Deflections of a rubber membrane

This paper deals with the problem of the transverse deflection of a natural rubber membrane that is fixed along a circular boundary. Uniaxial experiments were performed in order to characterize the constitutive behaviour of the rubber material in terms of several constitutive models available in the literature. These constitutive models were used to develop computational estimates for the quasi-static load–displacement response of a rigid spherical indentor that deflects the rubber membrane in a controlled fashion and to determine the deflected shape of the membrane at specified load levels. Both axisymmetric and asymmetric deflections of the rubber membrane were investigated. The paper provides a comparison of the experimental results for the membrane deflections with results derived from computational simulations.