Characterizing the mechanical properties of soft materials and biological tissues is of great significance for understanding their deformation behaviors. In this paper, a regional stretching method is proposed to measure the elastic and hyperelastic properties of a soft material with an adhesive surface or with the aid of glue. Theoretical and dimensional analyses are performed to investigate the regional stretch problem for soft materials that obey the neo-Hookean model, the Mooney-Rivlin model, or the Arruda-Boyce model. Finite element simulations are made to determine the expressions of the dimensionless functions that correlate the stretch response with the constitutive parameters. Thereby, an inverse approach is established to determine the elastic and hyperelastic properties of the tested materials. The regional stretch method is also compared to the indentation technique. Finally, experiments are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
This paper explores growth induced morphological instabilities in biological soft materials. In view of that the growth of a living tissue not only changes its geometry but also can alter its mechanical properties, we suggest a refined volumetric growth model incorporating the effects of growth on the mechanical properties of materials. Analogy between this volumetric growth model and the conventional thermal stress model is addressed for both small and finite de- formation problems, which brings great ease for the finite element analysis based on the suggested model. Examples of growth induced surface wrinkling behavior in soft composites, including core- shell soft cylinders and three-layered soft tissues, are explored. The results and discussions foresee possible applications of the model in understanding the correlation between the morphogenesis and growth of soft biological tissues （e.g. skins and tumors）, as well as in evaluating the defor- mation and surface instability behavior of soft artificial materials induced by swelling/shrinkage.
