Comparative Analysis of Various Hyperelastic Models for Neoprene Gasket at Ranging Strains

Leakages not only add to the cost, they are also a great threat to the safety of men, machines and the environment as well. Seals and gaskets have evolved as a perfect solution to the problem of leakages. Amongst the various types of gaskets, hyperelastic gaskets have long maintained their dominance in the industrial as well as domestic appliances because of their characteristic advantages. Hyperelasticity is defined for ideally elastic materials by constitutive models where the relations of stress and strain are derived from the strain energy density function denoted by `W' - a scalar-valued quantity that gives the relationship of a material's strain energy density to its rate of deformation. The constitutive models that explain hyperelasticity, include older Neo-Hookean, Generalized Rivlin and Mooney-Rivlin models as well as Blatz-Ko, Ogden and Arruda-Boyce models. All these models are expressed through different interpretations of W . The selection of the model to be used amongst the mentioned constitutive models depends upon the types of materials and geometric and loading profiles for effective prediction of behavior and results. An effort has been made to present a comparative analysis of 16 hyperelastic models, which are different variants of Mooney Rivlin, Ogden, Blatz-Ko, Yeoh, Gent, Polynomial and Arruda Boyce models. In this study, the above-mentioned hyperelastic models are applied to examine the behavior of a neoprene gasket under uniaxial tensile loading. The study is concluded with determining a hyperelastic constitutive model that predicts with reasonable exactness and safety margin when less or no experimental data is available for the neoprene gasket.