Transversely Isotropic Hyperelastic Constitutive Models for Plastic Thermoforming Simulation

For several years, modeling hyperelasticity has been focused on and leaded to a large choice of strain energy potential forms. Since then, many advances have been made in constitutive modeling of rubber like materials. These models are nowadays widely used in many applications like constitutive modeling of soft tissues in biomechanics problems or plastic thermoforming simulation. In this work, constitutive modeling of TPO sheets for thermoforming application is considered. Experimental measurements have shown that the material is transversely isotropic. To take into account this anisotropy, we implemented some new transversally isotropic hyperelastic constitutive models in Abaqus software with the help of user subroutines. Furthermore, different particular forms of the strain energy potential are investigated and their hyperelatic constants are fitted to the measurement data from tensile tests performed in different directions. Based on the results of these investigations, a transversely isotropic form of the energy potential derived from the Yeoh constitutive model is adopted and several tests are analyzed for validation purpose. The chosen model is a good compromise that achieves accurate predictions with limited amount of tests and limited identification efforts. Another key finding of this work is the influence of the anisotropy on the thermoformed parts.