The influence of cracks on the hydrogel material’s strength characteristic (stretch-to-stress ratio) is numerically investigated using a hyperelastic material model under variable strain loadings (from nominal to high). Material deformation is modeled using higher-order polynomials in conjunction with finite element steps, and a customized MATLAB code is used to evaluate the hydrogel’s constitutive behavior. The model incorporates Yeoh’s hyperelastic constitutive relationship to compute the stretch-stress characteristics under uniaxial tensile and high-strain loading conditions. A computational model is proposed to evaluate the constitutive behavior of a soft material, utilizing a few experimental exponents and validated by comparing with published data. The validation results show that the outcomes deviate by up to 1.23%. Solving a series of numerical examples has also highlighted the current model’s utility for understanding the influence of damage on the stress-strain responses of hyperelastic components. These examples demonstrate a thorough study of tensile properties to assess the mechanical behavior in hyperelastic polymeric composite components. The findings contribute to the improved design of polymeric components in high-performance engineering applications, including those in the biomedical and medicinal fields.
Meher et al. (Sat,) studied this question.