On the mechanical equilibrium of the fluid-filled poro-elastic body

S.L. Lopatnikov
Center for Composite Materials, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

J.W. Gillespie, Jr.

Center for Composite Materials, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
Department of Material Science and Engineering, University of Delaware, Newark, USA

ABSTRACT: The problem of the mechanical equilibrium of the rigid ball filled with penetrable poro-elastic
material and mass of a fluid with known equation of state is considered in the frame of the new theory of
poro-elasticity (Lopatnikov & Cheng, 2002, 2003; Lopatnikov et al. 2004). It is shown, that in contrast to Biots
theory of poro-elasticity and other earlier approaches, the problem can be consecutively solved in the general
case, particularly, for non-homogeneous material without any additional assumptions.

1 INTRODUCTION theory of fluid-filled poro-elastics have been solved

satisfactorily.
Since the classic works of Terzaghi (Terzaghi, 1943) Let us consider a simple problem that can be used
devoted to static (or quasi-static) mechanics of fluid- as a test of the physical consistency of a theory. Let
filled poro-elastics soils and Frenkels paper devoted to suggest first that we have an empty spherical ball B
seimo-electric effect and wave propagation in moisture
soils (Frenkel, 1944) and Biots (1956) later revision of
Frenkels work, hundreds of papers have contributed
in these fields.
Several approaches to the modeling of the mec-
hanical behavior of poro-elastics have been proposed.
Berryman (Berryman, to be published) recently sep-
arated all of these approaches into four groups: (1)
effective medium theory (Kustler & Toksos, 1974;
Milton 2002); (2) mixture theory (Frenkel, 1944,
Biot, 1956, 1957, 1961, 1973, Bedford & Drumheller,
1979, Berryman & Thigpen,1985, Lopatnikov et al.
2002, 2003, 2004); (3) multi-scale homogeniza-
tion (Auriault & Sanchez-Palencia,1977, Sanchez-
Palencia, 1980, Jikov et al. 1974, Gilbert, 1997, 2000);
and (4) volume averaging (Milton, 2002, Nikolaevskiy
et al, 1970, Nikolaevskiy, 1984, Nigmatullin, 1990). It
is necessary to also add the approach to up-scaling
of the poro-elastic properties based on application
of the theory of wave multiple scattering developed
in: (Lopatnikov, 1985, Gurevich & Lopatnikov 1988,
1995, Gurevich et al. 1990, 1992, Gorbachev &
Lopatnikov 1985, 1987, 1990). Obviously, we can-
not mention all papers devoted to this problem but
have identified the key work relevant to the present
study.
However, in spite of the tremendous amount of
work done, not all of the physical questions in the
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Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
of volume 0 with ideally rigid walls. Let us suggest
that one puts inside this ball the mass M of a fluid with
known equation of state:
(we do not consider here the heat effects, because they
are irrelevant to the problem).
The question is: in which state will the fluid be
within the sphere at the equilibrium state and what
pressure will act on the walls of the ball? Nothing is
easier to answer than this question.
Let us consider a similar problem. However, let us
now consider the ball is filled with penetrable poroe-
lastic material with initial distribution of the porosity
0 (x) and some elastic properties.
We will suggest that porous material is strongly
attached to the ball walls and thus, displacement
s (x) of the solid frame of the material is equal to
zero if x B.
Let us pose the same question: In which state will
be the fluid at equilibrium and what force will act on
the walls, if one injects a mass M of fluid with known
equation of state given in (1) in the porous space?. In
this case the actual volume available for fluid must be
defined simultaneously with the state of the fluid. First
question is: Can Biots theory and similar approaches
answer this question? The answer is no.
 There are several deep reasons, why it is impossible
to solve this problem in the frame of Biot theory. The
first reason is that the functional, which Biot used as
the energy functional is not the energy. It does not
satisfy the major property of physical energy: to be (in
absence of long-range fields like electric or gravity)
an additive function of constituents [Landau]. Biots
functional represents the expansion of the energy with
respect to small inclinations from the given and (what
is important) known ad hoc equilibrium state.
The second point is that Biot did not consider the
porosity (or changes of solid phase density) as an inde-
pendent variation parameter. It means that practically
he suggested that there can not be any changes of the
porosity without macro-movement of the constituents,
which contradicts the physics of poroelastics. As a
result, the Biot theory does not contain any instruments
to solve formulated above problem.
A better approach was presented in Bedford &
Drumheller (1979) and in later papers Berryman &
Thigpen (1985).
First, the energy density they used satisfies the
requirement that the total energy must be a sum of the
energies of the constituents. The second advancement
in comparison with Biots approach is that they used
the physical density of a fluid as the only parameter
of the fluidal part of a system and (in isotropic case)
in addition to invariants I1 , I2 , I3 , they also introduced
