Hailiang Ma, Yueting Zhou, Xing Li, Shenghu Ding and Xu
Wang
Vol. 20 (2025), No. 3, 327–352
DOI: 10.2140/jomms.2025.20.327
Abstract
Prestrains and residual stresses have certain impacts on the characteristics and
functions of soft materials and tissues. Consequently, prestrains and residual stresses
also influence the indentation test of soft materials. This paper focuses on the
indentation contact of a compressible rubber polymer with prestretching conditions.
It derives the semi-analytical expressions for the ratio of the indentation force
to the indentation depth and the stress distribution. Subsequently, these
semi-analytical expressions can be simplified into analytical expressions in the
equiaxial prestretching case. Based on the deduced results, the influences of
prestrain, ambient temperature, and indenter parameters on indentation force,
indentation depth, and stress distribution parameters are further analyzed. The
results indicate that the compressibility of the material makes the surface
stiffness of the material increase under the condition of prestretching, resulting
in a smaller indentation force or indentation depth during the indentation
test. The analytical expressions obtained here in the equiaxial prestretching
situation provides a theoretical reference for the indentation test of some soft
materials.
Keywords
prestrain, compressible soft material, neo-Hookean
material, surface Green's function
School of Mathematical Statistics
and Ningxia Key Laboratory of Interdisciplinary Mechanics and
Scientific Computing
Ningxia University
Yinchuan, 750021
China