Patent ID: 7203604

Claim:
A method of determining internal structural features of a hyperelastic material, said method comprising: (a) performing at least one uniaxial loading test on a sample comprised of the hyperelastic material, said uniaxial loading test yielding uniaxial loading data; (b) filling the uniaxial loading data with a stress-strain function of the form: σ = λ ⁢ ⁢ A ⁢ ⁢ λ 2 + B ⁢ ⁢ λ + C a ⁢ ⁢ λ 2 + b ⁢ ⁢ λ + c where σ is a measure of the uniaxial loading on the sample, A is a measure of the strain on the sample, and A, B, C, a, b, and c are coefficients relating the stress-strain function to the uniaxial loading data; (c) determining values for the coefficients A, B, C, a, b, c; (d) computing a plurality of statistical parameters α, β, γ, α 1 , β 1 , and γ 1 using equations of the form: σ=α+β tan(γψ) and λ=α 1 +β 1 tan(γ 1 φ); (e) determining a set of internal structural features of the hyperelastic material from the statistical parameters, said internal structural features including at least one of (i) molecular chain length, (ii) molecular segment orientations and lengths, (iii) cross-link density, (iv) material density, (v) molecular orientation, (vi) molecular shape, (vii) type of randomness, and (viii) specific distribution of monomer content; and (f) storing said parameters.