IDENTIFICATION OF MATERIAL PROPERTIES OF A NONLINEARLY ELASTIC MATERIAL BY QUASILINEARIZATION.

A method of determining certain characteristic flexural rigidities and elastic properties of non-linearly elastic materials is presented. A moment curvature relation in the form of a hyperbolic tangent law is introduced. An identification method utilizing quasilinearization and a least squares fitting technique is used to solve the nonlinear differential equation derived from the moment curvature relation, subject to boundary values representing deflections of the bar at discrete points. Deflection data from numerical simulations of a non-linearly elastic prismatic bar are used to demonstrate the identification method. Numerical experiments relating the accuracy of the identification method to the number and accuracy of the boundary values are presented. Conclusions based on the numerical experiments are included. (Author)