Implicit Elasticity

Hyperelasticity has been used to characterize the mechanical behavior of non-linear materials for quite some time.  Despite the overwhelming success of this theory and the numerous advances in the field of mechanics that have come from it the model does not describe all behavior encountered in nature.  A hallmark of hyperelasticity, which itself is a subset of explicit elasticity, is that the stress strain response is one-to-one, meaning there is only one given value of stress for one given value of strain, or visa-versa.  There are materials in nature that have stress and strain responses that are many to one, these materials can be characterized with implicit elasticity.

Characterization of smart stimuli-responsive hydrogels.

Implicit02
Comparison of Implicit and Explicit elastic materials.

Stimuli-responsive hydrogels are used in many fields of science as materials in lab on a chip devices because of their ability to serve as both sensors and actuators.  Mechanical characterization of these materials is an ongoing field of research because of the multitude of physical phenomena that are present when these materials are in use.  We seek to characterize stimuli-responsive hydrogels using principles from solid mechanic.

Relevant Publications

  1. Benjamin, C. C., Lakes, R. S., & Crone, W. C. (2018). Measurement of the stiffening parameter for stimuli-responsive hydrogels. Acta Mechanica, 1-11.

Publications by Collaborators

  1. Freed, A. D. (2017). A note on stress/strain conjugate pairs: Explicit and implicit theories of thermoelasticity for anisotropic materials. International Journal of Engineering Science120, 155-171.
  2. Freed, A. D., & Rajagopal, K. R. (2016). A promising approach for modeling biological fibers. Acta Mechanica227(6), 1609-1619.
  3. Muliana, A., Rajagopal, K. R., & Wineman, A. S. (2013). A new class of quasi-linear models for describing the nonlinear viscoelastic response of materials. Acta Mechanica224(9), 2169-2183.
  4. Rajagopal, K. R. (2003). On implicit constitutive theories. Applications of Mathematics48(4), 279-319.

 

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