility constraint is accomplished by restricting the elastic constants rather than by introducing Lagrange multipliers, the conventional method. The advantage of the approach is insight into the nature of the elastic response that characterizes incompressible poroelasticity. An application of the theory to the unconfined compression of a circular porous disk is presented to illustrate the effects of compressibility vs. incompressibility and transverse isotropy vs. isotropy.