Open Access Article
Stefanie
Heyden‡
a and
Nicolas
Bain‡
b
aETH Zürich, Institute for Building Materials, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland. E-mail: stefanie.heyden@mat.ethz.ch
bUniversite Claude Bernard Lyon 1, CNRS, Institut Lumière Matière, UMR5306, F-69100, Villeurbanne, France. E-mail: nicolas.bain@cnrs.fr
First published on 1st July 2024
The Shuttleworth equation: a linear stress–strain relation ubiquitously used in modeling the behavior of soft surfaces. Its validity in the realm of materials subject to large deformation is a topic of current debate. Here, we allow for large deformation by deriving the constitutive behavior of the surface from the general framework of finite kinematics. We distinguish cases of finite and infinitesimal surface relaxation preceding an infinitesimal applied deformation. The Shuttleworth equation identifies as the Cauchy stress measure in the fully linearized setting. We show that both in finite and linearized cases, measured elastic constants depend on the utilized stress measure. In addition, we discuss the physical implications of our results and analyze the impact of surface relaxation on the estimation of surface elastic moduli in the light of two different test cases.
![]() | ||
| Fig. 1 Experimental surface profiles of initially flat soft solids in contact with (a) a drop of glycerol, (b) a silica bead, and (c) a glass coverslip. Data were obtained from confocal imaging of fluorescent beads deposited on a silicone gel of shear modulus μ ∼ 2 kPa (same protocol as 3,12–14). Each blue circle represents a detected fluorescent bead, and the light blue areas represent the contacting objects. | ||
The dominant approach to tackle this fundamental question consists in investigating surface elastic properties.12,15–18 For instance, surface topography measurements of a stretched patterned silicone gel revealed an elastic surface, where surface stresses increase with surface deformations.15 This result hints towards a role of the crosslinked polymeric network in the surface constitutive behavior of silicone gels. Conversely, deformation measures of a spinning hydrogel bead evidenced constant surface stresses, independent of surface deformations, akin to the solvent surface tension.18
In its simplest form, the most common description for the surface mechanics of soft solids relates surface stresses σs (in N m−1) to surface strains εs and free energy Ws (in J m−2 or N m−1),
![]() | (1) |
and is called the Shuttleworth equation.19 This description is restricted to the linear regime, where small deformations prevail. It is, however, largely applied to estimate surface elastic constants (also in N m−1) of systems undergoing large deformations, where its validity and resulting physical interpretations have been rightfully questioned.20–23
The major drawback of the Shuttleworth equation is to ignore key features that can only be captured by accounting for finite deformations. Before applied deformations, for instance, soft solids are usually detached from a container, and their surfaces undergo an initial relaxation, inducing residual bulk stresses. Because soft solids are easy to deform, this surface relaxation can be large.13,24
Although extensive works in continuum mechanics laid out the framework of surface elasticity (see, e.g.,25–30), employing it in finite element simulations,31,32 sometimes accounting for the surface bending stiffness,27,32 the effect of initial surface relaxations on the estimation of surface elastic constants has so far not been assessed.
Here, we briefly expose the finite kinematics theory without initial surface relaxation. We leverage the framework of finite kinematics to rigorously derive surface stress–strain relations from a strain energy density while accounting for prior surface relaxations. We distinguish infinitesimal and finite surface relaxations and show that, in either case, different stress measures do not coincide, unlike the usual assumption in linear mechanics. While the classical description eqn (1) is valid for the Cauchy stress measure when the surface relaxations are infinitesimal, significant deviation terms appear when they are finite. We express these deviations in the general case and estimate their magnitude in two test cases. This framework should incite experimentalists to choose the suitable stress–strain relation and carefully interpret measured surface elastic parameters.
Following the Piola transform specialized to two dimensions, we define a free energy density expressed in the current configuration WC as
![]() | (2) |
. Here, and from now on, all vector quantities, such as displacement fields, and all tensor quantities, such as stress- and strain fields, are projected onto the surface (see Section S1, ESI†).
![]() | (3) |
![]() | (4) |
If one considers the free energy in the current configuration eqn (2), as is implicitly assumed in the Shuttleworth equation, the Cauchy stress takes a form similar to eqn (1)
![]() | (5) |
For a strain-dependent surface energy, without loss of generality, we use the St. Venant-Kirchhoff model, which is the simplest extension of linear elasticity that captures geometric nonlinearities. To account for the surface stresses in the reference state, we enrich this model with a constant surface energy in the current configuration,
![]() | (6) |
| σs = γI + Fs(2μsEs + λstr(Es)I)FTs, | (7) |
and similarly to the first and second Piola–Kirchhoff stresses
| Ps = γJsFs(FTsFs)−1 + 2μsFsEs + λstr(Es)Fs, | (8) |
| Ss = γJs(FTsFs)−1 + 2μsEs + λstr(Es)I. | (9) |
s = s = s = γI + 2μsεs + λstr(εs)I, | (10) |
s,
s,
s) are the linearized stress measures. It is then straightforward to extract surface elastic coefficients when applying small surface deformations.32 In the latter, we will show that this property does not hold when we account for surface relaxations before applied deformations.
