Modeling and simulation of damage in elastomer structures at high strains

X Aubard,P.-A Boucard,P Ladevèze,S Michel

doi:10.1016/s0045-7949(02)00241-9

Abstract

A new model is proposed in order to simulate correctly the behaviour of elastomers for very large deformations. The hyperelastic Hart–Smith’s model is revisited in order to take into account the damage of elastomers and the opening and the closing of micro-defects. Applications concern structures with elastomer used in space industry. Shear loadings are typical solicitations for these structures. Whenever the material is able to undergo very large deformations (600–700%), the simulation of this type of experiment up to so high strains is not easy. The failure of industrial finite element code leads us to develop a prototype software using a non-incremental method (large time increment method) and a material formulation with “rotated” quantities. Some applications are shown for elastic or hyperelastic materials, especially for nearly incompressible materials.

Highlights

The aim of this study is to simulate the behaviour of metal/elastomer structures used in space industry
Introduction of damage If we examine the behaviour of the Hart–Smith law for small and for large strain, we find that the constants materials can be defined by lim G 1⁄4 2C1 þ C2
The proposed model, which rests on the continuum damage mechanic, a phenomenological approach, is both simple with few parameters to identify and efficient to take into account the degradation of material properties

Summary

Introduction

The aim of this study is to simulate the behaviour of metal/elastomer structures used in space industry. For the shear experiment case, local instabilities seem to occur (premature stop of calculations with the finite element code ABAQUS). Another difficulty is due to the modeling of material behaviour: only few hyperelastic laws are able to give good adequacy between calculations and experiments for very large strains. The solution proposed in [11] is to replace classical invariants by new quantities obtained with the positive and negative parts of the Green– Lagrangian strain E. They are defined by writing the incompressibility constraint, that is ð5Þ

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Conclusion