Biaxial test and hyperelastic material models of silicone elastomer fabricated by extrusion-based additive manufacturing for wearable biomedical devices.

This study investigates the experimental setup and methods to measure and characterize mechanical properties of AM solid and porous silicone elastomer sheets on equi-biaxial stretch (with the stretch ratio up to 2). Four hyperelastic material models were applied to characterize the AM silicone sheet and evaluated through the finite element analysis (FEA) to quantify the fit to biaxial tensile test results. The Yeoh model with C10 = 80.7 kPa, C20 = -2.11 kPa, and C30 = 0.22 kPa has the best match to the experimentally measured stress-strain curve as well as the force and strain in FEA. This study demonstrates that the effects of raster angle and thickness are insignificant in the stress-strain curve of an AM silicone elastomer with solid cross-section. This study also demonstrates that AM can fabricate anisotropic porous silicone elastomer parts with different stiffness in x- and y-directions. PMID: 32364946 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials - Category: Materials Science Authors: Tags: J Mech Behav Biomed Mater Source Type: research