Contact Mechanics for Hyperelastic Materials

Understanding the mechanical behavior of soft materials is of great importance for many applica-tions, especially for bioengineering and clinical applications. Hertzian theory is frequently used to characterize the mechanical properties of such materials. However, these materials undergo large deformations resulting in non-linear stress-strain response, which cannot be accurately captured by Hertzian contact. These materials are also rate sensitive, where at high velocities, external e˙ects such as air can influence the mechanical response. In this study, we experimentally in-vestigated the contact response of a soft spherical impactor on a rigid substrate and by using the principle of Total Internal reflection, we directly measured the contact radius. The e˙ects of specimen size, loading rate and boundary conditions were also examined and we found that, for the studied velocities, only the boundary conditions a˙ects both the radius-displacement and load-displacement relationships, leading to deviations from the theory at di˙erent indentation depths. We finished by setting up an experiment consisting of a pendulum for studying the e˙ects of high velocities and the influence air.