The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

Finite Element Implementation of Incompressible, Transversely Isotropic Hyperelasticity

Weiss, Jeffrey A.; Maker, Bradley N.; Govindjee, Sanjay

UCB/SEMM-1995/07, Dept. of Civil Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, 1995-07, 34 pages

This research was motivated by an interest in the development of computational models of biological joints. Because of the complex nature of joints such as the human knee and shoulder, computational methods are necessary to model their mechanical response. Models of this nature offer the ability to predict soft tissue stresses, joint contact forces, and joint kinematics for externally applied loads and displacements. This paper describes a 3-D constitutive model for biological soft tissues and its finite element implementation for fully incompressible material behavior.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/SEMM/SEMM-95-07.pdf (2 MB)