Modeling high-strain-rate microcavitation in soft materials: the role of material response

High-strain-rate inertial microcavitation has been shown to be an effective method for mechanical characterization of soft materials. To model inertial microcavitation Rayleigh-Plesset-based approaches are commonly used to capture the cavitation dynamics; however, these approaches are limited to simple viscoelastic constitutive models for the soft material, such as the Kelvin-Voigt model, since the implementation of more complex viscoelastic models requires the integration of complex mathematical expressions. To circumvent this limitation, we have developed a finite-element-based numerical simulation capability for inertial microcavitation that enables the incorporation of more complex constitutive laws. In this talk, we consider nonlinear elastic and power-law viscous constitutive laws and present a deeper investigation of the role of the elasticity and rheology of the soft material on the consequent cavitation dynamics. We apply our simulation capability by comparing computational results with experimental data from high-strain-rate inertial microcavitation of polyacrylamide and collagen gels in order to mechanically characterize these materials at high strain rates.