Using an inverse method for optimizing the material constants of the Mooney-Rivlin constitutive model

The pelvic floor is made up of a set of soft tissue structures, supported by a network of muscles, which are in turn attached to each other and to the pelvis by condensations of fascial and fibromuscular tissues [1]. For clinical, technical and ethical reasons it is not possible to obtain the properties of these soft tissues in vivo. The utilization of Inverse Method is therefore required in order to obtain estimates for the mechanical properties of these structures. In this work, an optimization algorithm was implemented in order to obtain the optimal mechanical constants for the Mooney-Rivlin constitutive model [2]. The optimization algorithm uses the python scripting language to couple the Matlab® and Abaqus® software. The Powell's method was used for the optimization part of the algorithm.