Author(s)

C.W.J.Oomens

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to give a an introduction to the special session on Mixed Methods for Material Identification (MMM). MMM form a sub- class of the widely used Inverse Methods and are focussed on constitutive equations for biological materials and engineering materials like composites, polymers, metals, ceramics. This can be stress/strain (history) relation- ships, but also ultimate properties or a description of damage. MMM are based on three elements: experiments were materials are tested in complex flows or under complex loading conditions leading to nonunifom fields (dis- placement, velocity-, strain, stress fields), a numerical model using some assumed constitutive law for the material and initial estimates for material parameters and an estimation algorithm to iteratively improve the param- eter estimations

Keywords