A Geometric Theory of Growth Mechanics

In this paper we formulate a geometric theory of the mechanics of growing solids. Bulk growth is modeled by a material manifold with an evolving metric. The time dependence of the metric represents the evolution of the stress-free (natural) configuration of the body in response to changes in mass density and “shape”. We show that the time dependency of the material metric will affect the energy balance and the entropy production inequality; both the energy balance and the entropy production inequality have to be modified. We then obtain the governing equations covariantly by postulating invariance of energy balance under time-dependent spatial diffeomorphisms. We use the principle of maximum entropy production in deriving an evolution equation for the material metric. In the case of isotropic growth, we find those growth distributions that do not result in residual stresses. We then look at Lagrangian field theory of growing elastic solids. We will use the Lagrange–d’Alembert principle with Rayleigh’s dissipation functions to derive the governing equations. We make an explicit connection between our geometric theory and the conventional multiplicative decomposition of the deformation gradient, F = FeFg, into growth and elastic parts. We linearize the nonlinear theory and derive a linearized theory of growth mechanics. Finally, we obtain the stress-free growth distributions in the linearized theory.