Mechanical and optical characterization of a tissue surrogate polymer gel

The mechanical and optical characteristics of a transparent tissue surrogate ballistic polymer gel were measured at different loading rates. This included measurement of tension and shear responses of the gel. Due to the compliant nature of the material, special strategies had to be developed for sample preparation, specimen gripping and deformation measurement. The digital speckle correlation method was used for measuring 2D strains in uniaxial tension tests. Subsequently, the Mooney-Rivlin description was used to extract the material characteristics from measured stress-strain data. Using a newly introduced optical method called Digital Gradient Sensing (DGS), the elasto-optical constants for the material were evaluated at different loading rates.