Phenomenological aspects of the deformation of elastomeric networks

Abstract

The application of finite linear viscoelastic theory to elastomeric networks is discussed. It is shown that the time dependent behaviour of rubber-like materials in moderately large deformations can be described successfully by introducing a suitable chosen non-linear strain measure into the Boltzmann superposition integral. A new two-term elastic potential is proposed. The first term is the neo-Hookean potential predicted by the statistical theory of rubber elasticity for a ‘perfect’ network. The second accounts for contributions arising from the topological constraints which are generally present in real networks. The resulting two-network theory is verified on hand of published data.