Cohesive zone modeling of mode I tearing in thin soft materials

The use of modeling and simulation is growing rapidly in applications such as surgery simulations, injury mechanics and tissue engineering. The aim of this study is to model and simulate tissue tearing and the resulting failure for use in such applications. In particular, our goal is to characterize the mechanics of mode I tearing in thin soft materials. We use the cohesive zone modeling approach to characterize the propagation of tears in a processed meat product (PMP). The bulk response of the PMP is modeled with a hyperelastic material model and the interface with a cohesive zone model. A multistep parameter estimation approach is developed to determine the bulk and the cohesive model parameters from uniaxial extension and tearing experiments. Results show that the proposed approach is able to capture both material and geometrical nonlinearities inherent to such problems, and accurately model the overall force–displacement response of thin soft materials during tearing at slow rates.