Hyperelastic Muscle Simulation

Biological soft tissues like muscles and cartilages are anisotropic, inhomogeneous, and nearly incompressible. The incompressible material behavior may lead to some difficulties in numerical simulation, such as volumetric locking and solution divergence. Mixed u-P formulations can be used to overcome incompressible material problems. The hyperelastic materials can be used to describe the biological skeletal muscle behavior. In this study, experiments are conducted to obtain the stress-strain behavior of a solid silicone rubber tube. It is used to emulate the skeletal muscle tensile behavior. The stress-strain behavior of silicone is compared with that of muscles. A commercial finite element analysis package ABAQUS is used to simulate the stress-strain behavior of silicone rubber. Results show that mixed u-P formulations with hyperelastic material model can be used to successfully simulate the muscle material behavior. Such an analysis can be used to simulate and analyze other soft tissues that show similar behavior.