Stress and displacement fields in soft cylindrical multilayers

Multilayered gels play an important role in biomedical engineering as drug delivery vehicles, replacement tissues and bio-mimetic substrates for cell cultures. It has been established that the gel elasticity strongly influences the intended functionalities. In view of this, second-order elastic solutions for the stresses and displacements in cylindrical multilayered hydrogels subjected to various dilatation profiles are developed in this paper. The results emphasize the importance of nonlinearity in gel mechanics, and suggest the possibility of a rational selection of layer elasticities, layer thicknesses and dilatation profiles for improved mechanical responses such as maximum/minimum swelling and multiaxial stress states.