Spherical Indentation of Soft Matter Beyond the Hertzian Regime: Numerical and Experimental Validation of Hyperelastic Models

The lack of practicable nonlinear elastic contact models frequently compels the inappropriate use of Hertzian models in analyzing indentation data and likely contributes to inconsistencies associated with the results of biological atomic force microscopy measurements. We derived and validated with the aid of the finite element method force-indentation relations based on a number of hyperelastic strain energy functions. The models were applied to existing data from indentation, using microspheres as indenters, of synthetic rubber-like gels, native mouse cartilage tissue, and engineered cartilage. For the biological tissues, the Fung and single-term Ogden models achieved the best fits of the data while all tested hyperelastic models produced good fits for the synthetic gels. The Hertz model proved to be acceptable for the synthetic gels at small deformations (strain < 0.05 for the samples tested), but not for the biological tissues. Although this finding supports the generally accepted view that many soft materials can be assumed to be linear elastic at small deformations, the nonlinear models facilitate analysis of intrinsically nonlinear tissues and large-strain indentation behavior.