Abstract

Nappa upper pig leathers have been popular because shoes made from them give a very comfortable feeling to the wearer. From the viewpoint of stress-relaxation behaviour, the viscoelasticity of nappa upper pig leathers was studied and is reported in this paper.

A model with four Maxwell models connected in parallel is put forward, which had been used to describe the stress-relaxation behaviour of nappa upper pig leathers successfully. The correlation coefficients between model prediction and actual behaviour are very close to 1 which means that the simulation is reliable. The comfort of leather shoes is also discussed in relation to the stress-relaxation model.