the average density s of the solid as an independent
variation parameter.
However, the procedure used in the cited papers
is not a completely consistent variation and leads in
the general case to incorrect governing equations. For
instance, in the static case, in the frame of this approach
the momentum conservation equations are:
One can see that equation (3) obviously fails in the
case of non-homogeneous porosity or non-linear pro-
cesses which can make initially homogeneous porosity
non-homogeneous. This problem is well known and
was discussed in the literature. Similar result were
obtained by Nikolaevskiy using the direct averaging of
the micro-mechanical equations (Nikolaevskiy, et al.
1970).
There is a widely spread opinion, that the position of
the porosity before or behind the differential operators
in (2) and (3) is not significant because the theory is
applicable only for gradients which are very smooth
in comparison with the internal scale of the material.
However, it is clear from simple inspection anal-
ysis that this logic fails. The real condition that lets
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Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
one neglect terms containing gradient of porosity is
that the characteristic length of considered process is
significantly smaller that the characteristic length of
porosity changes. This constraint contains no relation-
ship with internal scale of the theory: pore size or size
of grains and is very restrictive in a practical sense. It
is quite a different condition that can not be satisfied
in most practically important applications.
The second approach was proposed by Niko-
laevskiy (Nikolaevskiy et al, 1970, Nikolaevskiy,
1984), who clearly realized the value of the problem.
To fix equation (3), he introduced the additional
balancing forces fint = p into governing equations
for fluid and solid to match the experiment.
However, in the frame of Nikolaevskiys approach,
the stresses are still undefined. As a result, these
(for the first view more advanced) theories, can
be practically applied under the same conditions as
Frenkel-Biot theory: for definition of small variations
of parameters of state in the neighborhood of initially
known equilibrium state, but not for definition of the
equilibrium state itself.
In this paper we show, how this important problem
can be solved in frame of the theory of poroelastics,
developed by in an earlier study (Lopatnikov & Cheng,
2002, 2003, 2004).
2 GOVERNING EQUATIONS FOR A FLUID
FILLED POROUS BODY
Let us describe briefly the major logic of our previous
papers where the Lagrangian approach was applied to
construct the governing equations for the static and
dynamic behavior of the fluid filled poroelastics. One
can find details of the theory in (Lopatnikov & Cheng
2002, 2003, 2004).
The energy of the porous body can be presented as
a sum of the energies of the constituents:
Here ij is the so called tensor of internal strains
and eS and ef are the mass energy densities of solid
and fluid phases.
The equilibrium state of the body delivers the min-
imum of the energy U that incorporates appropriate
constraints related to the continuity equations for the
solid and fluid. It can be presented in differential
form as:
 The variation of solid density is related with internal
strain tensor as:
An important point is that because all variations are
always small, the variations of internal strain tensor
can be always linearly connected with the variations
of external strain tensor of the solid (and, perhaps,
variations of other variables).
However, the most important point here is the
appearance of a convective term proportional to the
difference of the virtual displacements of the solid
and fluid. This term in not significant in homoge-
neous medium but is responsible for the appearance
of the Nikolaevskiys force, balancing the mechan-
ical momentum equations in non-homogeneous (or
non-linear) material. The physics behind this term is
discussed in (Lopatnikov & Cheng, 2002).
The trace part of external tensor of deformation is
related with the trace part of internal strain and varia-
tion of the porosity by the equation (6) and is therefore
defined.
Thus, one must introduce an additional relation-
ship between trace-less parts of external and internal
strains:
Thus, operators L mapping {} into {} have iso-
morphic representation by the 5 5 matrices Q that
maps the 5-D space of vectors A into itself.
Thus, relationship (8) defines five additional con-
straints, which must be used during the variation.
Coefficients of operator L are the material coeffi-
cients. They describe the type of material consolida-
tion. We do not consider all properties of this operator.
However, we will mention that if, for example, one
has to deal with non-consolidated material and vis-
cous behavior is negligible, the external shear of the
elementary volume does not provide any shear in the
is equal in this case
solid body itself. Thus, operator L
to zero. In the quasi-dynamic case, the operator L can
be some pseudo-differential operator of time. It leads
to an interesting variational procedure, which we will
not discuss in current paper.
After all constraints on the infinitesimally small
variations are defined, we can complete the variational
procedure. It leads to the next set of static governing
equations for the poro-elastics filled with a fluid:

