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The effect of large deformation and material nonlinearity on gel indentation

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Abstract

A gel, an aggregate of polymers with solvents, has dual attributes of solid and liquid as solvent migrates in and out of the polymer network. Indentation has recently been used to characterize the mechanical properties of gels. This paper evaluates the effects of large deformation and material nonlinearity on gel indentation through theoretical modeling and finite element analysis. It is found that large deformation significantly affects the interpretation of the experimental observations and the classical relation between indentation force and depth has limitations for large deformation. The material nonlinearity does not play a very important role on indentation experiment so that the poroelasticity is a good approximation. Based on these observations, this paper proposes an alternative approach to measure the mechanical properties of gels, namely, uniaxial compression experiment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85287, USA

    Zheng Duan, Yonghao An, Jiaping Zhang & Hanqing Jiang

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  1. Zheng Duan
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  2. Yonghao An
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  3. Jiaping Zhang
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  4. Hanqing Jiang
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Correspondence to Hanqing Jiang.

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Duan, Z., An, Y., Zhang, J. et al. The effect of large deformation and material nonlinearity on gel indentation. Acta Mech Sin 28, 1058–1067 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10409-012-0122-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10409-012-0122-7

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