Physical invariant strain energy function for passive myocardium.

Principal axis formulations are regularly used in isotropic elasticity, but they are not often used in dealing with anisotropic problems. In this paper, based on a principal axis technique, we develop a physical invariant orthotropic constitutive equation for incompressible solids, where it contains only a one variable (general) function. The corresponding strain energy function depends on six invariants that have immediate physical interpretation. These invariants are useful in facilitating an experiment to obtain a specific constitutive equation for a particular type of materials. The explicit appearance of the classical ground-state constants in the constitutive equation simplifies the calculation for their admissible values. A specific constitutive model is proposed for passive myocardium, and the model fits reasonably well with existing simple shear and biaxial experimental data. It is also able to predict a set of data from a simple shear experiment.