UNIAXIAL TENSILE TESTING OF RUBBER-LIKE MATERIALS

Rubber-like materials are unique engineering materials. These materials are generally considered as incompressible, isotropic, and hyperelastic. They resemble solids but they behave like fluids and gases as their volumes stay constant under isothermal deformations and their elastic moduli increase with temperature. Here, Vahapoglu et al discuss some inelastic behaviors of rubber-like materials. Some important aspects that should be considered in both designing a uniaxial testing machine and the procedure related to uniaxial testing of any material system, particularly for understanding the inelastic behaviors of rubber-like materials, are presented. In addition, a brief description of the software developed to generate the necessary instructions for controlling the machine and processing the data generated during the tests is given.