The Generalised Mooney Space for Modelling the Response of Rubber-Like Materials

Abstract Soft materials such as rubbers, silicones, gels and biological tissues have a nonlinear response to large deformations, phenomenon which in principle can be captured by hyperelastic models. The suitability of candidate strain energy function is then determined comparing its predicted the data gleaned from tests adjusting material parameters get good fit, an exercise deceptive because nonlinearity. Here we propose generalise approach Rivlin Saunders (Philos. Trans. R. Soc. A, Math. Phys. Eng. Sci. 243:251–288, 1951) who, instead reporting stress against stretch, manipulated these measures create ‘Mooney plot’, where Mooney-Rivlin model expected produce linear fit. We show that extending this idea other models modes deformation (tension, shear, torsion, etc.) advantageous, not only (a) for fitting procedure, but also (b) delineate trends are obvious raw (and may interpreted terms micro-, meso-, macro-structures) (c) obtain bounded condition number $\kappa $ ? over whole range deformation, robustness lacking plots spaces.