Abstract
The aim of this study was to select an appropriate material model for a polyurethane rail pad. The considered material was assumed to be hyper-elastic, and model selection was limited only to the Mooney-Rivlin (M-R) material models available in the MSC.Marc/Mentat system. The selection of the most appropriate material model was based on the most accurate approximation of the experimental results, considering also CPU time, the stability of the material model, and convergence of the FE analyses. The current study was limited to static analysis without cyclical deformation modes. The conclusions reached and the observations from the conducted analyses should not be generalized to the whole group of hyper-elastic materials, as they relate only to the specific material under consideration. However, the results may provide a foundation for researchers involved in the analysis of such types of engineering materials.
Keywords:
Hyper-elastic material; polyurethane; numerical modelling; Mooney-Rivlin models; model fitting
