Material identification of soft tissue using membrane inflation

Abstract

The constitutive equation for large elastic deformations is often used to model the mechanical response of soft tissue. This paper is concerned with the applications of the method of material identification to the determination of the strain energy density functions (W) in such a mode, under the assumption that the tissue is incompressible and isotropic. It is shown that an identification experiment based on inflation by lateral pressure of an initially flat circular membraneous specimen has a number of advantages. These are: the method of clamping the specimen, the ease of labelling material particles and measuring current coordinates, the easily determined domain of identification of W, and a means of systematically determining W over a large deformation range. An example in the form of a hypothetical experiment is presented.