On the Performance of Isotropic Hyperelastic Constitutive Models for Rubber-Like Materials: A State of the Art Review

Abstract Besides the well-known landmark models for the hyperelastic response of rubberlike materials, many new hyperelastic constitutive models have emerged over the last decade. Despite many reviews on constitutive modeling or elastomers, it is still a challenging endeavor for engineers to decide for a constitutive model for the specific rubber compound and application. In this work, we have reviewed 44 hyperelastic constitutive models for elastomers and assessed their strength and weaknesses under uniaxial, pure shear, and (equi)biaxial deformations. To this end, we first present a novel parameter identification methodology based on various multi-objective optimization strategies for the selection of the best constitutive models from a given set of uniaxial tension, pure shear, and (equi)biaxial tension experiments. We utilize a hybrid multi-objective optimization procedure using a genetic algorithm to generate multiple initial points for gradient-based search algorithm, Fmincon utility in matlab. The novelty of the approach is (i) simultaneous fitting with variable weight factors for uniaxial, equibiaxial, and pure shear data, and (ii) the sorting of the models based on objective normalized quality of fit metric. For the models incapable of simultaneously fitting the three distinct deformation data, the validity range is assessed through a threshold value for the quality of fit measure. Accordingly, 44 hyperelastic models are sorted with respect to their simultaneous fitting performance to the experimental dataset of Treloar and Kawabata. Based on the number of material parameters, and their fitting performance to experimental data, a detailed discussion is carried out.