Invariant formulation of hyperelastic transverse isotropy based on polyconvex free energy functions

In this paper we propose a formulation of polyconvex anisotropic hyperelasticity at finite strains. The main goal is the representation of the governing constitutive equations within the framework of the invariant theory which automatically fulfill the polyconvexity condition in the sense of Ball in order to guarantee the existence of minimizers. Based on the introduction of additional argument tensors, the so-called structural tensors, the free energies and the anisotropic stress response functions are represented by scalar-valued and tensor-valued isotropic tensor functions, respectively. In order to obtain various free energies to model specific problems which permit the matching of data stemming from experiments, we assume an additive structure. A variety of isotropic and anisotropic functions for transversely isotropic material behaviour are derived, where each individual term fulfills a priori the polyconvexity condition. The tensor generators for the stresses and moduli are evaluated in detail and some representative numerical examples are presented. Furthermore, we propose an extension to orthotropic symmetry.