Proposing a visco-hyperelastic constitutive model for time-dependent behavior of gluten in large deformations and the corresponding nonlinear finite element framework

Gluten, a mixture of proteins in wheat flour dough, is composed of a network of long fibers, which makes it capable of showing large deformations upon tension or compression. In this paper, a phenomenological strain energy function, with two exponential terms, is used and calibrated to simulate hyperelastic and viscoelastic material behavior of Gluten. This new visco-hyperelastic material model can also be calibrated and applied to other soft rubber-like materials. The developed system, composed of a simultaneous optimization process and the finite element code, makes it possible to simulate the exact experiments in the finite element software for determination of material parameters. The final results show that the EXP-EXP strain energy function simulates the material behavior of gluten in tension, compression and compression-relaxation more accurately, up to slightly large deformations. Using the proposed model in this paper, the material parameters can be determined from one dimensional, two dimensional or more complex tests and the calibrated model can be used for simulating the exact working conditions.