Operator L is not a general linear operator. It

must transform trace-less symmetric operator  into
trace-less symmetric operator  . It is easy to see
that in the general case, operator L can contain only
25 independent coefficients. It follows from simple
reasoning: trace-less symmetric matrixes  form
a subspace {} of the space of all 3 3 matrixes,
because the multiplication on the number and addi-
tion of such matrixes does not affect the property of
the matrix to be symmetric and trace-less. Then, there
is isomorphism between sub-space of trace-less sym-
metric matrixes and Euclidean 5-D vector space. To where:
set up this isomorphism, one can simply form the vec-
tor as follows: A = (11 , 22 , 12 , 13 , 23 ). If vector A
is defined, associated element from the sub-space of
symmetric trace-less matrixes can be uniquely defined
using the following relationships:

One can see that in addition to momentum conser-

vation laws (12) and (13), an additional force equa-
tion (13) defining equilibrium value of the porosity
It is clear that because operations (9), (10) are linear, appeared. It is important to mention also that inter-
the sum of two vectors aA + bA is mapping into to action force p, which was introduced by Niko-
the matrix: laevskiy from physical reasons, appeared in (13)
and (14) automatically during consistent variational
procedure (Lopatnikov & Cheng, 2002, 2004).

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Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
 This force did not appear in Bedford et al. nor Berry- and
man et al. due to invalid variational procedure used in
these works. It makes the results of this works applica-
ble only for linear processes in homogeneous materials
and only in the neighborhood of the known equilibrium
state. Thus, one can conclude that:
The physical nature of this force is discussed in
(Lopatnikov & Cheng, 2002).
Using equation (14) one obtains the next quadratic
3 SOLUTION OF THE TEST PROBLEM equation for definition of  as a function of two
constants p0 and  :
Now we are ready to solve the problem formulated in
the introduction. Let us define the equation of state of
a solid frame. Because, the shear components do not
affect major physical problem, but their inclusion leads where:
to unnecessary complexity, we will take the equation
of state of the solid body simply as:

This equation of state represents linear-elastic

porous material which does not resist shear. Only for
simplicity we will consider a homogeneous material.
Equation of state of fluid is taken in general form:
Also, for simplicity, we suggest that there is a one-
to-one relationship between the density of a fluid and
it pressure. It means that we will not consider the sit-
uations with possible co-existence of different phases
of the fluid considered.
From (13) one can conclude that in equilibrium, the
fluid pressure is constant in space:
The correct choice of the solution branch can be
identified if one takes into account that if pressure
p0 and parameter  are equal to zero (no pre-load of
solid frame during filling the ball with empty porous
material), the porosity is equal to 0 and thus  = 0.
Solving this equation, we come to the expression of
 as a function of two constants:
and substituting this solution in (40) one obtains also
the equilibrium internal strain as a function of the same
values:

