Investigation of a crack in a soft gel

• Main Author: Wong, Ho Ting
• Other Authors: Wu Mao See
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Mechanical engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/64518
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Hydrogels plays a crucial role as a biomaterial. It has a wide range of functions to serve multiple purposes such as tissue replacement and restoration because they provide the biophysical and biochemical surroundings that are able to direct cellular behaviour and functions. The motivation behind this project is to examine the methods employed by recent works on the analysis of crack tip fields in a hyperelastic material under Mode I traction free plane stress crack. The information on crack tip fields can provide useful information on the process of crack propagation. As the governing equations are highly non linear and are very difficult to solve analytically or even numerically, a computational program, Mathematica, was employed to aid the calculations. The variables that affect the stress distributions around the crack tip are the small strain shear modulus, μ, the degree of linearity, b and the degree of strain hardening, n. The report studies the relationship of the parameters, b and n from the equations derived from recent works. Meaningful observations and trends can be discovered with the help of Mathematica by simulation with numerical inputs into these variables. The method employed can be used to understand the stress distribution of any hyperelastic material with a trace of Cauchy-Green tensor and for materials that shows severe strain hardening. Results from the simulations will be discussed in this report and recommendations for future works will be advised according to the results obtained.