Inflating a Rubber Balloon

Abstract

A spherical balloon has a non-monotonic pressure-radius characteristic. This fact leads to interesting stability properties when two balloons of different radii are interconnected, see [1, 2, 3]. Here, however, we investigate what happens when a single balloon is inflated, say, by mouth. We simulate that process and show how the maximum of the pressure-radius characteristic is overcome by the pressure in the lungs and how the downward sloping part of the characteristic is ‘bridged’ while the lung pressure relaxes.