In the first state, Ω*, the bulk of the soft solid is stress-free. For this reason, we denote this state as the reference configuration (Fig. 2). The surface, however, is not stress-free, as is accounted for in our definition of the surface energy eqn (6). While the second state, Ω0, is the one experimentalists work with, we consider it as an intermediate state because it can contain finite residual bulk stresses due to prior surface relaxation. We note, however, that these two states coincide when the surface does not undergo prior relaxation, which happens when the soft solid is tested in the state it was prepared.
In the framework of finite kinematics, the deformation gradient Fs maps material points from the stress-free configuration Ω* to the deformed configuration Ω. We also have
mapping from the stress-free configuration Ω* to the relaxed configuration Ω0, and F0s = I + ∇su0 mapping from the relaxed configuration Ω0 to the deformed configuration Ω. By composition of mappings, the total deformation follows as
.
In practice, experiments impose deformations E0s from the relaxed state Ω0 to the deformed state Ω. Here, we focus on the case where imposed deformations are small, for which E0s ∼ ε0s. We then elucidate how the measured stresses vary with imposed surface strain ε0s = [∇su0 + (∇su0)T]/2, both when the relaxation deformation
is infinitesimal and finite.
. Then, the resultant total strain is an additive decomposition
.
After linearization, stress measures are usually assumed to coincide. This assumption, however, fails whenever initial stresses are present,29 as in the case of solid surfaces. We thus need to carefully distinguish different stress measures in the realm of linearized kinematics.
At first order in strains εs, the linearized Cauchy stress
s simplifies to the Hookean form
s = γI+ 2μsεs + λstr(εs)I. | (11) |
Based on the additive decomposition of strains, Cauchy stresses result in a contribution from the surface relaxation
and a contribution from the imposed deformations
0s
![]() | (12) |
αs= 2μsεαs + λstr(εαs)I, with α ∈ [*,0]. Unsurprisingly, the surface relaxation here comes as an additive stress, as in the classical principle of superposition in linear elasticity. In this context, the prior surface relaxation does not influence the estimation of the surface elastic moduli μs and λs from applied strains ε0s.
Similarly, the second Piola–Kirchhoff stress takes the form
s = γI+ 2μIIsεs + λIIstr(εs)I, | (13) |
s = γI+ 2μIsεs + λIstr(εs)I + γωs, | (14) |
with μIs = μs − γ/2, λIs = λIIs, and ωs = (∇su − ∇suT)/2 the infinitesimal rotation tensor (see Section S3, ESI†). Both the first and second Piola–Kirchhoff stress measures can also be decomposed akin to the Cauchy stress eqn (12).
From eqn (11)–(14), we note that the three linearized stress measures are only equal in two scenarios. First, when the solid is unstretched εs = 0. All stress measures are then trivially equal to the prestress γI, which is the surface stress of the solid at rest. Second, when the prestress is much smaller than the surface elastic constants γ β (μs,λs). In this case, which primarily pertains to hard solids, all stress measures are equal to the Hookean form eqn (11).
Besides these cases, when the surface moduli is of the order of the surface tension at rest or smaller, we should distinguish the different linearized stress measures. Otherwise, the surface shear modulus μs can be misestimated by a value of the order of the surface tension γ, eqn (13) and (14). This applies to soft solids and complex fluid–fluid interfaces, for which surface tension and surface elasticity can be of the same magnitude.15,17,34
![]() | (15) |
is the stress contribution due to surface relaxation (see Section S3, ESI†). Here, not only does the relaxation impose an additional stress term
, but it also mixes non-trivially into the terms that include the surface elastic parameters (λs,μs). In practice, the exact contribution from the finite surface relaxation depends on the sample geometry and has to be estimated accordingly. For the sake of completeness, we estimate the strain dependence of the Second Piola–Kirchhoff stress as![]() | (16) |
Finally, the First Piola–Kirchhoff stress tensor follows as
![]() | (17) |
is the Second Piola–Kirchhoff stress contributions to surface relaxation. Although the expressions (15)–(17) are cumbersome, they do not coincide even in the case of no imposed deformations ε0s = 0.
