Abstract
The surface instability of hypo-elastic solids is detected by using numerical stability techniques similar to those used to address the buckling problems of shell and truss structures. The performance of the proposed method is tested by comparing numerical to analytical results in the case of a simple boundary value problem—the plane strain compression test of blocks made of isotropic and anisotropic hypo-elastic materials. Although tested in a simple example, the proposed method can be applied to detect surface instability of more complicated boundary value problems, which are encountered in the fields of solids mechanics, structural geology and rock mechanics.
