A catalog of pressure drop, deformation profile and tube laws for slender hyperelastic tubes conveying Newtonian flow at steady state

Abstract: Slender tubes constituted of hyperelastic materials undergoing large deformations and conveying inertialess flow of Newtonian fluids at steady state are a model representations of complex systems in both biomechanics and bio-inspired technology. In this paper, we undertake a systematic study of this system. The tube's hyperelastic behavior is modeled by five (5) different constitutive laws: neo Hookean, Mooney Rivlin, Fung, Gent and Ogden. Invoking the principles of finite elasticity, we delineate the local pressure - deformation relationship for the tube for each of the hyperelastic models. The structural mechanical field of the tube is then coupled with fluid flow field, which is simplified using the tenets of lubrication approximation. The resultant fluid-structure interaction problem then throws up a cohort of interesting results including the deformation and pressure profile across the tube, and tube laws for five ($5$) hyperelastic models. Analysing these results, we posit that the behavior of neo Hookean and Mooney Rivlin tubes us converse of Fung's and Gent's tubes; the latter show a strain hardening behavior whilst the former exhibit a strain softening one. A sensitivity analysis which underscores the relative importance of geometrical nonlinearity in the problem then follows.