Finite element analysis is extensively used in the design of rubber products. Rubber products can suffer from large amounts of distortion under working conditions as they are nonlinearly elastic, isotropic, and incompressible materials. Working conditions can vary over a large distortion range, and relate directly to different distortion modes. Hyperelastic material models can describe the observed material behaviour. The goal of this investigation was to understand the stress and relegation fields around the tips of cracks in nearly incompressible, isotropic, hyperelastic accouterments, to directly reveal the uniaxial stress-strain relationship of hyperelastic soft accouterments. Numerical and factual trials showed that measurements of the stress-strain relationship could duly estimate values of nonlinear strain and stress for the neo-Hookean, Yeoh, and Arruda-Boyce hyperelastic material models. Numerical models were constructed using the finite element method. It was found that results concerning strains of 0-20% yielded curvatures that were nearly identical for both the neo-Hookean, and Arruda-Boyce models. We could also see that from the beginning of the test (0-5% strain), the curves produced from our experimental results, alongside those of the neo-Hookean and Arruda-Boyce models were identical. However, the experiment's curves, alongside those of the Yeoh model, converged at a certain point (30% strain for Pieces No. 1 and 2, and 32% for Piece No. 3). The results showed that these finite element simulations were qualitatively in agreement with the actual experiments. We could also see that the Yeoh models performed better than the neo-Hookean model, and that the neo-Hookean model performed better than the Arruda-Boyce model.
Keywords: finite element method; hyperelastic material; interface crack; rubber material.