Spherical indentation of incompressible rubber-like materials

In recent years, indentation tests have been proven very useful in probing mechanical properties of small volumes of materials. However, a class of materials that very little has been done in this direction is rubber-like materials (elastomers). The present work investigates the spherical indentation of incompressible rubber-like materials. The analysis is performed in the context of second-order hyperelasticity and is accompanied by finite element computations and an extensive experimental program with spherical indentors of different radii. Uniaxial tensile tests were also performed and it was found that the initial elastic modulus correlates well with the indentation response. The experiments suggest stiffer indentation response than that predicted by linear elasticity, which is somehow counter-intuitive, if the uniaxial material response is to be considered. Regarding the uniqueness of the inverse problem, that is to establish material properties from spherical indentation tests, the answer is disappointing. We prove that the inverse problem does not give unique answer regarding the constitutive relation, except for the initial stiffness. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.