The eardrum (tympanic membrane, TM) is a curved multi-layer membrane. Its function is to capture sound energy, and its mechanical properties play an essential role in the mechanics of hearing. To identify the stiffness of the TM, approaches such as tensile tests [1], finite-element modelling (FEM) [1], and the virtual fields method (VFM) [2] have been employed. Established methods such as FEM and tensile testing are easy to perform and interpret, but suffer from artefacts. For example, the eardrum periphery is often assumed to be fully fixed in FEM modelling, but experimental data shows that a complicated connection between the eardrum and surrounding bone exists [3]. For tensile tests, rectangular strips need to be cut from the TM, which suffers from grip slippage and does not allow investigating the TM under normal and intact circumstances. On the contrary, the VFM allows for direct identification of the material parameters of the TM based on experimental data. However, the identification process depends heavily on the selection of suitable virtual fields, which act as weighting functions to extract the material parameters from the data. During the presentation, we will showcase our current progress on using the VFM to extract the orthotropic material properties of the human eardrum. Our approach will be explained based on simulated FEM data. We will highlight the importance of A) starting from high quality data, B) selecting suitable virtual fields and C) the identification process of the material parameters. Moreover, we will focus on the general approach, so researchers from different fields can gain insight in this method during the presentation and discuss the possibility of adopting the methodology in their research. REFERENCES [1] Volandri G, Di Puccio F, Forte P, Carmignani C. Biomechanics of the tympanic membrane. J Biomech. 2011 Apr 29;44(7):1219-36. Epub 2011 Mar 3. PMID: 21376326. [2] Pires, F. S. M., Avril, S., Livens, P., Cordioli, J. A., and Dirckx, J. J. J. (October 13, 2021). "Material Identification on Thin Shells Using the Virtual Fields Method, Demonstrated on the Human Eardrum." ASME. J Biomech Eng. March 2022; 144(3): 031004. [3] Gea SL, Decraemer WF, Funnell WR, Dirckx JJ, Maier H. Tympanic membrane boundary deformations derived from static displacements observed with computerized tomography in hu