Ogden material calibration via magnetic resonance cartography, parameter sensitivity and variational system identification

Contemporary material characterization techniques that leverage deformation fields and the weak form of the equilibrium equations face challenges in the numerical solution procedure of the inverse characterization problem. As material models and descriptions differ, so too must the approaches for identifying parameters and their corresponding mechanisms. The widely used Ogden material model can be comprised of a chosen number of terms of the same mathematical form, which presents challenges of parsimonious representation, interpretability and stability. Robust techniques for system identification of any material model are important to assess and improve experimental design, in addition to their centrality to forward computations. Using fully three-dimensional displacement fields acquired in silicone elastomers with our recently developed magnetic resonance cartography (MR-u) technique on the order of greater than 20 000 points per sample, we leverage partial differential equation-constrained optimization as the basis of variational system identification of our material parameters. We incorporate the statistical F-test to maintain parsimony of representation. Using a new, local deformation decomposition locally into mixtures of biaxial and uniaxial tensile states, we evaluate experiments based on an analytical sensitivity metric and discuss the implications for experimental design. This article is part of the theme issue 'The Ogden model of rubber mechanics: Fifty years of impact on nonlinear elasticity'.