From the equation of state, one can also conclude At last, using the mass conservation law (16) for the
that the density of fluid is also constant and can be solid, which one can re-write in terms of  and as:
uniquely expressed (using suggested property of the
equation of state) as:

one comes to the expression for external strain:

where we introduced  = 0 .
Then, from (15) the mass of fluid can be expressed
as: One can find explicit expressions for functions 0
( p0 , ), 0 ( p0 , ), 0 ( p0 , ) in the Appendix A.
Using (34) and taking into account spherical sym-
metry of the problem, one can find the displacement
vector of solid frame. In spherical coordinates, this
Using equation (12) and definition of solid stress, vector can have only radial component and, thus:
one can write:

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Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
 Solution of this equation (with boundary condition:
r = 0 if r = R, where R is radius of the ball) is:
It is clear that if to suggest that 0 (p0 , ) is not equal
to zero, solution (36) leads to non-physical singularity
of the force in the point r = 0. Considering that the
material is continuous everywhere, one must put:
which means, particularly, that external strain for this
solution is, as expected, identically equal to zero. In
the meantime, equation (37) provides inexplicit rela-
tionship between parameters p0 and . Thus, one can
consider all values of interest: 0 (p0 , ), 0 (p0 , )
as a functions of only pressure: 0 (p0 , (p0 )),
0 (p0 , (p0 )).
The last step is substitution of the expression
0 (p0 , (p0 )) in (15). One has:
Equation (38) defines inexplicitly the equilibrium
pressure of a fluid as a function of injected mass M
and, by other words, solves the problem, formulated
in the Introduction. The equilibrium values: porosity,
density of fluid, density of solid and forces, acting on
the ball can be now defined if pressure p0 is defined
from (38).
If the distribution of material properties (poros-
ity and elastic constants) is non-homogeneous, the
procedure of the solution is practically the same.
However, the functions of interest are now also some
functions of coordinates:
and definition of the relationship between p0 and
 becomes more complex. Using the definition of
external strain, one can write:
The condition that defines the relationship between
p0 and  is the field of solid displacements s (p0 , , x)
that has no singular point within the ball and satisfies
the boundary conditions on it surface. In the general
case, it is not a simple problem.
However, in the particular case of a concentric non-
homogeneous structure, the solution of (40) can be
easily obtained.
One has:
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Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
Thus:
Considering the limit of this expression when
r 0, one has:
To exclude the singularity of the vector field at this
point, one must put:
In this case, this condition replaces the condi-
tion (37) and, thus, defines the relationship between
p0 and  .
The only difference for the non-homogeneous case
is, as we mentioned above, is that the values of interest
are now functions of radius. The last remark can be
made about the solution (36). Basically, the solution
with non-zero coefficient 0 (p0 ,  (p0 )) also makes
sense, if one considers non-continuous solid frame. If
one suggests that there is small spherically symmetric
hole in the center, outside of this hole the equation (36)
is still valid. However, in this case, one must define the
relationship between values p0 and  from the condi-
tions on this boundary. The difference between these
two cases can be easily explained. The solution with-
out singularity is valid if the material is continuous. It
means that there exist some material bonds connecting
the opposite points of the walls of an imaginary hole.
Thus, these walls can not move apart too far. If there
is a real hole in the center, the walls are not connected
by radial springs and, as result, the solid frame can
compensate for the contraction of solid material due
to fluid pressure by the movement of the material as a
whole and associated decrease of the porosity.
4 CONCLUSIONS
We have shown that the theory of the mechanics of
fluid-filled poro-elastics (Lopatnikov & Cheng 2002,
2003, 2004) provides the route to solve the problem of
definition of the equilibrium state of the fluid injected
into compressible penetrable poroelastic media which
is defined in classic Biot theory and other existing
approaches to the mechanics of poro-elastics.
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5 APPENDIX A. EXPRESSIONS FOR
POROSITY AND INTERNAL AND
EXTERNAL STRAINS
Correct choice of sign is minus, because if p0 and
 are equal to zero,  also must be equal to zero.
Internal strain can be expressed via  with the help
of (40) as:
At last, using the mass conservation of solid in the
form of (46), one has: