This thesis presents an alternative method for determining the elastic constants of pipes made of incompressible hyperelastic materials. First, the relationships between the internal pressure in the pipe and increase of the external circumferance of the pipe are analytically derived according to the neo-Hookean and Mooney-Rivlin material models. This was followed by conducting two experiments, where the second one was improved compared to the first one. During the experiment, the pipe was subjected to same load as it would be in everyday use. The shear modulus of the pipes used in the experiment was calculated. The results obtained using the neo-Hookean and Mooney-Rivlin material models were compared. We found that the use of the simpler neo-Hookean model is not reliable whereas the use of the Mooney-Rivlin model gives adequate results.
|
