Prediction of biaxial properties of elastomers and appropriate data processing

Abstract

An equibiaxial tension test could be necessary to set up hyperelastic material constants for elastomers exactly. Unfortunately, very often, only uniaxial tension experimental data are available. It is possible to use only uniaxial data to compute hyperelastic constants for a hyperelastic model, but the prediction of behavior in different deformation modes (as is equibiaxial or pure shear) will not work correctly with this model. It is quite obvious that there is some relation between uniaxial and equibiaxial behavior for the elastomers. Thus, we could use uniaxial data to predict equibiaxial behavior. If we were able to predict (at least approximately) equibiaxial data, then we could create a hyperelastic model usable for the general prediction of any deformation mode of elastomer. The method of the appropriate processing of experimental data for such prediction is described in the article and is verified by the comparison with the experiment. The presented results include uniaxial and equibiaxial experimental data, the created average curve of both the deformation modes, and the predicted equibiaxial data. Using Student's t-test, a close coincidence of the real and predicted equibiaxial data was confirmed.