Coupled hydro-mechanical effects in a poro-hyperelastic material

Fluid-saturated materials are encountered in several areas of engineering and biological applications. Geologic media saturated with water, oil and gas and biological materials such as bone saturated with synovial fluid, soft tissues containing blood and plasma and synthetic materials impregnated with energy absorbing fluids are some examples. In many instances such materials can be examined quite successfully by appeal to classical theories of poroelasticity where the skeletal deformations can be modelled as linear elastic. In the case of soft biological tissues and even highly compressible organic geological materials, the porous skeleton can experience large strains and, unlike rubberlike materials, the fluid plays an important role in maintaining the large strain capability of the material. In some instances, the removal of the fluid can render the geological or biological material void of any hyperelastic effects. While the fluid component can be present at various scales and forms, a useful first approximation would be to treat the material as hyperelastic where the fabric can experience large strains consistent with a hyperelastic material and an independent scalar pressure describes the pore fluid response. The flow of fluid within the porous skeleton is defined by Darcy's law for an isotropic material, which is formulated in terms of the relative velocity between the pore fluid and the porous skeleton. It is assumed that the form of Darcy's law remains unchanged during the large strain behaviour. This approach basically extends Biot's theory of classical poroelasticity to include finite deformations. The developments are used to examine the poro-hyperelastic behaviour of certain one-dimensional problems.