Overall, whether the surface relaxation induces small or finite deformations, the different stress measures differ from each other. While we can extract effective surface elastic coefficients in the case of infinitesimal surface relaxation, eqn (11)–(14), accounting for finite relaxation prevents having a simple constitutive equation between stresses and imposed deformation ε0s, eqn (15)–(17). Still, we approximate from the full expression for the Cauchy stress eqn (15) that, at first order in relaxation strain
, the surface moduli (μs,λs) will be misestimated by a factor (1 + 4
). Although this suggests that one cannot neglect prior surface relaxations as soon as they reach a few percent, being more precise requires investigating specific test cases.
![]() | ||
| Fig. 4 (a) Surface profile of periodic grooves of wavelength w. Left: initial profile, with amplitude a0. Right: after relaxation, with amplitude a1, estimated for a material of shear modulus μ = 2 kPa, surface tension γ = 20 mN m−1, wavelength w = 50 μm and initial amplitude a0 = 2 μm. (b) Cylindrical rod before (left) and after relaxation (right). (c) Deviation factors P and L, quantifying the effect of surface relaxation on estimated surface modulus (eqn (18) and (21)). (d) Contour plot for the surface relaxation axial strain εs‖ as a function of shear modulus and cylinder radius, computed from eqn (20) with surface tension γ = 20 mN m−1. The black dashed line represents stands for R = Lec. | ||
First, we consider a soft solid cured into a mold with periodic rectangular grooves of wavelength w and initial amplitude a0. For simplicity, we assume that the solid is much thicker than the pattern wavelength, akin to the experimental system in ref. 15. After demolding, the surface topography relaxes to a nearly sinusoidal wave with final amplitude a1 ∼ a0/(1 + |q|Lec), where q = 2π/w is the pattern wavevector and Lec = γ/2μ is the elastocapillary length7,13,15 (Fig. 4a). During this process, one period of the surface goes from its initial length l0 = w + 2a0 to a final length l1 ∼ w + 2a1. We define the surface relaxation strain
from the difference in surface length before and after demolding.
With no loss of generality, we assume that the surface relaxation strains are tangential to the surface profile
, without shear, and that we impose an external deformation that manifests as a longitudinal strain
and no transverse applied strain
. The longitudinal Cauchy stress,
![]() | (18) |
, we recover the surface modulus (2μs + λs) that can be calculated from the fully linear Cauchy stress eqn (11). Otherwise, the estimated surface modulus deviates from the true modulus by a factor
. This deviation factor increases when the relaxation places the surface in tension,
, and decreases when the surface is in compression
(Fig. 4c). In the experimental conditions of ref. 15 (recalled in the legend of Fig. 4a), we estimate the relaxation strain to be
and the resulting correction factor P(−0.05) = 0.7. Therefore, accounting for the surface relaxation, as done in ref. 15 with nonlinear theories, avoided a 30% underestimation of the surface elastic moduli.
Second, we assume the soft solid is cured into a slender cylindrical mold of length L and radius R, with L ≫ R.35 Once removed from the mold, the length and radius change to l and r, respectively (Fig. 4b). At first order, this relaxation follows the uniform deformation field
![]() | (19) |
In this framework, the stretch created by the surface relaxation that minimizes the total elastic energy,
![]() | (20) |
and the circumferential strain
. From eqn (20), surface strains are infinitesimal when the elastocapillary length is much smaller than the cylinder radius, Lec β R, where bulk elasticity dominates.
Otherwise, the relaxation-induced deformations are finite (Fig. 4d). If we assume they have no shear component and impose a longitudinal deformation that results in small surface strains
, the longitudinal Cauchy stress
![]() | (21) |
through
and the polynomial function L(ε) = (1 + ε)(1 + 8ε + 12ε2 + 4ε3) (see Section S4, ESI†). We recover the correct surface modulus (2μs + λs/2) calculated from eqn (11) in the case of infinitesimal surface relaxation and increasing deviation factors when surface relaxation is finite (Fig. 4c). While the bulk material properties may behave linearly up to large deformations,15 surface elastic constants scale by a factor of 2 in the case of prior surface relaxation on the order of ±10% (Fig. 4c).
This has direct implications for the determination of surface elastic constants. First, experimentalists need to assess if the way the solid reached its rest state results in surface relaxations, and if so estimate their amplitude. Second, they have to evaluate which stress measure is the most relevant depending on how measurements are done. This calls for a careful notion of which configuration forces and areas are measured. If forces are measured in the deformed state and areas in the rest state configuration, the first Piola stress measure should be considered, whereas the Cauchy stress should be used when the areas are also measured in the deformed state. Different constitutive relations need to be employed depending on the stress measure, and the measured elastic moduli will depend on the used stress measure even without prior surface relaxation.
As more experimental work is required to determine under which conditions a soft solid has an elastic surface, our results provide a robust framework to interpret measurements of surface elastic constants from different stress measures, whether the surface has or hasn't relaxed during the fabrication process.
Footnotes |
| † Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available. See DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/d4sm00078a |
| ‡ Both authors contributed equally. |
| This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2024 |