In porous materials, deformation of the solid skeleton is mechanically coupled to flow of the interstitial fluid. Soft porous materials such as soils, gels, and biological tissues often experience very large deformations. Here, we provide an overview of the physics of poromechanical coupling and the mathematical theory of large-deformation poroelasticity, and then study the importance of large deformations in the context of two uniaxial model problems.
Read the paper and download the associated MATLAB code: MacMinn et al., PRApplied 2016.