A macroscopic viscoelastic viscoplastic constitutive model for porous polymers under multiaxial loading conditions

Abstract

A macroscopic constitutive model, the Porous Eindhoven Glass Polymer (Porous EGP) model, is presented to describe the deformation behavior of cavitated rubber toughened polymers under multiaxial loading conditions. It is shown that the proposed macroscopic constitutive model is able to describe the non-linear pre-yield regime, strain rate dependence, post-yield behavior (strain softening and hardening) and void evolution for loading conditions ranging from shear to equi-triaxial (pure triaxial) tension and compression. The Porous EGP model is a combination of a well established non-linear viscoelastic viscoplastic model, the Eindhoven Glassy Polymer (EGP) model, and the modified Gurson model. The Gurson model is adopted to determine the equivalent stress and plastic rate of deformation tensor making it depending on the void volume fraction, deviatoric and hydrostatic stress. The macroscopic constitutive model is developed based on the response of realistic 3D representative volume elements (RVEs) containing randomly positioned mono-disperse inclusions. The constitutive behavior of the matrix phase in this full-field model is described by the EGP model, and the cavitated inclusions are idealized as voids. Their response is studied for a range of void volume fractions, multiaxial loading conditions, strain rates and thermodynamic states. The yield behavior of the heterogeneous material depends non-linearly on the macroscopic hydrostatic stress. This response is well captured with the proposed macroscopic constitutive model.